More and more frequently I hear that America’s education is falling behind other nations. Now, generally I am not an alarmist. I won’t beat the drum and say this country is going downhill fast (people have been saying this for decades). But when people who are actually in charge of improving the educational system are telling me that it is broken, I I tend to pay attention. I recall attending a great lecture at University of Illinois on this subject. At least from the statistics that we have collected over the years it does seem that America’s edge is eroding. Sure, we have some of the most famous universities in the world but more and more frequently the elite that is graduating from these universities are people of foreign descent. Historically, this foreign-born talent was drawn to America by the great personal rights and freedoms. Once graduated, the people tended to settle here and adopt the American way of life. Yet this is no longer the case. Many graduates are drawn back to their respective countries by increasing benefits and rising economies. This means that an increasing amount of scientists and engineers must be raised from the native population. But when articles like the one below surface, I tend to wonder if we are capable of doing so.

“Fifty years ago this October, Americans were jolted by the news that Moscow, one year after drowning the Hungarian Revolution in blood, had put an 80-kilo satellite into Earth orbit.

In December, the U.S. Navy tried to replicate the feat. Vanguard got four feet off the ground and exploded, incinerating its three-pound payload. America was humiliated. Khrushchev was Man of the Year. Some of us yet recall the Vanguard newsreels and the humiliating laughter.

Stunned, America went to work to improve education in math and science, and succeeded. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of high school seniors began to rise, reaching a high in 1964.

However, test scores for high school students have been falling now for 40 years. In 1984, the Reagan administration issued A Nation at Risk, documenting the deterioration of American public education.”

Read the rest of the article here.