With the 2012 Summer Olympics kicking off today in London, our minds are spinning with images and analogies of races and competitions. It’s appropriate, then, that today the Huffington Post shared an Education Olympics infographic illustrating how the United States compares to other countries in educational performance. As the infographic shows, the United State’s superiority in Olympic gold medals does not match up with its rankings in the “gold medals of education.” According to the results of an international exam featured in a report released last week by Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, American students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading worldwide. This means that America’s foreign peers are making gains in academics much faster than American students. The race to the top for education around the world has American students falling to the back of the pack and ultimately struggling to catch up to their international competitors. Indeed, it seems that while the U.S. may win the gold in the Olympic sports, America is in need of much more training in areas of education.