I don't want to come off as being anti-union, I appreciate what they accomplished for the working class, but teachers' unions are a major source of the dysfunction plaguing the pre-tertiary system. I believe that their resistance to increased school choice disenfranchises parents. The Netherlands, which is traditionally at or near the top of international benchmarks, has a nearly100 year history of publically financed school choice that empowers parents to participate in the education of their children. Continuing to educate in the same manner but expecting different results reeks of idiocy. I was a high school English teacher. I'm not speaking from an outsider's perspective. I quit to pursue my graduate degree in Global & International Education because it had become increasingly clear that the system was failing its consumers and workers alike (the students, the parents, the grandparents, and the teachers). RAND seems to think that if the school choice option were to be better publicized more students and parents would opt to participate. Then with a larger data set, maybe an accurate assessment could be conducted. Allow parents and students to take their education into their own hands. Increase pre-tertiary school choice.

In the first half of your piece you lay out the structural problems the United States has been left with because of the very nature of the knowledge economy, but the conclusions that you draw in the second half miss the obvious logical extensions of the evidence and instead head off in an entirely different direction.

1. "But the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google put together cannot employ the people laid off by Ford and General Motors."

The problem you present is that while the highest tier of economic activity, the cutting-edge tech industry, is thriving, it cannot compensate for the plummet of Ford and General Motors. This is, of course, the basis of the knowledge economy: technological progress equals higher productivity, which means less people are required to do more work, making that work more lucrative. The problem is, the combination of technological progress and foreign competition, which can produce more cheaply, are putting great pressure on the less advanced sectors of the US economy: Industrial production. The US is bleeding blue collar jobs, not white-collar ones (as of yet).

And the conclusion you draw from this is that our workforce isn't educated enough? GM and Ford aren't hurting for lack of college grads and technical expertise, they're bleeding because for the simple fact that Korean and Japanese carmakers can pay their blue-collar workers less. More-educated Americans aren't going to kickstart the auto-industry, they're going to be fighting for an ever-smaller share of the tech sector, whose endgame is basically the elimination of itself.

2. " No wonder America's Ph.D. students, especially in science and engineering, come increasingly from overseas."

This is less a criticism of America's educational institutions than an accolade. The fact that more foreign students are studying in the US means that they have recognized the superiority of the system. And the fact that the ratio is of foreigners to natives is increasing isn't a sign of American decline but of the fact that developing nations, such as China and India, who are new to wealth and education, have decided to send the cream of their crop to US schools. The average US student shouldn't be expected to compete with India and China's best, both nations of a billion people. Sending a bright American college student to an Indian university would likely show my point.

Secondly, American universities have strong incentives to accept foreign applicants. Not only does it boost sought-after statistics and promote their brand names around the world, but foreign students are much more likely to pay full admission.

3. "the United States has a 30 percent high-school dropout rate and recently ranked 31st of 65 countries in math proficiency in a ranking compiled by the OECD"

Of course this tidbit is terrible, yet it's easy to read too much into this. The US is an immense, diverse and highly fractured nation. Comparing it to a European nation with a sixth of the population and a far more homogeneous populace is ridiculous. That statistic isn't just taking in the educated, prosperous segments of America, but also the urban and rural poor. The dropout rate, sadly, is much higher among certain minorities and socio-economic statues. These are immense, long-running problems in America, but they have less to do with the education system than culture.

4."Go back to farming," he said. And it didn't entirely sound like a joke.

The very problem blue-collar America faces is that their competition in India and China HAVE just come off the farm, and can be paid much, much less to do the same work.

The American education system does need serious work, but it isn't the basket case so many make it out to be. It's a system that fails some but gives huge rewards to others. Today's problems with the knowledge economy are not because of poor education, but the point in history that we have reached. White collar jobs grow smaller as productivity increases, while blue-colalr jobs must compete with emerging markets.

The most important thing higher education must do is become cheaper. Sending graduates out with 40 grand in debt into a capricious market is not a tenable system. If this problem isn't solved soon, we will be in a pickle. Why hire one American programmer with 40 grand of debt when you can get four slightly-less educated Indian programmers for the same price?

An Emirati lecturing the United States on it's poor educational performance!!!!!

Look Habibi..I spent ten years working as an English teacher at the UAE Naval Academy in Abu Dhabi...Sadiyat Island....the cadets (if you can call them that) were abysmal in every regard.
The most unmotivated, arroagant..lazy and all around useless "students" I have ever encountered.
Now...there are students like this in every country...but one assumes cadets at the Naval Academy would be of a slightly higher standard.

And it wasn't just in the military. HCT and those phony UAE universities are worthless. The government pays huge sums to Western universities to set up shop in Dubai and Abu Dhabi (my own alma mater included) yet it's really only for prestige sake and to appease some meglamaniacal sheikh.

To anyone else who may be reading this..I am not writing out of anger. The educational system..in fact almost all social services in the United Arab Emirates are either non-existant or rotten to the core.....this after decades of extreme petroleum wealth.

The one thing the Emiratis have learned is how to buy good PR...remember they own half of CNN....and that's just for starters.

The reality of the United Arab Emirates is dismal and shocking..... to have this guy pontificating about short comings of the US system is..well...dismal and shocking.

This is a huge problem for the US, but what is the solution? How do we actually get over the loss of manufacturing jobs? I believe that steady jobs are a thing of the past and Americans need to use their wits to create their own jobs and not rely on these large corporations for a paycheck. Also, downsizing and not spending as much is a necessity. Too many people work for money and get caught up in a downward spiral of debt and can't get out of it. Money is not everything, especially when you have to sacrifice yourself for it. I feel like Americans can recreate themselves right now and use their knowledge and the power of our currency (while it lasts) to create their own businesses. Get on with life, even if it means going to a drugrehab fl, but it is best to take care of issues promptly and then move forward. Regardless of all of this talk, I take no comforter in the fact that America is where it is, but I don't think the US is like the Ottoman empire, because the world is global and we will not suffer alone, but the world will hurt with us too if we do not make some serious changes and get a good dulse of our own medicine. America will always be ahead of the pack in terms of innovation, because it is in our DNA to create and push the envelope, just take a look at all of our inventions over the years, the airplane, the telephone, the list goes on and on. I am ready for the new chapter and hope that the d800 comes out sooner rather than later. The best thing for America to do is to put things back together, tile by tile. I have faith in this country and will do my part to get things back on track.

I have a Bachelor's Degree from NYU film school that I have never used to get a job in my life. Not even peripherally. I've worked as an Accountant and now am a PPC Tech, and I got all of my jobs after school due to my ability to present myself and communicate value.

"Education" isn't a big red pill you feed everyone to made them healthy and good citizens. If you want to become a doctor, you go to med school. You wouldn't waste 8 years studying Chopin. The current American educational system is bizarre and unfocused. The kids who are good at Math and have a knack for it should take the upper level courses. But everyone else should be able to find things they are interested in and be taught how to monetize those skills.

I personally went through 2 years of pre-calc and advanced chemistry and physics. While the basics of these math and sciences are essential (understanding bases and acids, basic chemical reactions, being able to do complex division, percentages, etc.) 2 years of deep training into functions, negative integers, centripetal force, complex circuitry... while interesting, was completely unnecessary. And it was a major headache.

For years everyone in the state of S. Carolina was required to take AP History. Not everyone is capable of taking that course. But they did, and since the course is based on a curve, it helped those of us who were qualified.

Is it fair to expect every single student in the U.S. to excel in these courses at such an advanced level when it may have no relevance to their future career? In these other countries, are we talking about every single student? Does every poverty stricken kid even go to school? In the U.S. kids who are dealing with poverty, drug abuse, violence in their schools are expected to get good grades. Are these statistics in fact balanced? I am not saying they are, I just wonder.

I just read the "Missing Your Own Point" and i think I agree with most of what he is saying.

The other problem is that higher education in the U.S. is an unregulated business that doesn't have to be accountable for the quality of information it supplies to students. With more than 85% of college grads moving back home after school according to a new report, it makes you wonder how people even justify going to college anymore. Meanwhile private for profit art schools and trade schools like the New York Film Academy are making a fortune off the unregulated and unforgivable student loan industry and leaving grads with huge debt an few skills or job prospects.

Real education should teach people how to create jobs instead expecting to have them handed out, or just leaving them with a piece of paper and a cap and gown. Innovation created the 20th century and we need to have young people learn how to create and innovate new companies for tomorrow instead of hoping that dying industries will come back.

I quit to pursue my graduate degree in Global & International Education because it had become increasingly clear that the system was failing its consumers and workers alike (the students, the parents, the grandparents, and the teachers). RAND seems to think seslichat that if the school choice option were to be better publicized more students and parents would opt to participate. Then with a larger data set, maybe an accurate assessment could be conducted. Allow parents and students to take their education into their own hands. Increase pre-tertiary school choice.