<p>I just attended a discussion last night with Bill Schmidt prof at Michigan state and who has been touring the country sounding the alarm that our schools are not educating students to the level of the rest of the world ( the only countries apparently that are lower than US are South Africa and Guyana?)
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/interviews/schmidt.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/interviews/schmidt.html</a>
In Europe apparently students are not given a choice what level of class to take- in the US we might have students taking 4 years of math in high school- but to use one of prof Schimdts examples- it might be algebra A algebra B algebra C and Algebra 1, when they should have had algebra in middle school to get to the math that they need in college. 40% of math courses in public universities are remedial. THat blows my mind, and I think it is because students aren't given enough challenging course work.
My daughter who was in special education just two years ago, is now in 10 th gd taking an AP euro class and a marine science class that easily is at an AP level. She needs tutoring every week, but she is up for the challenge.( and I know that if she had, had, more challenging work before high school, she would have been much better prepared, her science in middle school, was elementary level)</p>