I'm extremely disappointed to see someone like the CEO of Lockheed-Martin on board with these recommendations. Some of these things are the kind of "solutions" I would expect from a Marxist think tank, not a leading industrial CEO.The CEO's of major corporations are tired of having to provide remedial education to their workers because our schools can't do an adequate job. 70% or the applicants where I work cannot pass basic literacy tests. That is not the type of work force that will help America advance faster than other nations. The days of high-paid unskilled workers is over. Get a bad education, and you will find it almost impossible to get a decent paying job. They all require some form of skill or education that you just can't pick up off the street.
Fifteen years ago (I was still in college at the time) I predicted that this country's entire approach to education would change when CEOs like this guy stopped expecting our dysfunctional families and dysfunctional schools to produce a competent work force. I've predicted that we may even see the day when a group of CEOs get together and develop their own "private" school system to train their own workers. These companies are in an ideal position to do this type of thing, since: 1) they know exactly what they are looking for in their workers, and 2) they have strong relationships with many institutions of higher learning through their research grants, etc.
This country isn't losing its ability to compete with India and China because our education system is poor. It's because our education system is poor but we pay a lot of freakin' money for it.