The January 2006 issues of the AMS NOTICES contains a letter by Dan
Fendel at:
http://www.ams.org/notices/200601/commentary.pdf
Registration (free) is required to access the letter by scrolling down
one page to Page 6.
Fendel appears to argue that teaching statistics in high school is at
least as important as teaching calculus.

The folly of pushing high school students into calculus was exposed by
J. H. Neelley [MAA MONTHLY, "A generation of high school calculus,"
Dec. 1961, pp 1004-5]. Neelley concluded that "high school calculus is
largely a waste of time." I posted a summary of Neelley's Note at:
http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?forumID=206&threadID=477972
Are the results of pushing students into cookbook statistics any
better?
Cookbook statistics is flourishing not only in high schools but also at
the highest levels of Academia.
At the June 1996 meeting of the Northeastern Section/MAA, John
McKenzie, a professor os statistics at Babson College, told me the
following story.
When McKenzie was at the University of Michigan, a statistics professor
used to assign the following project to his students: Find a published
statistical study that is flawed, explain the flaw, and correct the
flaw. After a few years, the professor stopped assigning this project
because it had become too easy. His students went directly to the
doctoral theses that had been written in Education or the Social
Sciences and would quickly find a flawed study.

Domenico Rosa