The new Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report has just been released. This report compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world and the results weren't pretty. US students were ranked average. Average...really? What happened to American Exceptionalism? To be honest, this is not a new trend. US students have been consistently lagging behind their peers around the world since the first PISA evaluation in 2000. In 2009, the US ranked 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and 25th for mathematics.

So, what is really going on? Is the proficiency of US students as dismal as it seems? Well, yes and no.

Follow up:

Reality check...

I am compelled to point out a few anamolies in the reporting methods gleaned from reading the actual report that are not apparent in the "raw" facts quoted above. There are ranges in the report that group scores together where there is no true statistical difference. For instance, in Reading Literacy there were 15 other countries that scored in the average range with scores between 508-494. The US students scored 500 as did the students in Iceland and Poland. [For some reason the US students were ranked below these two countries even though the scores were the same.] When duplicate scores are counted together, the US ranking improves slightly.

1. In Reading Literacy the actual US rank is 11th. The top five performing countries were Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan.
2. After combining scores in Mathematics, US students were ranked 24th. Korea, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, and Canada were the top five performing countries.  
3. The actual US ranking in Science was 16th behind the top five ranking countries Finland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and Canada.

The bad news is that these widely publisized rankings are only for OECD member countries. While counting like scores together improves slightly the outlook for the effectiveness of US educators; we get a stark reality check when scores for non-OECD countries are taken into account. One example: students in Shanghai, China scored 600 on the Mathematics section of the exam compared to the 487 scored by US students.

Stark Facts

If these raw results are not disconcerting enough...how about these statistics?

1. Of the 34 OECD countries, there are just eight with lower high school graduation rates than the US.
2. For the period 1995-2008, the US ranking for college graduation rates declined, dropping our ranking from 2nd...to 13th.
3. The percentage of 15-year-olds who are enrolled in school in the United States ranks above only Mexico and Turkey.

What can we do to improve the performance of US students?

HINT: Spending more money is not the answer. In a comparison of worldwide teacher salaries for 2005 the net monthly average teacher salary in the US was $4,055; the highest reported. The lowest (all salary and expenditures per student figures are given in US dollars for comparison) reported salary was Romania at just $302. Salaries for the highest performing countries from the PISA study included in this list are Korea $2,096, Japan $2,961, Canada $2,236, and Finland $2,311. Worldwide expenditures per student tell the same story. Of the top ranked countries in the PISA study Switzerland is ranked first in per student expenditures at $9,348. You might say ah ha! See...spending money is the answer.  However, when looking into the figures further we find that the US is ranked 3rd spending $7,764 per student and Japan spends $5,890 per student.  But, Switzerland and Japan are the ONLY two top performing countries listed in this survey of twenty-one included.

So, if dollars spent is not the answer, why are US students performing so badly and what types of programs might be put into place to improve the performance of US students? Although I don't have the answers I did find several interesting places to begin searching. I would recommend listening to the FOX News interview with Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Charter Network as a good place to begin. Ms. Moskowitz makes some very salient points and offers some strong suggestions for improving our educational system. Another interesting place to begin looking for answers is to analyze what top performing countries are doing differently than the US to produce above average results. In 2006, Finland's students were ranked number one in all tested areas. (They ranked first or second in 2009.) The article, Global grade: How do U.S. students compare? published by GreatSchools.org has done this sort of investigation into Finland's education system. The most interesting differences that I noted were:

1. Teachers must have master's degrees.
2. Teachers in Finland are highly respected. Teaching is a competitive and high-status profession with just 10% of Finnish college graduates accepted into teacher training programs.
3. Students are separated into academic and vocational tracks during the last three years of high school with about 50% going into each track.

I'll leave the implications for you to think about.