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February 07, 2007
SAT Question: How Can America Avoid the "Perfect Storm"?
The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the folks who made you spend your senior year in high school cramming for the SATs, has come out with a scary new report called America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future (http://www.ets.org/Media/Education_Topics/pdf/AmericasPerfectStorm.pdf). The three forces, when you get down to it, are really three facets of the same problem: Our economy is changing and a whole lot of people are being left behind. And while we're trying (not very successfully) to sort it all out, we're adding to the 'left behind' category at a furious pace.
As economic success demands higher and higher levels of education and skills, we're importing people with less education and lower skills. The report points out that Hispanics constitute the overwhelming share of our record-setting immigration, but more than half of all Hispanic immigrants have never finished high school. And things are likely to get worse. Literacy and numeracy (there's a good SAT vocabulary word) will decline by an additional 5 percent by 2030, widening the chasm between those who are moving ahead and those being left behind. "If we continue on our current course…our nation will gradually lose ground to other countries, becoming more divided socially and economically," ETS warns.
So naturally we'd better do something about this looming storm, and do it fast. The report urges "changing our economic strategies" and "equipping most (if not nearly all) adults with the ability to perform work that is highly valued in the marketplace." Nice thoughts…kind of vague, but nice. It is at least reassuring to know that there will be plenty of contemplation going on about what is wrong with our economy and our schools as we sail headlong into this perfect storm.
What about fixing what is wrong with that third component of the "perfect storm"? The one we actually have the most ability to change in the shortest period of time? You know - our immigration policies? Sorry, that one is not an option on this exam.
Posted on at February 7, 2007 05:11 PM