francoHFW
Diamond Member
Nonrich pay. savings, upward mobility, education, upward mobilty, and health care have gone to heck since 1982,while the rich have tripled their wealth and infrastructure is ruined. Thank god Obama and the Dems are slowly turning it around...Trickle down is a disaster for the country.
Today's young Americans have a below-average chance of becoming a graduate, compared with other industrialised economies.
The US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in a speech a few weeks ago, asked how the US had in "the space of a generation" tumbled from first place to 14th in graduation rates.
So what's gone wrong?
The spiralling cost of higher education in the United States is often cited as a barrier - and the collective student debt has exceeded a trillion dollars.
But Andreas Schleicher argues that a deeper problem is rooted in the inequalities of the school system.
He says that the level of social segregation and the excessive link between home background and success in school is "cutting off the supply" between secondary school and university.
The meritocratic, migrant energy in US culture is no longer operating in the school system.
"If you lose the confidence in the idea that effort and investment in education can change life chances, it's a really serious issue," says Mr Schleicher.
Middle-class squeeze
A US Senate committee examined this sense of imperilled optimism, in a hearing called Helping More Young People Achieve the American Dream.
The economist Miles Corak was among the expert witnesses - and he says the US education system reflects a wider picture of the "hollowing out" of the middle class.
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
These skills are the engine of the US economy and the engine is stuttering”
End Quote
Andreas Schleicher
OECD
"What you're seeing is the inequality of the labour market being echoed in education."
Prof Corak describes a polarising jobs market, with the very rich and very poor diverging - and a collapse in jobs in the middle ground, such as clerical or manufacturing jobs.
For such families, sending their children to college had once been a "defining metaphor for the country".
But it seems that the education system is no longer holding the door open to the brightest and the best, regardless of background.
The Philadelphia-based Pew research group compared the outcomes of young people in 10 western countries, in a project called Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Countries?
It found the US had the strongest link between family wealth and educational success - and the lowest mobility. Advantage and disadvantage were being further amplified in education.
Research manager Diana Elliott says in the US "income has a pervasive hold on mobility".
Insecurity
Another study by Pew, against the backdrop of recession, examined the phenomenon of downward mobility and found that a third of adults classified as middle class would slip out of that status during their adult life.
BBC News - Downward mobility haunts US education
Today's young Americans have a below-average chance of becoming a graduate, compared with other industrialised economies.
The US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in a speech a few weeks ago, asked how the US had in "the space of a generation" tumbled from first place to 14th in graduation rates.
So what's gone wrong?
The spiralling cost of higher education in the United States is often cited as a barrier - and the collective student debt has exceeded a trillion dollars.
But Andreas Schleicher argues that a deeper problem is rooted in the inequalities of the school system.
He says that the level of social segregation and the excessive link between home background and success in school is "cutting off the supply" between secondary school and university.
The meritocratic, migrant energy in US culture is no longer operating in the school system.
"If you lose the confidence in the idea that effort and investment in education can change life chances, it's a really serious issue," says Mr Schleicher.
Middle-class squeeze
A US Senate committee examined this sense of imperilled optimism, in a hearing called Helping More Young People Achieve the American Dream.
The economist Miles Corak was among the expert witnesses - and he says the US education system reflects a wider picture of the "hollowing out" of the middle class.
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
These skills are the engine of the US economy and the engine is stuttering”
End Quote
Andreas Schleicher
OECD
"What you're seeing is the inequality of the labour market being echoed in education."
Prof Corak describes a polarising jobs market, with the very rich and very poor diverging - and a collapse in jobs in the middle ground, such as clerical or manufacturing jobs.
For such families, sending their children to college had once been a "defining metaphor for the country".
But it seems that the education system is no longer holding the door open to the brightest and the best, regardless of background.
The Philadelphia-based Pew research group compared the outcomes of young people in 10 western countries, in a project called Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Countries?
It found the US had the strongest link between family wealth and educational success - and the lowest mobility. Advantage and disadvantage were being further amplified in education.
Research manager Diana Elliott says in the US "income has a pervasive hold on mobility".
Insecurity
Another study by Pew, against the backdrop of recession, examined the phenomenon of downward mobility and found that a third of adults classified as middle class would slip out of that status during their adult life.
BBC News - Downward mobility haunts US education
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