Here are eleven stories since August that illustrate the trouble our public schools are in:

One, according to a recent AP report, a survey conducted by the ACT college testing service found that "only 51 percent of students showed they were ready to handle the reading requirements of a typical first-year college course."

Two, we learn, according to Reuters, that another survey, conducted by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, found that "most Americans have an easier time naming members of the cartoon Simpson family than listing the five freedoms granted by the nation's founders."

Reuters went on to report that "just 28 percent of respondents could name more than one of the five freedoms listed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment -- about the same proportion that could name all five Simpson family members or could recall the three judges on Fox TV's top-rated 'American Idol.'"

Some of the survey's respondents actually thought "the right to drive and the right to have pets" were listed in the Constitution.

Three, there is the story from Parsippany (NJ) High School, where, according to The Daily Record (NJ), a teacher has one of his classes putting President Bush on trial for "'crimes against civilian populations' and 'inhumane treatment of prisoners,' with students arguing both sides before a five-teacher 'international court of justice.'"

According to the report, the teacher insists that he isn't trying to show up President Bush.

"'President Bush is often tried in absentia all around the world,'" the teacher said. 'All we hear in the papers is, war crimes this, war crimes that -- without even hearing a defense. It would be irresponsible for a teacher to pretend that isn't happening.'"

Is that really all this teacher hears? War crimes? If so, what does he read?

Four, we have a 20-minute audio of an Overland, CO geography teacher attacking Bush, the US, and capitalism.

Capitalism, we learn from this teacher, is "at odds with humanity, with caring, and compassion."

We further learn that America is a "quote, unquote democracy"; that there are "eerie similarities" between George Bush and Adolph Hitler; that some Americans "want to kill innocent people.... People who work in the CIA. People who have to think like that. These kinds of dirty minds, dirty tricks. That's how the intelligence world works."

Aside from the silliness of this teacher's positions, one wonders, What has any of this to do with geography?

And why is this teacher taking up 20 minutes of class time to talk about this with his students?

Five, back in January, the AP reported that another survey showed that "more than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks."

According to the report, this meant "they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school."

The results, the study found, "cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips."

AP reported that "almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station."

Six, back in November 2005, a report from Strategy Page indicated that the Defense Department was having trouble finding qualified recruits from public schools, "because so many potential recruits have to be turned down because of the poor education they have received in those schools."

Seven, back in September we learned from a Chicago Sun-Times report the following:

1) In 2003 only 54 percent of Chicago public high school students who started four years earlier graduated.

2) "Most Chicago Public Schools alumni must take remedial classes at the Chicago City Colleges; 74 percent must take remedial English; 94 percent must take remedial math."

3) 75 percent of those Chicago public school students with a B average scored below the national average score on the ACT.

These numbers are horrendous -- 75% of "B" students don't even achieve the national average score on the ACT? What is that all about?

Eight, in September we also learned in an AP report on the New Orleans public schools that "[m]ore than two-thirds of the school system's fourth-graders do not have basic competence in math."

What a waste of brains!

Nine, back in August 2005, the New York Times reported on a survey that showed that 20% of people surveyed believed that the sun revolves around the earth.

Good God, is this the result of the Ptolemy lobby's efforts, or what?

Ten, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report in August, a Chicago public school science teacher at one of the city's finest schools calls his home's 12-year appreciation, "morally abhorrent. It's indentured servitude. It's wrong."

The rate of appreciation? 6-7% per year over 12 years.

This man teaches science in the public schools, yet he doesn't have the curiosity, the math skills, or a sufficient enough grasp of capitalism to understand a slightly above normal financial return.

Yet, it's worth repeating, he teaches science in the public schools.

Eleven, according to American Bar Association survey released last August, only 55% of respondents could name all three branches of the federal government.

When barely half the nation's kids don't read well enough to understand first-year college reading assignments, when they know more about The Simpsons and American Idol than they do about rudimentary aspects of the US Constitution, when kids are being told in school that George Bush is a "war criminal," that he is "eerily similar to Hitler," or that "capitalism is at odds with humanity," something is very wrong.

When kids don't have the math skills to balance checkbooks, or figure out restaurant tips; when the Defense Department has trouble finding qualified public school students to recruit; when barely half of Chicago Public School students graduate, and if they do, 75% to 95% must take remedial reading and math classes in junior college; when two-thirds of New Orleans public school fourth graders "do not have basic competence in math," something is very wrong.

When 20% of a survey's respondents think the sun revolves around the earth, when a high school science teacher doesn't understand the mathematics of present or future valuation, when only 55% of survey respondents can name all three federal branches of government, something is very wrong.

That these stories could be told should be intolerable to every single American. Yet, they are just the tip of the iceberg.