What International Comparisons Don't Tell Us
Yet another international survey of educational achievement has ranked the United States near the bottom of the academic hierarchy ("20-Nation Study Shows U.S. Lags in Math, Science," Feb. 12, 1992). The usual pundits are wringing their hands about the schools and about the implications of the scores for American "competitiveness" and for the future of society. American education is certainly in trouble, and the current climate of budget cuts is making the schools worse. There is a very direct relationship between good schools and a robust economy and a healthy society. Yet, one must be somewhat skeptical about these international comparisons. Cross-national educational comparisons are tricky--what produces good test takers in Korea may not work in New York.
The data tell a complex story. American children who attend schools in affluent, mostly suburban, neighborhoods compete well with students in other countries. The top 10 percent of American students who attend schools in which academic achievement is stressed are doing well. The problem is with schools in the inner cities that are dramatically underfunded and in which learning is not stressed; these are the schools about which Jonathan Kozol wrote so movingly in his recent book, Savage Inequalities. If one looks at America as two increasingly separate and distinct societies-the privileged and the rest, then those at the top are doing fine.
America's schools are among the least competitive in the world--and always have been. The American philosophy is to put off hard choices as long as possible. In countries like Korea and Taiwan, which did best in the recent tests, secondary education is extraordinarily competitive because access to higher education is limited and there is a tremendous stress, from both schools and families, to do well in high school in order to get into a university. In Japan, which did not participate in this round of tests, the intense competition in high school is well known. Achievement in high school in the United States is not so crucial because virtually everyone can enter college and "prove themselves" there even if they do not do so well in secondary school. America is alone in the world in offering universal access to higher education, and this helps to shape the ethos of secondary schools. In America, there is always a second chance. In many other countries, if one does not do well in high school, one's...
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