The Failure of American Education

American education, which used to be the envy of the world, is in dire straits. The U.S. ranks 21st among 25 developed countries on overall educational achievement for 15-year-olds.

The U.S. spends almost three times as much per prisoner as per public school pupil.

Only 15 percent of Black 4th graders are reading at or above grade level and only 15 percent are doing math at or above grade level; for Hispanic students the respective percentages are 16 and 21 percent, and they are almost as low for American Indian/Alaska Native students.

46 percent of Black high school students, 39 percent of Hispanic and 11 percent of White students attend the 2,000 “dropout factories” across our country, where less than 60 percent of the freshman class will graduate high school in four years.

Read the full report on the failure of American education at
http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-of-americas-children-2010-report-education.pdf