The Need
America's workforce is ill-prepared for the jobs that exist today. As we move into the future, unless substantial changes are made, our citizens will be increasingly less capable of performing the work required by employers. The results of this inadequacy will be far-reaching–affecting our economy, national security, morale, and standard of living. As more jobs are off-shored to countries that have a better educated, better trained workforce, American workers will have fewer opportunities for meaningful employment. Larger numbers of people who are unemployed and underemployed–the working poor–will seek alternative means to support their families, raising the crime rate. Anger and frustration will generate public protests that will drive the country toward anarchy.

This scenario may seem just a bit far-fetched, until you pause and consider the impacts of a workforce that lacks the capacity to perform the tasks required by society.

Consider this information from research conducted by Achieve, Inc., a bipartisan, non-profit organization that helps states raise academic standards, improve assessments and strengthen accountability to prepare all young people for postsecondary education, work and citizenship.

• Of the 21 countries participating in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, American high school seniors outperformed only students from Cyprus and South Africa and ranked behind such nations as Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, Russia and the Czech Republic;
• Non-U.S. residents with temporary visas accounted for a third of the Ph.D.s awarded in science and engineering in 2003, despite any post-9/11 difficulties they might have experienced.
• A recent study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that America's literacy rate is average among the nations of the industrialized world and that our high school graduation rate – 73 percent – is one of the lowest among the industrialized nations;
• Once the leader in education, the United States now ranks 14th in the number of years a 5-year-old may expect to attend school during the course of his or her life;
• The U.S. university dropout rate – 38 percent – is among the highest in the industrialized world;

United States Trails Most Countries in High School Graduation Rate

Rank OECD Reporting Country Graduation Rate (%)

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Learning for Tomorrow's World: First Results from PISA 2003, 2004.

Among those ranked in 2003, U.S. high school students tied for 27th place in math with Latvia and were slightly ahead of Portugal. Their science skills were roughly comparable to those of students in Iceland and Austria. These deficient skills translate directly into a reduced ability to solve basic problems, such as map-reading, scheduling, and converting weights and measures.

American teenagers rank at the bottom of the industrialized world in math problem solving and only in the middle of a list of nations at dramatically lower levels of development. How important is this skills difference? Economist Eric Hanushek of Stanford University estimates that if the gap were closed, American economic growth would increase by half a percentage point every year, or about a 20 percent increase in the economy's long-term potential.

Note: This table includes a representative sample of developed nations that participated in the PISA study.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Learning for Tomorrow's World: First Results from PISA 2003, 2004.

Note: This table includes a representative sample of less developed nations that participated in the PISA study.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Learning for Tomorrow's World: First Results from PISA 2003, 2004.

High school is important not just because it allows those who complete it to be more productive and to earn more, but because it is the first rung of an earnings ladder that provides affluence and mobility to those who climb it. Economists understand that education leads to productivity, which leads to income. Census data show the median earnings of a high school graduate ($30,800) are 43 percent higher than those of a non-graduate ($21,600) and those of a college graduate are 62 percent higher than those of a high school graduate.10

But technology is amplifying these differences; it is demanding new and advanced skills that our high schools are failing to teach. A generation ago, insurance claims adjusting, truck dispatching, steel foundry process management and machine lathing were all dramatically different in every respect. Today, they are all fundamentally similar – each requires manipulating data on a computer screen and using them to solve problems.

Technology has changed the skills people need to work; as Harvard Business School's Shoshana Zuboff said in her epochal In the Age of the Smart Machine, technology has "migrated work from the muscles to the senses."11 Economists David Autor, Frank Levy and Richard Murmane found that these changes in the skills required in existing jobs and occupations – that is, not even considering new jobs and occupations – accounted for a third or more of the greater demand for college graduates, mostly since 1980.

These changes are pervasive. Economists Anthony Carnevale and Donna Desrochers found almost all categories of employment now require more advanced education today than they did 30 years ago.13 They show the share of office workers with "some college" has increased from 37 percent to 60 percent over that span; the share with a bachelor's degree has almost doubled, from 20 percent to 38 percent. Even factory work demonstrates the trend – the share of factory workers with some higher education has increased fourfold, from 8 percent to 31 percent in the past three decades. And along with these higher levels of skill have come higher incomes. In a seminal report, economist Alan Krueger estimated that simply working with a computer implies a 15 percent increase in earnings, even after education and other factors are taken into account. In short, when jobs pay well, it is often because they demand the skills of a trade-intensive, high-tech world.

In addition, trade is accelerating this trend toward higher skills. As foreign suppliers step into more advanced service industries, American workers must respond by becoming more productive. Insurance adjusters, truck dispatchers, lathers, machinists and foundry workers were the middle class of a generation ago. But the middle class of the next generation will be the people who work at terminals controlling those processes and the people who create the technology – the ideas, machines, software and services – that allow those jobs to change. Thus, America is faced with a stark choice – we can either climb the productivity ladder and re-create the American middle class, or we can watch our nation's middle class fade away as other countries' teenagers continue to outperform our children.