LOL @ E to a C.. that's a good one! haha

on a more serious note, the recent trend in public education is fairly disparaging especially here in CA. We have had a fairly bad mix of poor legislation, poor school management, and lazy/dumb parents AND kids. There has been a lot of "dumbing down" happening across the system... ie, dropping SAT scores, fight against high school exit exam, etc. All of these factors have contributed to a degradaton of the educationsystem as a whole and will lead to more problems for future generations. Not to mention that even though schools are highly funded through bond measures, the funds are often mis-managed which further erodes the education experience for the kids. There needs to be a re-vamp of the entire system and a complete change in attitude from all sides. It's not just 1 person's fault that you can pin this against.

Rediculous isn't it. Schools have been forced to deal with so much 'other then education' BS it is no surprise they begin to fall behind. That and as you said, lowering of scores to make everyone 'fit in' together.

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Best I could google in 10 min.
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/new_96_report.htm#pictures

I am sure some of the smaller countries are exclued in the sensus.
For example, from what I know years ago, Singapore was(is) by far top in evey measures. I knew a girl from the country. That kid blew away the most of American Kids in class especially in English Writing! She wasn't a boy/girl wonder from China (I mean those 1 out of 10 million Smart). She was a below average student who couldn't make it to a college in her own country, but fortunately her parents had money and sent her to private collage in the U.S... She told me that in Singapore regardless what grade you are if you fail in any subject they will make you repeat the grade no matter what, which is a huge shame in the family. Yes, it is the country where gum chewing is illegal, and one American kid got their ass whipped in public for vandalizing cars if you recall.

As you could deduct from the chart above, throwing money at school does help but it doesn't gurantee the outcome. For exmaple some developing countries does better than us. Why they got more dough than us? Where I live public school is excellent considering it is LA County. Recently I heard that BS racially oriented riot took place in one of the high school in our area.
It was a shock to me because some like that is common in other LA couty schools, no offence, not here. If this continues on I will personally maker sure my hard earn money will be put to a good use. I am send my kid to a 50k/yr private high school in Boston. I don't know what else to tell you guys.

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