NJ Education Report

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report today on a paper about to be issued by the Council of Foreign Relations that examines the impact of a “broken education system” on America’s national security. In a neat hat trick of consensus, authors include AFT President Randi Weingarten, Joel Klein, and Condoleeza Rice.

From the Times:

75 percent of young adults do not qualify to serve in the military because they are physically unfit or have criminal records or inadequate levels of education. It said 30 percent of high school graduates do not do well enough on an aptitude test to serve.

And from the Journal:

Performance on all these fronts is grim. Only a third of elementary and middle-school students are competent in reading, math and science. Compared to peers in industrial countries, American 15-year-olds rank 14th in reading, 25th in math and 17th in science. Fewer than 5% of college students graduate with engineering degrees (in China it’s 33%), and a third of science and engineering grad students in the U.S. are foreign nationals, most of whom are ultimately denied visas to stay.

The report closes with three recommendations. From the Times:

¶ Common Core standards should be adopted and expanded to include science, technology and foreign languages.
¶ Students, especially those in poor schools, should have more choices in where they go to school.
¶ Governors, working with the federal government, should develop a national security readiness audit, to judge whether schools are meeting targets.