Everyone should read Education Spin from FactCheck.org. Looking into the President’s speech regarding the state of US education, the Annenberg folks found:

• The high school dropout rate hasn’t “tripled in the past 30 years.” According to the DOE, it has declined by a third.
• Eighth grade math scores haven’t “fallen” to ninth place compared to other countries. US scores have climbed to that ranking from 28th place in 1995.
• Regarding the goal of “having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” by 2020 … the US is currently second only to Norway in the percentage of adults with a 4-year bachelor’s degree – and trails by only 1 percentage point.

Worth reading.