Click the pic for: Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States: A Book of Charts
Posted on 02/20/2007 5:24:05 PM PST by A. Pole
US workers may be significantly less literate in 2030 than they are today.
The reason: Most baby boomers will be retiring and a large wave of less-educated immigrants will be moving into the workforce. This downward shift in reading and math skills suggests a huge challenge for educators and policymakers in the future, according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).
If they can't reverse the trend, then it could spell trouble for a large swath of the labor force, widen an already large skill gap, and shrink the middle class.
"There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years" where literacy and numeracy have declined, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston and one of the report's authors. "But if you don't change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face."
The decline in literacy is one of the more startling projections in a report that examines what it calls a "perfect storm" of converging factors and how those trends are likely to play out if left unchecked.
The three factors identified are: a shifting labor market increasingly rewarding education and skills, a changing demographic that include a rapid-growing Hispanic population, and a yawning achievement gap, particularly along racial and socioeconomic lines, when it comes to reading and math.
The individual trends have been identified before, but this study makes an effort to examine their combined effects, and to project a disturbing future, including a sharply declining middle class in addition to the lost ground in literacy.
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The young men working for us in Buenos Aires stopped talking about possibly immigrating to the US when they saw images of what happened in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. I guess they figured that one third world country is as good as the next.
Then you're not paying attention. Here in CA, the single best predictor of academic performance in a school is the percentage of Hispanics. The higher the percentage, the worse the school. It's not politically correct, but it's the truth.
Ah, that's funny! Gotta run cuz my beeber is going off and I'm stoned, I mean stuned.
Interesting comments. I guess language is what gets the job done, whatever sounds enough like "plain talk" to get the word across back and forth.
But the written word is used to express so many artful subtleties which I'm afraid are simply lost on many of today's youth. And the least subtle, the least informed really, are so often among the most crass, vocal and opinionated. Has it always been so? I don't know.
That's the post I was lookin' for!
Hey I always thought the border should be sealed.
We have tried to create a homogenous student population, ignoring differences in ability, and going so far as to suggest (wrongly) that all students are capable of a successful college education.
In the name of self-esteem, equality and diversity we refuse to categorize students by ability, thus boring the able and taxing those who are less able.
Further, we have tried, educationally, to be all things to all people. Rather than adhering to the basics of education, we insert PE, computer, music, art, library, sex education, etc. etc. etc. We omit math, literature, science and spelling (which is teaching memorization skills).
It is crude, but the judge in Caddyshack had it right: The world needs ditch diggers, too. We have created shame in technical and vocational schools, when there should be none.
English is a great language for any human to learn. There is no lanuguage so persnicacious.
It's the difference between liberal and conservative views. Conservatives treat the cause, liberals treat the symptoms.
People don't have health care? Don't look to oppressive regulation, exorbitant legal fees, or a massive flood of illegal immigration, create a government health care program instead. People unhappy with their single parenthood? Don't look to the glorification of unmarried sex in the media, marriage penalties in the tax system, or easy divorce laws. Create more welfare instead. Children are sad about their accomplishments? Don't look to joke curriculums, teachers unions, or the complete lack of discipline in the classroom. Create self esteem programs instead.
press 1 for english
What do I press for beeber?
Sealed? the whole border "sealed"?? that's a pretty neat trick. Sealed with what... like a 22,000 mile ziplock baggie? Looking into it on this wonderful internet we have, I find that bulk ziplock baggies are about $14,666 per mile. Over 22,000 miles of both sea and land border that gives us about 77.4 Billion dollars worth of ziplock baggies to do the whole thing. Though... somebody points out to me that there is a pretty simple "scissors" method to break this "seal". Any ideas on how to deal with that?
Don't know...I'm stunned by the question.
This is definitely another reason to homeschool, and encourage others to do so, also.
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