(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.