Cite as: 514 U. S. 549 (1995)
Breyer, J., dissenting
(only about one-third of handtool company's 1,000 workers were qualified to work with a new process that requires high-school-level reading and mathematical skills); Cyert & Mowery 68 (gap between wages of high school dropouts and better trained workers increasing); U. S. Dept. of Labor 41 (1981) ( job openings for dropouts declining over time). There is evidence that "service, manufacturing or construction jobs are being displaced by technology that requires a better-educated worker or, more likely, are being exported overseas," Gordon, Ponticell, & Morgan 26; that "workers with truly few skills by the year 2000 will find that only one job out of ten will remain," ibid.; and that
"[o]ver the long haul the best way to encourage the growth of high-wage jobs is to upgrade the skills of the work force. . . . [B]etter-trained workers become more productive workers, enabling a company to become more competitive and expand." Henkoff 60.
Increasing global competition also has made primary and secondary education economically more important. The portion of the American economy attributable to international trade nearly tripled between 1950 and 1980, and more than 70 percent of American-made goods now compete with imports. Marshall 205; Marshall & Tucker 33. Yet, lagging worker productivity has contributed to negative trade balances and to real hourly compensation that has fallen below wages in 10 other industrialized nations. See National Center 57; Handbook of Labor Statistics 561, 576 (1989); Neef & Kask 28, 31. At least some significant part of this serious productivity problem is attributable to students who emerge from classrooms without the reading or mathematical skills necessary to compete with their European or Asian counterparts, see, e. g., MIT 28, and, presumably, to high school dropout rates of 20 to 25 percent (up to 50 percent in inner cities), see, e. g., National Center 47; Chubb & Hanushek 215. Indeed, Congress has said, when writing other statutes, that
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