Educating Our Children To Succeed In The Global Economy

Education is critical to the success of our children, and education is critical to the success of our future economy. And yet, as a Nation, we are struggling. Our skills as a Nation, as they relate to skills in other countries around the world, are slipping. And we are now ranked 14th out of 34 countries for reading skills, 17th for science, 25th for mathematics. We are becoming the first generation of adults whose children are getting less education than we got. We are becoming the first generation in which our children often do not get hands-on experience through shop classes, a generation in which many schools are losing their music classes, even gym classes, things that aren't connected directly to No Child Left Behind testing. We have testing that perhaps has some elements that are valuable but has a lot of shortcomings. That is not a path for either the success of our children in a knowledge-based economy or the success of our future economy.