Why It’s Never Mattered That America’s Schools ‘Lag’ Behind Other Countries

[Ian Curtis]

Why It's Never Mattered that America's Schools Lag Behind Other Countries

There are some pretty interesting facts presented by the author. I was never aware that the US students as a whole have never ranked particularly well, but that the US has a large percentage of top tier students.

In particular:

Originally Posted by Gregory Ferenstein

Most importantly, the innovators at the helm of an economy come from the top quarter of students. While the United States has a dismal track-record of inequality, we treat our brightest minds quite well. The “average test scores are mostly irrelevant as a measure of economic potential,” write Hal Salzman & Lindsay Lowell in the prestigious journal, Nature, “To produce leading-edge technology, one could argue that it is the numbers of high-performing students that is most important in the global economy.”

The United States, they find, has among the highest percentage of top-performing students in the world. Whether the abundance of smart students is a product of U.S. culture, an artifact of the genetic lottery, or some unknown factor hidden in our education system is anyone’s guess.

This plot from the cited article in Nature has some interesting implications.



What's the marginal economic return of adding 1% to that top tier? And how difficult is it motivate/teach 1% of students?

[F22Rapture]

I'm going to disagree with the article. Innovation and economic growth isn't the only goal of education. It's certainly good that the US has a nice peak of high-achieving students, but there's a slightly more intangible benefit to an informed populace. And that benefit is that when someone gets on their TV and tells them "Evolution Is 'Ridiculous -- I Haven't Seen A Half-Monkey, Half-Person Yet", they'll know that that person is horrendously, absurdly ignorant. And when a faceless politician says this, you know that that person is lying to you to promote their agenda, and realize that perhaps that person is not the best choice to represent you in government.

[Sandvich]

Nice article, fresh take on an interesting subject.

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

snip

Since when can school classes teach people how to do that? In any case there are the same things going on in the cultures and politics of other nations, regardless of their education.

[Ether]

Interesting perspective. The title is a bit misleading though: a person who has not read the article might presume that the author considers the wider societal effects of substandard education to be unimportant.

According to the article, South Korea ranks #1. They also have much more academic freedom to teach both sides of controversial issues in their schools.