Our schools be broke

"A friend of mine went to his first day on the job at the United States Department of Education," writes Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, "and was chagrined to see a sign on the door warning, 'The door be broke.' That sign is emblematic of what's wrong with education in America."

A report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development stated American children now place 24th in math behind such diverse nations as Canada, Germany, France, Korea, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. Just how difficult is the testing by which this ranking was established? What follows is a fourth grade mathematics test question used by The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement:

"Al wanted to find how much his cat weighed. He weighed himself and noted that the scale read 57 kg. He then stepped back on the scale holding his cat and found that it read 62 kg. What was the weight of the cat in kilograms?"

Only 60 percent of American students received full credit on their answers.