Article Link: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf PISA country report: the United States This report explains the multitude of disheartening failings in the US education system. I describes below average (for OECD nations) scores in every subject area. It also describes how American students seem generally happy with their education despite below average results. My first response to this was that the US is only-below average for industrialized, first-world nations and since every nation cannot be number 1, are we not better off accepting inevitable mediocrity? However, according to the report the US spends the third most per pupil of any nation in the world. Furthermore, as a nation we have a long history of educational brilliance and we still have the best tertiary education system in the world. There is no reason for us to have an average education system, nor is there any reason to be complacent. The US currently has the world's biggest economy, that can not continue if our education system continues to slip. We must look at why our education system is failing and attempt to correct it. The PISA report singles out Massachusetts for its excellent performance and specifically for its strong state-wide education standards (which manifested themselves to me as the MCAS). The report also mentions that conspicuous lack of a national standards in the United States. Recommending the implementation of the common core standards. These standards are already being put in place but when I did further research on the common core I was shocked to discover the level of vitriol, especially from parents, directed against the standards. This I cannot comprehend, no reasonable person could possibly see the common core as a "way for the government to control local education". Nor could one think that common core standards would eliminate important regional-specific lesson plans such as local crop-cycles. Such information is essentially useless in the modern-world. These complaints against the common core seem to have their basis in a sense of regional pride or identity, one that I cannot understand. How can a citizen of Mississippi not see that their state is doing poorly and that nationalized standards would help it. It is tempting to see this distrust of central government as a symptom of the recent-wave of anti-government sentiment but the US has gone its entire existence, more than 200 years with the institution of a national curriculum, a step almost every other nations has taken. According to PISA without the common core the US will be hard-pressed to tread water in international rankings. I can only hope they are implemented. This article also brought to my attention the issue of school funding which, almost uniquely in the US is done through local property taxes an issue that I will explore further in my next post.