p>Every time data allowing international comparisons are published debates on the quality of the U.S. educational system seem to follow. The most recent data are from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (full report). The U.S. appears to have improved, but scores somewhere in the middle of the pack.
In evaluating International comparisons, my present thinking continues to be influenced by a book (The Manufactured Crisis – Berliner and Biddle). The rest of the title may give additional insight – Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools. The authors systematically go through issues related to what International comparisons can reveal. The fear mongering can have unpredictable consequences. Some want to argue that public education needs more resources to be able to compete. Some want to argue that public education is broken, mostly implemented by incompetent individuals and needs to be operated in a different fashion. Among the things that concern me is that the issue has been reduced to sound-bites and has made experts out of politicians and leaders of industry who seem to feel they have special insights not present within the educational community or the scholars who study educational practice. Berliner and Biddle have a great way of bringing up issues that may not be apparent. For example, just who in the U.S. is scoring at what level? Who takes these tests in different countries? etc.
The performance of U.S. schools is an important issue to evaluate, but it is easy to misunderstand and misapply the data that are generated. It is also possible that responsibilities are given to schools that are inappropriate and not well thought out. The issue of economic competitiveness is one such issue. If I wanted only to focus on the issue of economic competitiveness, I might attempt early on to identify students with math and science talent and offer these students an enriched environment within which to focus on the development of math and science knowledge and skills. I would not necessarily worry about the other 80% of students not suited or interested in such a focus. Of course, we do not take such a perspective and come up with programs such as NCLB which by definition focus on developing the proficiency of under-performing students who are unlikely to become scientists or mathematicians. We have a different system of values but we seem to become confused when assuming certain goals (economic competitiveness) will be accomplished by acting according to our values (focusing on basic expectations for all students).
Note, that NCLB has been in effect now for one plus Presidents and it had no impact on the U.S. standings as measured by the PISA exam. Why would we expect that it would? Getting a higher proportion of students past some minimums is not the same as advancing all students.