President Obama said today the United States has the makings of the best education system in the world, but other nations are outpacing us. The World's Katy Clark reports on Obama's vision for beefing up learning here.
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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. First it was the economy. Then the war in Iraq. Now, President Obama says he's tackling education reform. In a speech today before the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Obama said improving the country's education system is an economic imperative. The World's Katy Clark has more.
KATY CLARK: President Obama argued that despite having resources unmatched anywhere in the world, America has let classroom grades slip, schools crumble, and teacher quality drop. The result, he said, is that other nations now outpace the United States when it comes to educational excellence.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let me give you some statistics. In 8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place. Singapore's middle schoolers out-perform ours 3 to 1. Just a third of our 13 and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should.
CLARK: The President went on to say that it's not that other nation's children are smarter than American students. It's that other nations are being smarter about how they're educating their students.
OBAMA: They're spending less time teaching things that don't matter and more time teaching things that do. They're preparing their students not only for high school or college, but for a career. We are not.
CLARK: One of the measures Mr. Obama proposed today was increasing the amount of time American students spend in the classroom. Education analysts say that's an important place to start because students who spend more time in school on core subjects like science and math generally score higher on achievement tests.
JOHN CRESWELL: Yes. Yes, that's important. We've shown that for the students who are receiving higher level of contact hours the results generally tend to be higher.
CLARK: John Creswell is with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It's an international organization that rates student performances in industrialized countries. The group's last survey in 2006 found 15-year-old students in the U.S. trailing well behind their counterparts in 30 other countries in math and science. Finland scored the best in those subjects. Education policy experts also say the U.S. needs to do better when it comes to graduating students who are prepared to succeed in the global workplace – whether it's being able to speak a foreign language or merely understanding what life is like outside the U.S. Victor Johnson is with NAFSA, an association of international educators based in Washington.
JOHNSON: In any given year, roughly one percent of those enrolled in all higher education institutions in the United States study abroad. By any measure, the participation is way too low for the times we live in.
CLARK: President Obama didn't speak directly to the issue of study abroad in today's address on education reform, but he did cite his time living in Indonesia as an important part of his educational development. Johnson says a key part of any education reform here should emphasize foreign exchange. That would include bringing more foreign professors and researchers here.
JOHNSON: If we want to train more Americans in science and math, whose going to do it? The answer is the foreigners who are teaching those subjects today.
CLARK: But that may not be so simple. Stepped up screening since September 11th created a massive visa backlog for foreign professors and students. That backlog is starting to ease, but problems persist. And Victor Johnson warns those problems could hamper even the best efforts to re-invigorate America's education system. For The World, this is Katy Clark.
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