U.S. Schools Receive Failing Grades

Ten years later, America's effort to become the world's best-educated nation is receiving failing marks. A federal panel reported Thursday that each of the six national education goals President Bush set in 1990 for the year 2000 will go unmet. Still, there was some noticeable improvement from kids at the youngest age. As it turns out, throwing money at the problem of fulfilling Bush's goal that kids enter kindergarten ready to learn really did work. Even as the level of federal funding devoted to public education stagnated during the past decade, the amount invested in early childhood education boomed. Head Start's budget alone grew nearly tenfold. Further, most states raised qualification levels for day care practitioners, and more quality day care is available to poor parents than a decade ago.

But the big enchilada of educational measurement — the percentage of kids who graduate from high school — remains stalled at 86 percent. Improving this is a much tougher proposition. Unlike early childhood education, for which there are widely accepted models for success, high school is an area that education leaders aren't quite sure how to address. In the '90s some states experimented with vouchers, while most raised their targets for student achievement on standardized tests. That hasn't been very successful; just last week, for example, Arizona announced that only 1 in 10 sophomores passed a new state math test, and states are now rushing to ease their testing standards. Meanwhile, calls for federal funding for school construction and for more, better-trained teachers are gaining traction in the presidential race. Students may be arriving ready to learn, but somewhere along the line they're not being taught.