In a study that should surprise almost no one, a new survey reveals that students in the US continue to lag far behind in terms of math and science. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development gave the same test to 15 year old students in 30 industrialized countries , including the United States, as well as 27 other non-OECD countries. Finland, Hong Kong, Canada, Taiwan and South Korea were among the top performers on the test, but where was the United States you ask? Well below average, where else. And yet opponents of school choice claim offering alternatives for American school children would be harmful. The question is: harmful to whom?

Certainly not harmful to the student, they already rank amongst the bottom of the barrel, no school choice would be harmful to the schools and the administrators, school boards and teachers unions, who thrive under the status quo. With school choice, the state’s education monoploy would be vanquished and schools would have to perform or their customers (ie, the students would turn elsewhere). Indeed, while American students languish in the doldrums other nation’s even left leaning ones have long since embraced school choice to one extent or another. In Hong Kong, France, Canada, Belgium, Chile, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc…school choice is the norm, and in those countries students excell, while in America mediocrity is the order of the day. Even in neo-Fascist regimes like Putin's Russia where the state plays an ever increasing role in so many aspects of people's lives there is school choice.

Schools, alone are not to blame for America’s shamefully poor performance on such academic barometers. The attitude of many American parents toward education is sorely lacking and helps to explain why parents in Utah recently shot down a ballot initiative to bring about school choice there. Sadly, for many Americans education takes a back seat to American Idol, Football, Music, Movies and every other aspect of popular culture and as long as it does, look for Americans to continue their downward spiral toward insignificance.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i8h-DxHp61exabOSw_W4O6KZf9CwD8TAHK7G0