It is no secret that the American education system is held as one of the most elite in the eyes of the world. Often times, the college degrees from an American col- lege will hold more value overseas than most indigenous universities around the world. This is the image we, as a country, project to the in- ternational community. But, the reality is that the quality of education in the US falls short of an “”elite system.”” Why you ask? Because the system is losing control of graduation rates in high schools. In this decade, the ag- gregate high school dropout rates are nearing 20% and even in some troubled places, the rate is near or at 40%. What does this say about this country’s future as a nation? With a annual budget of nearly $1 trillion for education at the federal and state level, there should be no excuse as to why US high schools arenot graduating more than 90% of its high school students. In the US, each individual student has more access to teachers, financial resources, books, and technology per capita than many other coun- tries on the earth. On top of that, it is paid for by the taxes and rev- enue collected by the US govern- ment. The problem is that coun- tries such as Switzerland, Japan and even South Korea have higher graduation rates than the US even though the spend less or almost the same per capita on each student. This is alarming because success in the age of globalization requires a well-educated workforce to ensure the wealth of the country’ s future. These country’s grasp this and it can be seen through their strength in the global market and the perfor- mance of their students in the real world. A 2009 CNN study found that nearly 16% of all high school stu- dents drop out, which equals to about 6.2 million high school stu- dents nationwide. This should be alarming to anyone that calls this country home. This country is al- ready faced with a deeply troubled economy and hundreds of thou- sands being laid off or unemployed American jobs – which is partly due to outsourcing to countries like China and India, both of which have more competent education systems. With the dropout rate so high, imagine how many more jobs will go overseas, because of the lack of qualified workers. These prob- lems need to be looked at more closely so that they can be rooted out. In order for this country to fix the causes of the dropouts, they need look deeper at the districts where success is evident and can be replicated elsewhere in the US. One of these places is the Massachusetts Public schools, specifically Boston, which just reported fewer than 3% dropout rate. They attribute their success to the matter of emphasiz- ing the issue publicly, which many people find it as a taboo. Other at- tributes are providing students with the right resources, which include the best qualified teachers. Some schools have gone as far as finding which student are in finan- cial crisis, drug addictions, social issues and so forth. Some dropouts have gone as far as dropping out to support their family. It is a shame that these students have to give up their basic necessity to make a de- cent living, because the system does not recognize their issue to be ac- commodated. In addition to high school students, if the Massachu- setts Sales Tax Relief Act, (question 3) is successful in passing, college students would have to work dou- ble the hours they already do to keep up with tuition. This will leave little to no time for their studies. It is no doubt that this country’ s educations system needs an over- haul. They need to break down the barriers today, because tomorrow is right around the corner. School systems need to start digesting this 16% and target the main causes one-by-one. It can’ t get more ap- parent that the old system of pub- lic education is failing to produce fruitful outcomes. Schools need to go back to the drawing boards and revamp their archaic systems, be- cause this is a new era.