Well, here we are talking about education again.  It seems that this issue is a continual thorn for parents, because our current systems just aren’t working.  According to this CNN article (Associated Press), the U.S. ranks second in educational spending per student among industrialized nations, but ninth in student achievement.  When I talk with other parents and listen to them obsess about getting their kids placed in this school or that, it all seems silly until I see numbers like these. 

And the worst part is, spending isn’t the problem, according to the article.  There is something fundamentally wrong, and we can’t seem to figure it out.  It would almost be easy if we ranked low on dollars spent per student because we would just know that we need to spend more money.  As a parent, I go through phases where I’m digging through so much school data that I think I’m a little looney when I take a step back.  Then I realize that obtaining a good education for our children is a huge undertaking, because we’re all betting that the top schools in the U.S. can compete effectively with schools in other industrialized nations that ranked higher on the whole.  So, we look for the best among our choices, which takes time and research.  I wonder if parents in the other high ranking nations go to all this trouble.  Maybe next year along with the education rankings, we can have a new measure of parent preparation hours/student.  Then the folks in the rest of the world can truly see how we are operating like rats on a wheel when it comes to education:  running fast but not going anywhere.