Alex Wiseman: How test scores in U.S. schools really stack up

December 31, 2012

I'm the parent of an elementary and middle school student. I've attended both public and private schools in America, taught in the U.S. and Japan, and both supervised teachers and evaluated principals. I've been in schools in rural post-Soviet Mongolia, high-poverty and high-privilege schools in South Africa, and all across the Arabian Gulf. And the sum of all that experience is this: Don't believe the hype.

We shouldn't be looking at test scores — or international rankings — alone to decide if the American educational system is failing our students. People who make policy decisions based on these rankings are missing the point.

The truth is this: Overall, the U.S. is still doing as well as or better than a majority of its international peers. Yes, we have many serious and complex problems. That's a well-known fact for a hundred years. But we also provide shining examples of the best education possible.

What we need to do is ignore the hype and use this international data not to compare ourselves but to help us fix what we can. We have a responsibility to put these scores into context and start solving our problems.

For example, everybody wants to talk about China's and Finland's education systems nowadays. Americans love a good success story. But we often forget the first rule of education: It is always, always embedded in society and community. In other words, the problems that exist in the world outside of a school's walls come right into the classroom every day. If there is school violence, then chances are there is violence in society. If teachers are less than experts in their fields, then maybe they live in a community that undervalues teaching.

Let's use the Finnish example. Educators in Finland are highly professionalized and selectively trained. The system for teacher education is standardized and taken seriously. So, how does Finland differ from America? We already emphasize equality in our educational policies. We train our teachers thoroughly. Then why don't we look like Finland? Is it because we don't train our teachers as rigorously? Maybe. Is it because we don't have high enough standards for our teachers? Maybe. Is it because the service they provide our youth and our communities is seriously undervalued? Most definitely. But there is another, more obvious answer. It's because we're not the same community, the same population, as Finland.

Our educational system is a product of our own social, political and economic context — and our schools respond to that. For example, would Americans reform school funding so that is not tied to fundamental inequalities like property taxes or household income? Probably not.

So, if the U.S. can't be Finland, maybe we could be China. Chinese students outperformed the rest of the world — including Finland — in a popular international test. But the only samples came from Shanghai, a well-prepared community historically built upon test-taking and test-passing. Do Americans really want a society where advancement is based on rote memorization of government-approved facts? Probably not.

Aside from rankings, there is a lot of really useful data out there that could help us start to fix what is wrong with American schools.

It's been said before, and the international data back this up, that part of America's problem is that our education system is highly variable in curriculum standards, in teacher training, in school conditions and in classroom resources. Our improvement efforts are too variable as well. Whatever changes we make must be sustained beyond the introductory phase. This means that parents, teachers and students must "own" their education and must invest in its development and improvement.

This is the truth about American education. We're not as bad off as we think. We're doing better than we were in spite of the reports, and we have enough information to make informed and intelligent decisions about how to fix what is broken and improve on what works. Now, the trick is just to do it.

Alex Wiseman is associate professor of comparative and international education at Lehigh University.

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