Monday, February 26th. This is the Cato Daily Podcast. I'm your host Anastasia Yuglova.

America is not a poor country, but our awful public school system makes many of us question just how rich we really are.

Funds funneled into the

Department of Education never seem to give a return on investment. Why do American

school children consistently lag behind their peers in other rich countries.

Education policy analyst Neil McCluskey wonders the same thing.

What is the nation's report card?

Well the nation's report card, it's a name that's been given to what's called the National Assessment

of Educational Progress.

Now, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAPE, isn't really monolithic.

It's not just one test.

It's actually a series of multiple tests with

all kinds of different standards that covers everything from civics to geography, economics.

They have a long-term trends report that looks at math and reading for decades

now.

But the report that came out today from the nation's report card was for 12th graders, so that's sort of the final product of America's school

system, how they are doing on tests of reading ability and mathematics knowledge and the ability to do math.

This is kind of one of the core exams because this really gets at the very basics.

How are our students doing on the most basic of skills reading in math?

And you said this is just for 12th graders.

So how did they fare this time around?

The scores for 12th graders, they were pretty bad.

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