Today’s guest post on Discovery Blog is from Bill Goodwyn,
President of Global Distribution and CEO of Discovery Education
at Discovery Communications. If you ask the average student in
Austria or the Czech Republic what the words “United States of
America” conjure up for them, it is likely that they will still
use the following words: innovation, opportunity, progress,
pioneering…which is why I was shocked to read a recent article
that indicated that in the most recent Office for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) education rankings, the
United States fell below both Austria and the Czech Republic
(and 28 other countries) in math secondary assessment tests. The
most frightening part of this statistic is that it doesn’t start
and stop in the hallways of America’s schools – it has
implications that extend well beyond education into national
security, economic growth and the stability of our nation. Why?
Because an uneducated nation is a nation without jobs. A nation
without jobs is a nation without ec