Interesting read...
At the end of this article, the reporter slips in an important
rhetorical question: But if being No. 1 in education is our goal,
shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely linked
to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health care
and reduction of childhood poverty? We must push this question
beyond rhetoric. Our children are suffering in very real
ways.
The usual hand-wringing accompanied the Department of Education's
release late last year of new statistics on how U.S. students
performed on international tests. How will the United States
compete in the global economy, went the lament, when our students
lag behind the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong in math and
science? American fourth-graders ranked 12th in the world on one
international math test, and eighth-graders were 14th. Is this
further evidence of the failure of the nation's schools?
Not exactly. In fact, a closer look at how our kids perform against
the international "competition" suggests that this story line may
contain more than a few myths:
1. U.S. students rate poorly compared with those in the rest of
the
world.
This is true only if you cherry-pick the results. University of
Pennsylvania researchers Erling E. Boe and Sujie Shin looked at six
major international tests in reading, math, science and civics
conducted from 1991 through 2001. Their conclusion: Americans are
above average when compared with 22 other industrialized nations.
In civics, no nation scored significantly higher than the United
States; in reading, only 13 percent did. Even in math and science
-- the two subjects considered "vital" to future technological
competitiveness -- the United States fell in roughly the middle of
the pack. No gold star, but hardly a crisis, either.
More interesting, when compared with students in the world's most
industrialized countries, U.S. students were on par with the others
in every subject (and outperformed everyone in civics). And every
Western country, not just the United States, lagged behind Japan in
math and science, suggesting that the "achievement gap" in these
subjects is an East-West phenomenon rather than an American
one.
2. U.S. students are falling behind.
Actually, American students are mostly improving, or at worst
holding their own. As the Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study TIMSS) shows, America's eighth-graders improved their
math and science scores in 1995, 1999 and 2003. Only students in
Hong Kong, Latvia and Lithuania -- three relatively tiny and
homogenous entities -- improved more than the United States did.
Indeed, no nation included in the major international rankings
educates as many poor students or as ethnically diverse a
population as does the United States. Yet even as the percentage of
historically low-achieving students has increased, our test scores
have risen. Unfortunately, news accounts focus on the relative
position of American students (are we No. 1 or No. 12?) rather than
on their absolute performance (did they improve, regardless of what
others did?).
3. U.S. students won't be well prepared for the modern
workforce.
This myth has been bandied around since at least the turn of the
century -- the 19th century -- by business leaders who blame
schools for inadequately preparing workers. It's part of the
never-ending notion that U.S. schools are in crisis.
Education researcher Gerald W. Bracey cites a March 1957 cover
story in Life magazine -- at the height of post-Sputnik paranoia
over Soviet scientific prowess -- that contrasts the stern,
rigorous education of a Moscow teenager (complicated physics and
chemistry courses) with the carefree lifestyle of a Chicago youth
(rehearsals for his high school musical). The cover headline:
"Crisis in Education." In the 1980s, when Japan seemed to be an
unstoppable economic juggernaut, the seminal policy manifesto "A
Nation at Risk," written by a blue-ribbon panel at the behest of
the Department of Education, warned that deficiencies in high
school graduates "come at a time when the demand for highly skilled
workers in new fields is accelerating rapidly."
Despite these doomsday cases, the United States survived and, by
many measures, bested the competition. Today, with the Soviet Union
a memory and Japan facing its own economic and demographic
problems, the anxieties have shifted to China and other Asian
rivals.
4. Bad schooling has undermined America's competitiveness.
This canard -- perhaps the biggest of them all -- was given a boost
by the recent World Economic Forum survey of international
economies. Typically this annual survey ranks the U.S. economy as
the most competitive in the world, but last year it put the United
States in sixth place. However, the drop had nothing to do with
test scores or school performance. Rather, the forum cited U.S.
trade and budget deficits, a low savings rate, tax cuts and the
federal government's increased spending on defense and homeland
security.
Another recent survey, by the Council on Competitiveness, a
Washington-based business advisory group, found that over the past
two decades the U.S. economy grew faster than that of any other
advanced nation, and generated a third of the world's economic
growth. Yet this performance followed a period in which the authors
of "A Nation at Risk" were warning that a "rising tide of
[educational] mediocrity . .. threatens our very future as a
nation." That was in 1983. Those high-school mediocrities are now
turning 40, and presumably have been playing a part in helping the
U.S. economy grow "faster than any other advanced economy" over the
past two decades.
A dynamic economy is much more than the sum of its test scores.
It's part of a culture that rewards innovation and risk-taking, and
values unconventional problem-solving. Much of this is nurtured in
our schools, even if it can't be quantified on a test.
Recently, Newsweek International's
Fareed Zakaria noted Singapore's success on international math and
science exams, but asked Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam
why Singapore produced so few top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs,
inventors, business executives and academics. "We both have
meritocracies," he replied. America's "is a talent meritocracy,
ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect
that we are not able to test well -- like creativity, curiosity, a
sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of
learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means
challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must
learn from America."
Our current (and past) economic success suggests something that
educational alarmists and their sky-is-falling friends in the news
media seem reluctant to admit: American schools may have a lot to
fix, but they may be doing a few things right, too.
5. How we stack up on international tests matters, if only for
national
pride.
Yes, we're a nation of strivers and self-improvers; the American
drive to be the biggest and the best in everything seems part of
our national character. But if being No. 1 in education is our
goal, shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely
linked to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health
care and reduction of childhood poverty? National pride can be a
destructive concept, especially when it views learning as a
zero-sum game ("their" gains are "our" losses, and vice versa).
Continuous improvement should be our goal, regardless of whether
we're No.1 in the test-score Olympics.
Paul Farhi is a Washington Post staff writer
Paul Farhi
Washington Post