Education Beats Incarceration

By Tom Carroll

We’re No. 1! We lead the world in prison incarcerations. If only we were No. 1 in education.

The sobering news from a new report by the Pew Center on the States is that one of every 100 Americans is behind bars. Of greater concern is that one in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is in jail. If only they had spent more time in school.

The Pew study, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” found that the United States has the largest per-capita prison population in the world, followed by Russia. The highest-scoring European countries in international education comparisons are among those with...