Nation at risk?

Remember Nation at Risk in 1983? It said, "If an unfriendly power had imposed our schools upon us, we would have regarded it as an act of war." How many reports have we heard since then about the horrible job being done by public schools? How many complaints have we heard from corporate leaders, politicians and others about the terrible job public schools were doing preparing people for the workforce? How many dire predictions have we heard about the disastrous effects that public education's failures were going to have on our economy? I think it's fair to say that according to what we've been hearing from the media and many of "the elite" in America for about the last thirty years this should be an impossibility:

GENEVA - American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.

They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States "leads the world in labor productivity."

The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609.

The productivity figure is found by dividing the country's gross domestic product by the number of people employed. The U.N. report is based on 2006 figures for many countries, or the most recent available.

Only part of the U.S. productivity growth, which has outpaced that of many other developed economies, can be explained by the longer hours Americans are putting in, the ILO said.

The U.S., according to the report, also beats all 27 nations in the European Union, Japan and Switzerland in the amount of wealth created per hour of work — a second key measure of productivity.

Norway, which is not an EU member, generates the most output per working hour, $37.99, a figure inflated by the country's billions of dollars in oil exports and high prices for goods at home. The U.S. is second at $35.63, about a half dollar ahead of third-place France.