Wrong on all three counts. Educational achievement is not lower than it was
thirty years ago.  Education in the U.S. is good compared to the rest of the
world. And it is competition from low-skilled, low-wage workers that is
hurting the low-skilled workers here.

From: "Wirt Atmar" <[log in to unmask]>
> For thirty years now, educational standards in the United States have been
> dropping while they've been rising significantly in the rest of the
world -- and
> if anything, US standards have dropped especially precipitously in the
last
> decade.

There's been hardly any change in educational achievement over the last
thirty or forty years.  For a balanced view, see
http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/sted1.htm

If you have any actual data to back up your claim, let's see it.  Lots of
people believe in some golden past of education, but the facts just don't
confirm it.

As to America's performance on TIMSS--it mostly reflects our ethnic
diversity.

Eighth-graders in the U.S. scored 515 on the science portion of the 1999
TIMSS test, in 18th place.  But white students in America scored 547, which
would put them in sixth place, behind only Taiwan, Singapore, Hungary,
Japan, and Korea.  That is higher than ALL western European countries.

In math, the U.S. scored 502, which is 19th place.  White students scored
525, which would tie them with Australia for 13th place.

How did achievement change between 1995 and 1999?  It increased:

Mathematics 1995 v. 1999
------------------------
1995  1999
---   ----
516    525    +9 White students
419    444   +25 Black students
443    457   +14 Hispanic students


Science 1995 v. 1999
--------------------
1995  1999
---   ----
544    547   +3 White students
422    438  +16 Black students
446    462  +16 Hispanic students


TIMSS data from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001028


>You can get a sense of that decline just from the comments of people on
> this list, where they would prefer to inculcate their children in their ow
n
> peculiar religious mythologies than educate them in the hard sciences. In
an
> open and free world, jobs should flow to the best educated people who will
work
> at the lowest wages. Indeed, the process underway now is exactly how it
should
> work -- and it benefits us all in the end.

So people in call centers and textile mills need to know about evolution?
Please!  It's the jobs at the _low end_ that the U.S. is losing, not the
jobs at the high end.

Take a look at what job categories have declined since 1983:
http://home.nc.rr.com/kenhirsch/occupations.html
There are two themes: ones that computers have reduced the demand for
(secretaries, bookkeeper, bank tellers, drafters), and low-skilled workers
in manufacturing and farming.

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