Responding today to his nations ranking in a new international study measuring student performance, 14-year-old Izotk Rogelj told reporters he was more than a little surprised that even he and his classmates, all eighth-grade students from Slovenia, had outperformed their American counterparts on science achievement exams. I mean, I know theyre in desperate need of education reform over there, but those guys ranked four spots below a country where the average income is half what it is in the United States, said the flabbergasted pupil, noting that Slovenias national education budget of $2.8 billion in funding for every single basic primary, secondary, and tertiary institution was enough to buy maybe three microscopes. I understand the global recession has taken a toll on American education as much as anywhere else, but I live in an Eastern European nation that barely existed 20 years ago. And yet we manage to beat a nation with the highest GDP in the world? Pretty weird, right? Rogelj said that despite Americas shortcomings in education, he was hoping to go there for college one day. 