Book Reviews & Citations
(07/18/05) Clyde Prestowitz and Three Billion New Capitalists noted in the Akron Beacon Journal
Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio) (KRT)
Copyright 2005 Akron Beacon Journal
July 18, 2005
Deluded at 17
The other achievement gap
Count us among those very pleased to see the country's 9-year-olds
making impressive gains in reading and mathematics. The results of the
National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test covering 28,000
students (private and public) ages 9, 13 and 17 in all 50 states,
revealed a narrowing of the achievement gap among the youngest
students, minority students making the largest improvement.
Count us among those very pleased to see the country's 9-year-olds
making impressive gains in reading and mathematics. The results of the
National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test covering 28,000
students (private and public) ages 9, 13 and 17 in all 50 states,
revealed a narrowing of the achievement gap among the youngest
students, minority students making the largest improvement.
Ohioans, in particular, should recognize the broader payoff from
investing in the education of young children. The trouble is, the
national exams also reflected a persistent problem, the slippage as
students proceed through middle and high schools.
Haunting is a passage from the recent book Three Billion New
Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power from the East, by
Clyde Prestowitz, a trade negotiator in the Reagan years and now
president of the Economic Strategy Institute. By East, Prestowitz has
China, India and much of Asia in mind. He notes that American
12th-graders rank globally in the 10th percentile in math, yes, near
the very bottom. Yet those seniors think they are among the very best.
The task? Preventing those 9-year-olds from taking the same misguided
path.