AMERICA'S high schools are producing millions of failures - ill-educated teens with little prospect of success in the snowballing high-tech "information age" - former Gov. Bob Wise warns in a disturbing new book.
AMERICA'S high schools are producing millions of failures - ill-educated teens with little prospect of success in the snowballing high-tech "information age" - former Gov. Bob Wise warns in a disturbing new book.
This sad trend will worsen "our 'two Americas' of haves and have-nots," he writes, because bright U.S. students will find lucrative careers, while the less-educated will find scant opportunity.
As president of the Alliance for Excellent Education in Washington, Wise has written Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation. The book says the multitude of dropouts and semiliterate graduates not only will suffer themselves, but they also will drag down America's economy.
Wise says this nation has some excellent high schools and many "mediocre" ones. "Then there is a toxic core, accounting for about one-half of all dropouts."
Unseen, barely noticed, 7,000 American teens drop out of high school every day, he writes. That's 1.2 million this year - and next year - and the next.
"Currently, a third of the nation's high school students will not graduate with a diploma; only about half of minority students will graduate," the book says. "These students, who certainly face a doubtful future, have to go somewhere. Unfortunately, far too many end up unemployed, on welfare rolls, or even in prison. We cannot as a nation continue in this way."
Compared to other advanced democracies, America's education level is paltry, Wise says. This country "allows our high school students to be surpassed by much of the industrialized world in academics. International comparisons rank the United States a stunningly unimpressive 18th for high school graduation rates, a lackluster ranking of 15th for high school reading assessments among 15-year-olds in developed countries, and an embarrassing 25th for high school math. Were academic performance an Olympic competition, the United States would not even make it into the stadium."
The dismal U.S. showing has a disturbing racial factor, he says. While 76 percent of white American students graduate on time, only 58 percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of blacks and 49 percent of American Indians do, Wise writes. "By 12th grade, average African-American and Hispanic students read at the same level as white eighth-grade students."
The ex-governor pointed out that when he was in high school in the 1960s, dropouts could find good-paying, blue-collar jobs in coal mines, chemical plants and other factories. But those industries have downsized drastically, and the fewer employees use sophisticated machines and computers - jobs that require significant education. Nowadays, the unskilled mostly sink into marginal lives.
In an interview about the book, Wise told education reporter Davin White that the average U.S. college graduate earns $52,600 a year, while high school grads get only $27,000 and dropouts a mere $17,300. As learning grows constantly more essential for good careers, this gulf between the educated rich and uneducated poor undoubtedly will worsen.
Much of Wise's book is devoted to proposals to raise U.S. high schools to the levels of foreign ones. Improvement will be expensive - but we can't think of a better investment for America's future. If other democracies can produce well-educated youths, there's no reason that America can't do as well.
AMERICA'S high schools are producing millions of failures - ill-educated teens with little prospect of success in the snowballing high-tech "information age" - former Gov. Bob Wise warns in a disturbing new book.
This sad trend will worsen "our 'two Americas' of haves and have-nots," he writes, because bright U.S. students will find lucrative careers, while the less-educated will find scant opportunity.
As president of the Alliance for Excellent Education in Washington, Wise has written Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation. The book says the multitude of dropouts and semiliterate graduates not only will suffer themselves, but they also will drag down America's economy.
Wise says this nation has some excellent high schools and many "mediocre" ones. "Then there is a toxic core, accounting for about one-half of all dropouts."
Unseen, barely noticed, 7,000 American teens drop out of high school every day, he writes. That's 1.2 million this year - and next year - and the next.
"Currently, a third of the nation's high school students will not graduate with a diploma; only about half of minority students will graduate," the book says. "These students, who certainly face a doubtful future, have to go somewhere. Unfortunately, far too many end up unemployed, on welfare rolls, or even in prison. We cannot as a nation continue in this way."
Compared to other advanced democracies, America's education level is paltry, Wise says. This country "allows our high school students to be surpassed by much of the industrialized world in academics. International comparisons rank the United States a stunningly unimpressive 18th for high school graduation rates, a lackluster ranking of 15th for high school reading assessments among 15-year-olds in developed countries, and an embarrassing 25th for high school math. Were academic performance an Olympic competition, the United States would not even make it into the stadium."
The dismal U.S. showing has a disturbing racial factor, he says. While 76 percent of white American students graduate on time, only 58 percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of blacks and 49 percent of American Indians do, Wise writes. "By 12th grade, average African-American and Hispanic students read at the same level as white eighth-grade students."
The ex-governor pointed out that when he was in high school in the 1960s, dropouts could find good-paying, blue-collar jobs in coal mines, chemical plants and other factories. But those industries have downsized drastically, and the fewer employees use sophisticated machines and computers - jobs that require significant education. Nowadays, the unskilled mostly sink into marginal lives.
In an interview about the book, Wise told education reporter Davin White that the average U.S. college graduate earns $52,600 a year, while high school grads get only $27,000 and dropouts a mere $17,300. As learning grows constantly more essential for good careers, this gulf between the educated rich and uneducated poor undoubtedly will worsen.
Much of Wise's book is devoted to proposals to raise U.S. high schools to the levels of foreign ones. Improvement will be expensive - but we can't think of a better investment for America's future. If other democracies can produce well-educated youths, there's no reason that America can't do as well.
