We're # 1

From the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — President Obama kicked off a drive Monday to upgrade American education, unveiling a plan requiring states to adopt new reading and mathematics standards and committing his administration to “breaking down some of the barriers to reform.”

Meeting with the nation’s governors at the White House, Mr. Obama stressed the importance of education to America’s economic competitiveness in a tough global marketplace, a theme he has cited in recent days to undergird a number of his domestic priorities.

. . . .

“That’s what we’re up against,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s what’s at stake — nothing less than our primacy in the world. As I said at the State of the Union address, I do not accept a United States of America that’s second-place.”

No one can blame the President for wanting to be #1 in education, especially since we have an long-established No. 1 ranking when it comes to the highest poverty among advanced Western nations. USA! USA!

From the Population Reference Bureau:

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Relative Poverty in Selected Industrialized Countries, 1990s Source: Luxemborg Income Study, "Key Figures: Relative Poverty Rates" (www.lisproject.org/ keyfigures/povertytable.htm, accessed April 2, 2002).

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Reference

Timothy Smeeding et al., "United States Poverty in a Cross-National Context," Focus 21, no. 3 (2001): 50-54.