"The new economy is a knowledge-based economy, and we are woefully lagging other countries in the accumulation of formal knowledge," writes Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College for Women in USA Today.

See Time to Address Our Education Crisis, Too in USA Today.

This article is so far off from reality that I have to seriously wonder what exposure the writer has with public education.

The Lumina Foundation prediction that "our nation is likely to face a shortage of college-educated workers by 2020, especially as the highly educated Baby Boomers retire" is about a future that does not seem to take into account the terrible economic struggles of 2008. Twelve years from now our families will be looking back to what we did today that gave them greater opportunities, or not. Twelve years from now, our kindergartners will be graduating from high school. We want to encourage our children and their classmates to reach their full potential whether they go to college or not. The crisis for colleges and universities now might be that fewer middle class students of any ethnicity will be able to afford to further their educations. And with young people who have graduated recently suffering the burden of huge college loan debts and high interest rates, in a struggling economy, it's less likely alumni or their families will be able to support their alma maters as they might have twenty years ago.

They need to shift the focus on to teaching kids to analyze and research... to THINK. They need to start acknowledging cultural differences that inhibit learning among minorities and frequently land them in educational settings that are completely inappropriate because their actions and responses are misread. They need to start facilitating learning instead of rote memorization. They need to stop teaching to the test (tests which I whole-heartedly believe are necessary) and start teaching the kids how to learn and how to figure things out--then they would pass the tests.

I could go ooooooon and oooooon and oooooon. It's pathetic. Teachers learn lots of wonderful ways to inspire and educate kids. Their hands are tied by administrators who will take their paltry current results in favor of "the great unknown" of new techniques that might not produce anything (despite the research that would say otherwise).

The education crisis is not about cost. It's about education.

"The education crisis is not about cost. It's about education."

Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. The article IS lofty--but it matches the national push from government at all levels to pressure students into a 4 year degree--something which is not necessarily required these days. Unfortunately, what our children learn in PreK-12 isn't sufficient enough to gain them any solid foothold in the world of work. This means that many--those who wish to work outside of a service industry--will need SOME sort of training beyond high school. That does not mean, however, that university training is required. At this time, and for all jobs projected through 2025, only 30 percent of all US jobs actually REQUIRE a degree of any kind.

Educational Reform MUST begin with the Parents. The biggest lack in education of our youth is the lack of education children gain from their parents. The school system alone, no matter how perfect, can provide all the education a child needs in their life. There is so much lack of parental involvement in educating their children it's no wonder children are not succeeding as well. Yes, there needs to be improvements made by schools, teachers and school administration. However, no amount of reform can be as effective as the strong involvement of parents teaching their children from birth into adulthood. Education begins with the Parents.

Craig: the parents need to supply the lower 3 levels of Maslow and certainly, there are a portion of parents who don't/can't. But the greater majority of students have those lower levels fulfilled at home and therefore the schools should be able to educate them.

I'm sick of hearing this excuse. I had kids who had ignorant parents and surprise, surprise--they managed to learn. Of course I also taught in a subject area that was not subject to test scores--and even at that, alternative methods of teaching freaked out the administration. So because I taught at a high school level, coloring and reading aloud were deemed "inappropriate". Interesting...

This is the issue with educators everywhere: they often have their hands tied from actually educating.

No amount of parenting at home in the world will overcome that unless that parent can take on the financial loss of income to homeschool them... and many are.

Frankly Craig58, parents could live at the school while the child is attending, be involved in everything all day long, and we'll still find our children know little more than how to successfuly take standardized tests, run from unseen violence, and perform to the 50th percentile. Unless things significantly change in the schools, we'll continue to have issues.