International Test Scores

Poor U.S. Test Results
Tied To Weak Curriculum

Most of the following was excerpted from a speech by Pascal D. Forgione, Jr., Ph.D. U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics.  As a government researcher, he tries to put the best possible spin on the academic failure of American schools, but this is no sugar-coated report.

Comparisons are Fair Traditionally, the most common criticism of international studies is that it is unfair to compare our results to other countries because their national scores are based on a highly selective population. While this may have been true in the past, it is simply not valid in the case of TIMSS. Using several different methods of measuring enrollment, the data indicate that the enrollment rate in the United States is closer to the international average than to the desirable upper extreme. Even the theory that higher secondary enrollment rates hurt a country's overall achievement did not hold true. Students in countries with higher enrollment rates tended to score significantly higher on both the math and science general knowledge assessments. Higher secondary enrollment rates are associated with higher levels of performance, rather than the reverse. The range of scores, from high to low, is no greater in the United States than in the higher-scoring countries. 

Participants This study included primarily the industrialized countries of Europe but also the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Asia. So-called third world countries that have a higher literacy rate than the U.S., like Costa Rica, and others that contribute a significant number of U.S. advance degreed immigrants, like India , were not part of this study; therefore, the results in terms of world competition are worse than portrayed in these charts.

Results In short, the tests showed U.S. fourth-graders performing poorly, middle school students worse. and high school students are unable to compete. By the same criteria used to say we were "average" in elementary school, "we appear to be "near the bottom" at the high school level. People have a tendency to think this picture is  bleak but it doesn't apply to their own school. Chances are, even if your school compares well in SAT scores, it will still be a lightweight on an international scale.

1. By the time our students are ready to leave high school - ready to enter higher education and the labor force - they are doing so badly with science they are significantly weaker than their peers in other countries.
2. Our idea of "advanced" is clearly below international standards.
3. There appears to be a consistent weakness in our teaching performance in physical sciences that becomes magnified over the years.

Causes for Failure One would think that with our vastly superior resources and the level of education spending which far exceeds these competitors we would outperform nearly everyone - not so. Dr. Schmidt, who oversees the research effort into the TIMSS results, says the actual cause for the failures appears to be weak math and science curricula in U.S. middle schools. 

A more insightful explanation was once proffered by Jean McLaughlin, president of Barry University who said "The public schools lack focus; instead of concentrating on education, they dabble in social re-engineering". That assessment was confirmed by the superintendent of the country's fourth largest school district in Miami-Dade, Florida who said "Half our job is education, and the other half is social work". 

Downward sloping performance confirms John Taylor Gatto's thesis in his book Dumbing Us Down and his speeches which charge compulsory government education with deliberately producing robots instead of adults who are the best they can be.

      Curricula The biggest deficits are found at the middle school level. In middle school, most countries shift curricula from basic arithmetic and elementary science in the direction of chemistry, physics, algebra and geometry. Even poor countries generally teach a half-year of algebra and a half-year of geometry to every eighth-grader.

In U.S. middle schools, however, most students continue to review arithmetic. And they are more likely to study earth science and life science than physics or chemistry.

      Teachers Among teachers of high school biology and life sciences classes, approximately 31 percent of them do not have at least a minor in biology. Among high school physical science teachers, over half, 55 percent, do not have at least a minor in any of the physical sciences. Again we might question the focus of the teachers on social re-engineering instead of subject areas.

      Textbooks U.S. textbooks treat topics with a "mile-wide, inch-deep" approach, Schmidt said. A typical U.S. eighth-grade math textbook deals with about 35 topics. By comparison, a Japanese or German math textbook for that age would have only five or six topics. Comparisons done elsewhere between French and American  math books show more innovative approaches to finding, for instance, the volume of a pyramid. Fractions don't lend themselves to computerization, so they're relegated to an importance slightly above Roman numerals. Calculators are here to stay, so kids breeze through long division. They concentrate on how to use math rather than how to do math, and with less entanglement in social philosophy.

American Education Not World Class

The schools systematically let kids down. By grade 4, American students only score in the middle of 26 countries reported. By grade 8 they are in the bottom third, and at the finish line, where it really counts,  we're near dead last. Its even worse when you notice that some of the superior countries in grade 8 (especially the Asians) were not included in published 12th grade results.

Math

Science

For years, people have taken false comfort in the notion that while the performance of all our students may be poor, our strength lies in our top students. Many people believe that our best students perform better than the best students of most other countries. TIMSS shows this notion to be untrue. Note again that many superior countries (especially the Asians) are not included in the reported results.

Grade 12 Top Students

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Editorial Comment  In 1983, A Nation At Risk urgently recommended reforms in education warning "the United States is under challenge from many quarters".  Today we're at greater risk than ever. The Government Education Monopoly continues to imperil our economy by failing miserably at preparing the workforce. Business increasingly looks for talent overseas. The world's greatest concentration of PhD's is in Seoul, Korea and half of Americans can't even find Seoul on a map.

Microsoft India taps Indian programming and engineering skills with 83,000 certifications issued in 1999. We import 107,000 H-1B professionals every year, half of them with PhD's. 

Unless we re-tool education, there is a strong likelihood that America will get overtaken in education the way we did in automobiles. Before the 70's our economy was based on the automobile, but a complacent automobile industry failed to make changes. Japanese cars invaded, and canceled our dominance. The resulting outflow of dollars to Japan devastated our economy. Its about to happen again, this time to pay high salaries to well-educated workers overseas.

Doing it Right One does not need to scurry around trying to devise a plan to extricate ourselves from this mess. The simplest way to improve American education (public, private, and parochial) quickly is to adopt books and teaching methods from countries at the top of the ranking. Several International Baccalaureate schools have gotten dual accreditation from the participating sister country when they met the higher standards required abroad. In our own case, that required an extra hour of instruction each day, and phys-ed in a foreign language. One such government school nicknamed "teacher heaven" was organized by principal Lois Lindahl in Miami, Florida. Her motto is "Children will perform to the level of your expectations".

Sources:

Download the summary TIMSS report in PDF format http://nces.ed.gov/pubs99/1999081.pdf

Full text and charts of Forgione speech: http://nces.ed.gov/Pressrelease/science/index.html

See also: http://ed-web3.educ.msu.edu/news/news-briefs/1999/curriculum.htm

Kill the messenger: Dr. Forgione's re-nomination as U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics was blocked by the Clinton/Gore administration.  Forgione is now Superintendent of the Austin Independent School District.

More Info:

Boston College International Study Center originated TIMSS. It has timely updates and more data.

Grandfather Education Report  presenting graphs, data, and analysis that tells the stark truth. 

This research brought to you by 4Choice, dedicated to School Choice without School Vouchers.

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