[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I was going off of this article, which I will grant you was from 2010, so things may have changed. http://www.texastribune.org/texas-ed...hool-diplomas/

Yes, and I am not disputing your article. "Adults without a HS diploma" could certainly be valid, we may have a lot more 30-60 year old dropouts that other states, wouldn't totally shock me. And as the article says, the huge influx of illegal aliens has a lot to do with it.

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

And it also mentions that a lot of people without those degrees are immigrants to the state (from other U.S. states and Mexico) so it may not be as much of an indicator of the quality of the Texas education system. But I was just reading an article the other day that says the OECD just completed a study that found that American children are now more likely to achieve the same or a lower level of schooling than their parents. Only one in five will achieve a higher educational level than their parents. The U.S. is the only major developed economy in the world where this is the case. So when you take those two facts together, it's a worrying trend for Texas.

A worrying trend for the whole country.

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

It is because we, as a nation, do not value education as they do in Europe (particularly Scandinavia) and the Asian nations of Pacific Rim. Our politicians and community 'interest groups' have politicized schools, labeling them as indocrtrination centers and creating enough distrust that problems are bound to occur. And when they do, they sit back and tell you "see, I told you so!". Parents further encourage their children in the belief that they are not answerable for their effort and behavior, and when the children are problematic in the classroom, the teacher is blamed for not being an effective educator and classroom manager. All of this is reinforced by the media which works very hard to promote the idea of the shiftless, lazy teacher sitting back making $80,000 per year and being answerable to no one. And when the result of all this subterfuge and meddling is a system that fails the student, they take it as evidence that they were right after all, despite the fact that the failure was the deliberate product of their own engineering.

QFT!