... Only one in 100 high school seniors could write a coherent response of more than one paragraph to an essay question; and only 7% of high school seniors could read at advanced level." (Hanushek) In the light of this vast body of very forceful evidence, we cannot but agree that our public education system has deteriorated to the extent that we can no longer expect our public schools to produce quality students. Most of our public school students lack even basic knowledge of scientific facts and mathematical concepts and their communication skills leave a lot to be desired. With such students we cannot hope to compete on a global level, not at least in the long run. This explains why more professionally qualified people from...

Hanushek, "When School Finance Reform May Not Be Good Policy. Symposium, Investing in Our Children's Future: School Finance Reform in the 1990s," Harvard Journal on Legislation 28 (Summer 1991), 423.
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics (1993).

Cited in Susan Chira, "The Big Test: How to Translate the Talk About School Reform into Action," New York Times (March 24, 1991), Sec. 4, at…