A Global Look at U.S. Education
These days, when trying to grade the U.S. school system, we need some kind of international report card. After all, U.S. students are going to be competing in a global labor force.
But figuring out how well the system is performing is difficult when your two best international tests just don’t agree on how much students really know. One suggests the U.S. system is failing badly. Another suggests it’s not really so bad and may even be showing signs of improvement.
The more alarming assessment comes from an international study called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is conducted by the Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD). When looking at the math performance of 15-year-olds, it found that the U.S. ranked in 24th place among 29 nations, all members of the OECD. When ten nonmember nations were added into the mix, the U.S. sank even further, receiving the rank of 27th, tied with Latvia. The Wall Street Journal labeled the performance of U.S. teenagers an “economic time bomb.”
U.S. students did a little better in the areas of science and reading than in math, but they were among the worst in the world in terms of their general problem-solving skills (Kronholz, 2004). One particularly bad piece of new is that the U.S. has a shortage of high-performing students. Just 2% of U.S. students scored at the highest levels of math proficiency on the PISA, whereas the average percentage for OECD countries was 4% (OECD, 2004).
Another bit of lousy news – one that bodes ill for the future – is that African-American and Hispanic students scored well below the international average scores on the PISA as well as below the scores of their white counterparts in the U.S. These minority students will, of course, make up a growing share of the U.S. workforce (Lemke et al., 2004).
But maybe things aren’t quite as bleak as the PISA scores suggest. Another recently released international assessment – this one known as the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – found that in 2003, U.S. eighth-graders beat the international averages in both mathematics and science. They outperformed peers in 25 countries in mathematics and 32 countries in science. In the area of science, the U.S. enjoyed the third highest improvement among 45 nations since the last time the test was taken in 1995.
Fourth-graders taking the TIMSS didn’t show the same kind of advances since 1995 but the news was better to start with. Only three nations had higher average scores in science, and 11 had higher scores in mathematics, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
So, which assessment is telling the real story? Some experts think both are. The differences might arise from factors such as the age of groups taking the exams and the educational emphases of the last decade or so. There have, for example, been a number of initiatives aimed at improving and funding science education at the elementary school level, but there’s been relatively little support at the high school level (Pratt, 2005).
The nature of the two tests might also account for the differences in the scores. Whereas the TIMSS was designed to test how well students are learning a certain academic curriculum, the PISA was designed to gauge how well students actually use their knowledge to solve problems. Therefore, the discrepancies between the two exams might be showing that U.S. students are getting better at acquiring certain kinds of knowledge but are not achieving the higher levels of understanding required for good performance on the PISA.
“The TIMSS results suggest that the country is on a good course in improving student knowledge on basic facts and procedures and should persevere with its current strategy,” write Roger Bybee and Elizabeth Stage in Issues in Science and Technology. “The PISA results indicate that the country has not been closing the enormous gap in student achievement to meet the higher demands of critical evaluation and the application of knowledge to problem-solving.”
This analysis indicates that U.S. educators and politicians must beware placing too much emphasis on standardized testing for its own sake. In the 21st century, workers won’t just need basic knowledge. They’ll need to know how to leverage that knowledge to perform complex reasoning, using it in innovative ways. This will require students to stay curious about how the world works, a characteristic that some experts say is squelched through too much “teaching the test.”
Another lesson for the U.S. system is that it probably needs better experts in the classroom. At the high school level, there’s actually been a drop in the percentage of math and science teachers who are certified in the areas in which they’re teaching. In contrast, the country of Finland – whose students ranked first in math literacy and second in problem-solving on the PISA – has small classes taught by extremely well-trained and well-respected teachers (Cavanagh, 2005).
Some business leaders believe that the U.S. system still needs radical change, especially at the high school level. A few months ago, Microsoft’s Bill Gates told the National Governor’s Association (NGA), “Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work and citizenship.” He went on to note, “This isn’t an accident or flaw in the system; it is the system” (Mezzacappa, 2005). The NGA has, in fact, released an agenda for high school redesign and lists steps for getting started on this agenda. The initiative, Redesigning the American High School, is receiving financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For more on the Program for International Student Assessment, click here. U.S.-based information on PISA can be found here.
For more information on TIMSS, click here.
For information on the NGA’s “Redesigning the American High School” initiative, click here.
The following documents were used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher:
Bybee, Roger and Elizabeth Stage. “No Country Left Behind.” Issues in Science and Technology. ProQuest. Winter 2005, p. 69.
Cavanagh, Sean. “Finnish Students Are at the Top of the World Class.” Education Week, March 16, 2005.
Kronholz, June. “Economic Time Bomb: U.S. Teens Are Among the Worst at Math.” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2004.
Lemke, M., et al. International Outcomes of Learning in Mathematics Literacy and Problem Solving. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
Mezzacappa, Dale. “U.S. High Schools Are Obsolete, Gates Tells Governors Group.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, February 27, 2005.
Organisation for Co-operation and Development. Learning for Tomorrow’s World, 2004.
Pratt, Harold. “Where Are We Now? Two International Studies Help Us Assess Science Education.” The Science Teacher. January 2005, p. 10.
But figuring out how well the system is performing is difficult when your two best international tests just don’t agree on how much students really know. One suggests the U.S. system is failing badly. Another suggests it’s not really so bad and may even be showing signs of improvement.
The more alarming assessment comes from an international study called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is conducted by the Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD). When looking at the math performance of 15-year-olds, it found that the U.S. ranked in 24th place among 29 nations, all members of the OECD. When ten nonmember nations were added into the mix, the U.S. sank even further, receiving the rank of 27th, tied with Latvia. The Wall Street Journal labeled the performance of U.S. teenagers an “economic time bomb.”
U.S. students did a little better in the areas of science and reading than in math, but they were among the worst in the world in terms of their general problem-solving skills (Kronholz, 2004). One particularly bad piece of new is that the U.S. has a shortage of high-performing students. Just 2% of U.S. students scored at the highest levels of math proficiency on the PISA, whereas the average percentage for OECD countries was 4% (OECD, 2004).
Another bit of lousy news – one that bodes ill for the future – is that African-American and Hispanic students scored well below the international average scores on the PISA as well as below the scores of their white counterparts in the U.S. These minority students will, of course, make up a growing share of the U.S. workforce (Lemke et al., 2004).
But maybe things aren’t quite as bleak as the PISA scores suggest. Another recently released international assessment – this one known as the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – found that in 2003, U.S. eighth-graders beat the international averages in both mathematics and science. They outperformed peers in 25 countries in mathematics and 32 countries in science. In the area of science, the U.S. enjoyed the third highest improvement among 45 nations since the last time the test was taken in 1995.
Fourth-graders taking the TIMSS didn’t show the same kind of advances since 1995 but the news was better to start with. Only three nations had higher average scores in science, and 11 had higher scores in mathematics, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
So, which assessment is telling the real story? Some experts think both are. The differences might arise from factors such as the age of groups taking the exams and the educational emphases of the last decade or so. There have, for example, been a number of initiatives aimed at improving and funding science education at the elementary school level, but there’s been relatively little support at the high school level (Pratt, 2005).
The nature of the two tests might also account for the differences in the scores. Whereas the TIMSS was designed to test how well students are learning a certain academic curriculum, the PISA was designed to gauge how well students actually use their knowledge to solve problems. Therefore, the discrepancies between the two exams might be showing that U.S. students are getting better at acquiring certain kinds of knowledge but are not achieving the higher levels of understanding required for good performance on the PISA.
“The TIMSS results suggest that the country is on a good course in improving student knowledge on basic facts and procedures and should persevere with its current strategy,” write Roger Bybee and Elizabeth Stage in Issues in Science and Technology. “The PISA results indicate that the country has not been closing the enormous gap in student achievement to meet the higher demands of critical evaluation and the application of knowledge to problem-solving.”
This analysis indicates that U.S. educators and politicians must beware placing too much emphasis on standardized testing for its own sake. In the 21st century, workers won’t just need basic knowledge. They’ll need to know how to leverage that knowledge to perform complex reasoning, using it in innovative ways. This will require students to stay curious about how the world works, a characteristic that some experts say is squelched through too much “teaching the test.”
Another lesson for the U.S. system is that it probably needs better experts in the classroom. At the high school level, there’s actually been a drop in the percentage of math and science teachers who are certified in the areas in which they’re teaching. In contrast, the country of Finland – whose students ranked first in math literacy and second in problem-solving on the PISA – has small classes taught by extremely well-trained and well-respected teachers (Cavanagh, 2005).
Some business leaders believe that the U.S. system still needs radical change, especially at the high school level. A few months ago, Microsoft’s Bill Gates told the National Governor’s Association (NGA), “Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work and citizenship.” He went on to note, “This isn’t an accident or flaw in the system; it is the system” (Mezzacappa, 2005). The NGA has, in fact, released an agenda for high school redesign and lists steps for getting started on this agenda. The initiative, Redesigning the American High School, is receiving financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For more on the Program for International Student Assessment, click here. U.S.-based information on PISA can be found here.
For more information on TIMSS, click here.
For information on the NGA’s “Redesigning the American High School” initiative, click here.
The following documents were used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher:
Bybee, Roger and Elizabeth Stage. “No Country Left Behind.” Issues in Science and Technology. ProQuest. Winter 2005, p. 69.
Cavanagh, Sean. “Finnish Students Are at the Top of the World Class.” Education Week, March 16, 2005.
Kronholz, June. “Economic Time Bomb: U.S. Teens Are Among the Worst at Math.” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2004.
Lemke, M., et al. International Outcomes of Learning in Mathematics Literacy and Problem Solving. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
Mezzacappa, Dale. “U.S. High Schools Are Obsolete, Gates Tells Governors Group.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, February 27, 2005.
Organisation for Co-operation and Development. Learning for Tomorrow’s World, 2004.
Pratt, Harold. “Where Are We Now? Two International Studies Help Us Assess Science Education.” The Science Teacher. January 2005, p. 10.