Five Myths About U.S. Kids Outclassed by the Rest of the World

This article from the Sunday Washington Post's Opinion page really sums up a lot of the debate over the importance (or non-importance) of test scores. We've excerpted the most important points, but we highly recommend you read the entire article.

by Paul FarhiSunday, January 21, 2007; Page B02

The usual hand-wringing accompanied the Department of Education's release late last year of new statistics on how U.S. students performed on international tests. How will the United States compete in the global economy, went the lament, when our students lag behind the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong in math and science? American fourth-graders ranked 12th in the world on one international math test, and eighth-graders were 14th. Is this further evidence of the failure of the nation's schools?

Not exactly. In fact, a closer look at how our kids perform against the international "competition" suggests that this story line may contain more than a few myths:

1. U.S. students rate poorly compared with those in the rest of the world.

This is true only if you cherry-pick the results.

2. U.S. students are falling behind.

Actually, American students are mostly improving, or at worst holding their own.

3. U.S. students won't be well prepared for the modern workforce.

This myth has been bandied around since at least the turn of the century -- the 19th century -- by business leaders who blame schools for inadequately preparing workers. It's part of the never-ending notion that U.S. schools are in crisis.

4. Bad schooling has undermined America's competitiveness.

Over the past two decades the U.S. economy grew faster than that of any other advanced nation, and generated a third of the world's economic growth. Yet this performance followed a period in which the authors of "A Nation at Risk" were warning that a "rising tide of [educational] mediocrity . . . threatens our very future as a nation." That was in 1983. Those high-school mediocrities are now turning 40, and presumably have been playing a part in helping the U.S. economy grow "faster than any other advanced economy" over the past two decades.

5. How we stack up on international tests matters, if only for national pride.

Yes, we're a nation of strivers and self-improvers; the American drive to be the biggest and the best in everything seems part of our national character. But if being No. 1 in education is our goal, shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely linked to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health care and reduction of childhood poverty? National pride can be a destructive concept, especially when it views learning as a zero-sum game ("their" gains are "our" losses, and vice versa). Continuous improvement should be our goal, regardless of whether we're No.1 in the test-score Olympics.