I'm guessing poverty is a huge factor in our educational decline. The harder a parent has to work to stay afloat, the less time that parent spends with their child. It would be interesting to compare socio-economic factors with these educational rankings.

Comparing the US to countries with pissant homogenous populations doesn't prove anything.

What really happened? Teacher's unions. Increased federal control. The switch from teaching to indoctrinating, with the answer to every question "More Big Government."

Get rid of government schools already. Private schools do a better job at half the cost.

www.schoolandstate.org

/\ Do you mean pissant homogenous populations like in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and France? They are not all that homogenous and ranked higher. Australia is now more ethnically diverse than the U.S.A.

"Get rid of government schools already. Private schools do a better job at half the cost."

Not in Australia. Here studies have shown that public school students outrank private school students very often. Especially when public students go to university/college they've been found to do much better than their private counterparts (and the dropout rate is higher for private students too).

And the ridiculous thing over here is the government actually invests a fuck-tonne MORE money into the private system than the public system. I went to a public school and both my parents are teachers in the public system. While the private schools have brand new textbooks, computers, pools, gyms, tennis courts etc... our school always had to fundraise to build anything new or get new sporting equipment for example. And while we did have free textbooks, most of the time it was 1 (old edition) textbook shared amongst 2-3 students.

The major, major problem I see with especially the US privatising their education system is religion. Your country is already in the shitter because of religious indoctrination. More private schools, will mean more religious schools not bound to teaching regulations... which will mean more kids being taught creation over evolution, superstition over reason etc. And then you can say goodbye to any scientific or technological advances in the US.

Gotta agree with QM here (note it on your calendars!) besides the homogeneity and teachers' unions part. Also, public schools are fine as long as they only answer to their local district.

"And the ridiculous thing over here is the government actually invests a fuck-tonne MORE money into the private system than the public system."

Jesus you people that whine about government funding for private schools need to wake the hell up. I'd love to know where exactly you're pulling those figures from. Here are some actual numbers for you which are based on studies of the the Australian education system by the bureau of statistics. Over the last five years the Australian government spends $4.7 billion per year on Government schools whilst giving non-government run schools $1.57 billion per year. Independent schools receive the majority of their funding from fees charged to the parents which saves the taxpayer because they don't have to contribute all of the education fees for the 28% of Australian students in non government schools. Therefore private schools HELP to SUBSIDISE government schools as the government doesn't need to spend as much as they would to run more government schools. So to spell it out for you take away the private schools and instead of the government putting $1.57 billion into private education they'd have to spend almost $5 billion to cover the short fall from those schools not existing. If you don't believe me the figures are here: http://www.abs.gov.au

And you've pulled those numbers about public students being more successful than private out of your arse as well. The syllabus is standard across Australia, but that is all. The different states have different systems for getting that syllabus across to it's students what you learn is standard, the variations which you find in students continuing onto higher education is STATE based, the Australian government cannot be held accountable for education which is a state responsibility. Wake up to yourself and stop trying to make the education system in Australia out to be something it is not.

The following link is only one example, you don't even need to scratch the surface to see that each State varies in it's results between private and public schools. "Private schools outperform Public" http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/08/2134118.htm

*engineering--this affects us university educators very strongly.

Adding video to channels (Engineering) - requested by oxdottir.