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By Root 6694 0

triggered by the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, made a huge contribution to these dismal, shocking, and unprecedented figures. The titans of banking have a lot to answer for. But financial misdeeds were not the only cause. Just as responsible for the nation’s abysmal economic performance during the Terrible Twos, if not more responsible for it, was the nation’s collective failure to maintain and upgrade the American formula that had served us so well for so long. We let each one of the pillars of our formula erode significantly during the last decade, and that, in our view, is what made the Terrible Twos so terrible. Here is a scorecard.

If 2 Plus X Equals 4, What Is the Value of X?

On October 24, 2010, The Hartford Courant ran a cartoon by the paper’s resident cartoonist, Bob Englehart, featuring four versions of the famed recruiting poster—the one with Uncle Sam pointing outward. In the first poster Uncle Sam is saying, “I WANT YOU.” In the second poster, he has both hands up, flashing stop, under the caption “NO, WAIT. NOT YOU.” In the third poster he is pointing out again, under the caption “WELL, OK, YOU.” In the final poster he has both hands up again, warning stop, under the caption “NO, WAIT …”

We wonder if he drew that cartoon in anticipation of a study that made headlines on December 21, 2010, which found, according to an Associated Press report that day, that “nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the U.S. Army fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can’t answer basic math, science and reading questions.” The study, conducted by the Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.–based children’s advocacy group, “found that 23 percent of recent high school graduates don’t get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. Questions are often basic, such as: ‘If 2 plus x equals 4, what is the value of x?’”

The AP story noted that this was the first time the U.S. Army had released such test data publicly. Tom Loveless, an education expert at the Brookings Institution think tank, was quoted saying the results echo those on other tests. In 2009, 26 percent of seniors performed below the basic reading level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Other tests, like the SAT, look at students who are going to college. “A lot of people make the charge that in this era of accountability and standardized testing, we’ve put too much emphasis on basic skills,” Loveless said. “This study really refutes that. We have a lot of kids that graduate from high school who have not mastered basic skills.”

In chapter 6, we cited the unimpressive showing of American fifteen-year-olds in the international PISA test, which measures student skills in reading, math, science, and critical thinking. But many other warning signs that America’s education system was underperforming at all levels showed up in the Terrible Twos.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (October 19, 2010), Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, issued his own report card on the status of American education. On a broad set of metrics of educational attainment, we didn’t do well.

Just one generation ago, the United States had the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Today, in eight other nations, including South Korea, young adults are more likely to have college degrees than in the U.S. In South Korea, 58 percent of young adults have earned at least an associate’s degree. In America, just 42 percent of young adults have achieved the same milestone. In many other developed countries, the proportion of young adults with associate’s or bachelor’s degrees soared in the last 15 years. Here in the United States, we simply flat-lined. We stagnated, we lost our way—and others literally passed us by … Just as troubling, about one in four high school students—25 percent—in the U.S. drops out or fails to graduate on time. That’s almost one million students leaving our schools for the streets