A recent article in The New York Times entitled “Many Nations Passing the U.S. in Education, Expert Says” was a disheartening read. According to the article, one of the world’s foremost experts on comparing national school systems recently informed lawmakers that many other countries were surpassing the United States in educational attainment, including Canada, where 15-year-old students were, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds.
The article mentioned that more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States. Among O.E.C.D. countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates. It is possible that the blame for America’s sagging academic achievement does not lie solely with public schools but also with dysfunctional families and a culture that seemingly undervalues education. Budget cuts at public schools and rising unemployment rates amongst teachers do nothing to dissipate this belief.
Finland has the world’s “best performing education system,” partly because of its highly effective way of recruiting, training and supporting teachers. South Korea, which was in economic ruin after World War II, today is an economic dynamo partly because of its educational attainment, which, among other measures, has achieved a 96 percent high school graduation rate, the world’s highest.
Even Poland is improving its education system rapidly. In less than a decade, it raised the literacy skills of its 15-year-olds by the equivalent of almost a school year. If the U.S. would raise the performance of schools by a similar amount, that could translate into a long-term economic value of over 40 trillion dollars.
Another contributing factor to the downward spiral is that America’s system of standards, curriculums and testing are controlled by states and local districts with a heavy overlay of federal rules, comprised of an unusual mix of decentralization and central control. The difference between our system and that of more successful nations is that they maintain central control over standards and curriculum, but give local schools more freedom from regulation.
The bottom line: we need more parent involvement, better educated and equipped teachers, more central control at the federal level but more flexibility in local schools, and less of an apathetic outlook on education as a whole. We need a fix, and we need one fast!
