When assessing the state of K-12, there is always talk about an education crisis in America. And when previewing the topline data to compare ourselves against other countries, one could walk away believing that such a crisis does exist. American 15-year-olds were scoring under 500 on a scale of 0–1,000 in the 2015 Program of International Student Assessment, with the United States ranking 24th in both Math and Science, and a dismal 39th place in Reading out of 71 countries assessed. Of the 35 powerful Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, the U.S. is at the bottom: 30th in Math and 19th in Science.
Meanwhile, both taxpayers and the colleges they send their kids to are paying more than $7 billion annually in remedial education courses because, collectively, our K-12 system is failing to prepare nearly half of all graduating seniors for the basics. A Hechinger Report showed 874 out of 911 community and four-year college surveyed enrolling new students who needed remediation in the 2014–2015 school year. Nearly 23 percent of those schools were enrolling over half of their incoming students in “at least on remedial course.”
That’s not what we should expect or accept from a $20 trillion economy accounting for over a quarter of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.
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