The chart above highlights the separate and unequal opportunities at a good education in America.  As the chart shows – a top scoring low income student has less of a chance to complete college than a low scoring wealthy student.  That’s modern America for you.  And yet – despite that inequality of opportunity…that huge gap – Republicans are pushing for HUGE cuts to the Pell Grant program as part of the Ryan plan (source) that Mitt Romney has embraced and called “bold and exciting”.

If the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP.
~American Progress 

To learn more about the American Feudal Education System – go HERE:

American Progress has the stuff HERE:

• A strong middle class promotes the development of human capital and a well educated population.
• A strong middle class creates a stable source of demand for goods and services.
• A strong middle class incubates the next generation of entrepreneurs.
• A strong middle class supports inclusive political and economic institutions, which underpin economic growth.

In a widely regarded 1992 study, Harvard University economist Gregory Mankiw, University of California-Berkeley economist David Romer, and Brown University economist David Weil found that human capital investment had a roughly equivalent or larger effect on economic growth rates than did investment in physical capital.17 Consistent with this, Harvard economist Robert Barro and Korea University economist Jong-Wha Lee found that among the developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the positive effect of human capital on economic growth was three times larger than the effect for physical investment, concluding that “human capital, particularly attained through education, is crucial to economic progress.”

This chart below compares countries throughout the world in terms of their social mobility essentially.  The lower and to the left on the chart – the better the social mobility.  American can proudly claim to be better in social mobility than China, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Singapore.  What a major accomplishment.  <sarcasm/>

“PARENTAL INCOME IS A BETTER PREDICTOR OF A CHILD’S FUTURE IN AMERICA THAN IN MUCH OF EUROPE, IMPLYING THAT SOCIAL MOBILITY IS LESS POWERFUL. “
~THE ECONOMIST 

We do know that liberal leaning states tend to have better social mobility.  The truth HERE.

We know that charter schools are producing worse results than public schools.  The truth HERE.

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