Not only are the test scores and drop-out rates indicative of an educational establishment in crisis, they represent a group of people who are woefully unprepared for higher education and employment.
College and university professors around the country believe that the academic performance among undergraduates has seriously declined, according to a report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Ernest L. Boyer, the foundation's president, noted that a survey of more than 5,000 professors "reinforce the fact that colleges can be no stronger than the nation's schools and that public education, despite six years of reform, is still producing inadequately prepared students."
In terms of their ability to enter the world of work, our students are even less prepared. The New York Times reported in an article entitled, "U.S. Businesses Brace for Disaster: Work Force Unqualified to Work," on September 25, 1989, that "American schools are graduating students who lack even the skills needed to fill existing assembly line jobs, let alone the sophisticated new jobs that increasingly dominate the economy."
At the MCI Communications Corporation in Boston, Joanne M. Ramsey, the residential sales manager, has reported that telephone sales jobs paying $7.10 an hour plus incentives are not filled because the company cannot find enough qualified applicants to fill them.