Guest Blogger: Frank Peng

In Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat, he brings up a very valid point about America becoming too complacent in education. Though America trails many other countries, namely Asian countries, as Friedman pointed out, America has cut spending for education, relocating that cut money towards supporting our troops. Though it is money well spent, not sending our troops in the first place would provide our country with a plethora of funds that could be used to assist in raising the education level in the US. Also, states aren’t looking at the big picture. The legislature sees that their schools are above the national average and they get lax because they think that that’s good enough. It isn’t. We need to compete at the global level, not just the national level. In order to do that, education needs more funding. Not only that, but too much money is being allocated to bringing the undereducated up. The accelerated kids can’t be ignored either. Without funding accelerated programs, many of our most gifted children may not get the rigor they need to take their talents to the next level. The thought of closing the gap is somewhat misleading. Yes, it’s great to improve the scores of the undereducated, but holding back the overachievers isn’t the solution.