In his column at the Hill, Juan Williams sounds the alarm about the declining American education system, which is in crisis. He says that historians are already describing the decline as a threat to the nation's economy and military.
Thirty percent of America’s high school students drop out and never graduate. Fewer than half of the nation’s black and Hispanic students graduate on time from high school.
The scandalous bottom line here is that more than 1 million students drop out of American public schools every year. That works out to more than 6,000 students every day and one student every 26 seconds.
Education in America, particularly big-city education, is in crisis. Historians are already describing the decline of public education as a threat to the nation’s economy and military. And when the tragic scale of harm to racial minorities is considered, the education crisis is aptly labeled as the greatest civil rights challenge of the 21st century …
The idea is simple: Better schools will result if parents have more control over how tax dollars are spent on education. That means bipartisan, coast-to-coast support for charter schools, vouchers and anything else that introduces competition and innovation into a stultified, failing education system.
Read Juan Williams' entire column at the Hill.