And What About Our Children?

Speaking of financial crises and how they can expose weak companies and weak countries, Warren Buffett once famously quipped that “only when the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.” So true and I agree with NYT Op-Ed columnist Thomas Friedman who said in his column today that what’s really unnerving is that America appears to be one of those countries that has been swimming buck naked – in more ways than one.

He goes on to say that credit bubbles are like the tide. They can cover up a lot of rot. In our case, the excess consumer demand and jobs created by our credit and housing bubbles have masked not only our weaknesses in manufacturing and other economic fundamentals, but something worse: how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us.

In the 1950s and 60s, the U.S. dominated the world in K-12 education. We also dominated economically. In the 1970s and 80s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and we continued to lead the world economically, albeit with other big economies, like China, closing in. Today, we have fallen behind in both per capita high school graduates and their quality. Consequences to follow.

In the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment that measure the applied learning and problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 30 industrialized countries, the US ranked 26th out of the 30 in math, and 24th in science. That put our average youth on par with those from Portugal and the Slovak Republic, rather than with students in countries that are more relevant competitors for service-sector and high-value jobs, like Canada, the Netherlands, Korea and Australia. And while our fourth-graders compare well on such global tests with, say, Singapore, our high school kids really lag, which means that the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers.

It’s not that we are failing across the board. There are huge numbers of exciting education innovations in America today, but the problem is that they are too scattered around the country leaving all kinds of achievement gaps between whites, African-Americans, Latinos and different income levels.

But it’s not just where education is concerned that we are failing our children. Bob Herbert, also a NYT Op-Ed columnist, wrote yesterday about our “Children in Peril”. There is little doubt that poverty and family homelessness are rising, the quality of public education in many communities is deteriorating and that legions of children are losing access to health care as their parents join the vastly expanded ranks of the unemployed.

Unemployment is expected to continue to rise for the foreseeable future, and with state and local governments staggering beneath the weight of budget deficits, there is no reason to believe that these problems and their profound negative impact on our children will do anything but worsen. States from coast to coast are cutting social service programs that include investigations of abuse and neglect along with socially beneficial and even life-saving programs for children are in the works in many states.

So, when do we stop the petty politics among those in Washington? I believe in Obama’s awareness of these problems as well as his desire to focus on trying to solve them, but what about members of the House and the Senate? When does our country, our people and particularly our children get put at the top of their list? That’s what I’m waiting for, but I’m not holding my breath.