> Native-born Americans like me who have lived in east Asia are APPALLED at the wasted opportunities that United States schools have with their lavish resources to provide a truly world-class education. United States schools do not do as badly as they possibly could, but they also don't do as well as they reasonably could be expected to do.
I know this is a popular refrain about American education, but it's only a half-truth. The only real direct, objective comparisons between different countries' educational systems are based on data from identical tests administered across those nations. However, as the results from the PISA[0] indicate, Americans rank near the top of their respective ethnic groups when they are separated in that manner. That is to say, American students of European descent are near the top of the charts when compared to European students, American students of Asian descent are near the top of the charts when compared to Asian students, etc.
This also applies to American students of African and Hispanic descent. However, students in African and Hispanic countries do so much worse than students in European and Asian countries that despite the American students of those ethnicities performing better than students in those countries, they still bring down the average American score below that of most European and Asian nations.
What this tells us is not that the American education system is just plain bad. Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America. The real problem is that our education system fails to provide an equal quality of education to all of our children.
As you probably already know, this result is because our public education system is funded by local taxes, and our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor, who are overwhelmingly of African and Hispanic descent. Thus, the African and Hispanic students end up going to public schools that are poorly funded because their parents are poor, trapping Americans of African and Hispanic descent in a cycle of poverty.
The solution to this problem is not apparent, as attempts to integrate schools along socioeconomic & ethnic lines just results in the wealthy voting to defund public schools and sending their children to expensive private schools instead.
From your linkd article:
"So much for the bigoted notions that Americans are dumb and Europeans are smart." > "There are 3 parts to the PISA test, Reading, Math, and Science."
There is more to an education than reading, math, and science. The US is particularly famous for frequently forgetting that other countries even exist. Most of the Anglo world (including, but not just US) is seen with some derision in Europe for being so proudly monoglot. A comment of "My god, that person was so dumb" is usually about their lack of worldliness, not their skill with calculus.
Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America
The people that get to immigrate to the US are the best and brightest, otherwise they don't get in. It's unsurprising that their children perform well. Yes, the US education system is far better than the third world's (what a boast!) but even if you're talking about Finnish immigrants, they're not going to be unskilled louts. The mere fact that they're allowed in means that they have already passed a bar.
I agree that the real problem is the disparity and locally-sourced funding for schools, but that doesn't mean that there's no problem with the curriculum across the board. There are squillions of articles out there bemoaning all aspects of the US school system's race to teach the test rather than provide an education.
I think that probably the most telling is when you hear of tertiary educators saying that they have to dumb down intro subjects and teach students the skills they used to get in high school - things as simple as how to construct an essay (which doesn't sound like it's an objective 'reading, math, science' measure)
> There is more to an education than reading, math, and science. The US is particularly famous for frequently forgetting that other countries even exist. Most of the Anglo world (including, but not just US) is seen with some derision in Europe for being so proudly monoglot. A comment of "My god, that person was so dumb" is usually about their lack of worldliness, not their skill with calculus.
I won't deny the lack of language learning in the US, which is something that I find disturbing, particularly with the "flattening" of the world in recent years. However, I firmly believe that it has nothing to do with the education system. The real problem (if you can call it that) is that Anglophone countries don't need to learn any other languages. The reason why Europeans can speak foreign languages (most often English) is because they need to.
Moreover, if you live in an Anglophone country (particularly America, and I'd expect Australia is similar too, due to its linguistic isolation), there just aren't very many chances to practice a language even if you learn it. I know the public schools where I grew up required students to learn foreign languages (and they usually learned Spanish), but most of them forgot the language within a year of stopping classes, because they never got a chance to use it. This situation may very well change with the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the US.
OTOH, if you live in a non-Anglophone country, you're constantly bombarded with all kinds of media in English - on the web, in print, and on the silver screen. This effect is amplified in countries that speak languages with relatively small numbers of speakers. For example, the postage stamp-sized countries of northern Europe are more fluent in English than southern European countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, and a big reason for this is that their small size means that there is less domestic media to consume, so they turn to Angolophone content.
> There are squillions of articles out there bemoaning all aspects of the US school system's race to teach the test rather than provide an education.
Once again, I think this is largely a function of the quality of the school. Having graduated from a public high school in an affluent district after the turn of the millenium, I can say that contemporary US public schools do not solely teach to the test if the students are primarily wealthy suburbanites. We received plenty of stimulating education and in college we were thrown straight into the deep end of the pool, with lots of graduate-level material that we didn't understand for quite a while, a far cry from the reteaching of high school material that everyone says is happening. Then again, that's only my personal experience.
So I do not think financing is the main problem. You can always find ways to spend more money, but first it needs to be shown that the money is the problem, and it is far from obvious, as the data does not show that lavish spending leads to improvement in results.
as several commenters here on HN have mentioned to other persons who have shared the link, and anyway doesn't address the nub of my statement, which is that the United States, by OBSERVATION OF ACTUAL PRACTICE, is underperforming in providing lessons to young people in school,
The analysis in the first link you posted has flaws as well. The author does not deny that when you break down the US scores by ethnicity, Asian-Americans do as well as other Asians, European-Americans as other Europeans, etc. He bases a large part of his argument on the contention that the US should actually be doing better than it is right now - that "we can do more" - simply because we have a higher GDP per capita.
One example he cites is that the mean PISA score for Asian-Americans is 534, while the mean PISA score for Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong is 533. The author argues that since our GPP per capita is much higher than Japan / South Korea (and especially the Asian-American GDP per capita, which is probably slightly higher than the overall US number, given that Asian-American median income is about $1-2k higher than White median income), we should be doing better than we are now. This ignores, of course, that even this alleged observable underperformance must then be shared by Singapore and Hong Kong as well, which have higher GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) than even the US (Singpore has $10k higher GDP per capita, in fact), but do only equally as well as US Asian-Americans / Japan / South Korea.
The author also argues that it the explosive growth of private tuition services are propping up US test scores, completely oblivious to the fact that the pervasiveness and ubiquity of private tuition services in many Asian countries (especially South Korea) make US private tuition services look like day care centers.
Finally, link-dumping 3 articles and a book that we'd have to purchase on Amazon really does not add much.
>our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor
You think that a society needs cars to be geographically isolated from the poor? Ever hear of a thing called history? by this statement I can see that you have not. History tells us that our car-based society allows for more opportunity for the social underclass rather than the opposite.
If you think that funding for schools in poor areas is the problem with our education system - you are out of touch with reality. I grew up in one of those areas and observed first hand the problem. It is not that the children do not have the opportunity to study and get good grades, go to college and get out of poverty.... The problem is that the kids are lazy and they aren't pushed by their parent(s) to do their homework and study. They get into trouble on the streets or play video games instead, girls get pregnant and go on welfare as single moms, guys do drugs and join gangs ending up in jail. Then they blame white people for their problems.
I know this by observation. Why isn't anyone asking the students who come out of these areas with decent to good grades and make something out of themselves. Everyone has their theory but no one wants to hold the parents of these kids accountable. I personally think that parents should be punished if their children don't do well in school, have continual behavioral problems or commit crimes. Cut off the welfare and restrict these parents and their families to living in a shelter and eating bread and water (no money for cable tv, alcohol and ciggies). It is not a good solution, but it is the only solution that will work. No amount of money via welfare or social programs will ever bring the black community out of the continuum they are stuck in.
The Hispanic community has another problem. Most of them are from Mexico or are second generation. The immigrants are usually much better off financially than they were in Mexico even if they are making $6 an hour mowing lawns. Their kids often cannot speak English very well and don't think that that they should have to put in more work than their English speaking counterparts to stay at the same level. Often their parents both work very long hours and do not appreciate the value of their kids education. They like the black parents (but for different reasons) do not require a high level of effort from their kids in regards to education. Again, their has to be consequences for these parents. Investigate the parents of children who never do their homework or are clearly not giving much effort in school. Warn them, then if things don't improve - deport them. I think that we would see quite a lot better grades from Mexicans overnight if this policy was implemented.
If parents don't know how to motivate their children - offer them parenting classes.
I know this is a popular refrain about American education, but it's only a half-truth. The only real direct, objective comparisons between different countries' educational systems are based on data from identical tests administered across those nations. However, as the results from the PISA[0] indicate, Americans rank near the top of their respective ethnic groups when they are separated in that manner. That is to say, American students of European descent are near the top of the charts when compared to European students, American students of Asian descent are near the top of the charts when compared to Asian students, etc.
This also applies to American students of African and Hispanic descent. However, students in African and Hispanic countries do so much worse than students in European and Asian countries that despite the American students of those ethnicities performing better than students in those countries, they still bring down the average American score below that of most European and Asian nations.
What this tells us is not that the American education system is just plain bad. Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America. The real problem is that our education system fails to provide an equal quality of education to all of our children.
As you probably already know, this result is because our public education system is funded by local taxes, and our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor, who are overwhelmingly of African and Hispanic descent. Thus, the African and Hispanic students end up going to public schools that are poorly funded because their parents are poor, trapping Americans of African and Hispanic descent in a cycle of poverty.
The solution to this problem is not apparent, as attempts to integrate schools along socioeconomic & ethnic lines just results in the wealthy voting to defund public schools and sending their children to expensive private schools instead.
0: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...