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December 3, 2013 11:18 pm GMT

Why It's Never Mattered That America's Schools Lag' Behind Other Countries [2013 Edition]

90607850_ee3fbb18e0_b*Editorial Note: Every year, the media generally reports international student test comparisons with the same narrative about how the US is losing at education. The new annual report out today from the OECD will no doubt fuel another round of that. So,we're just reposting our story from last yearbelow, solely updated with the new stats covering 2012. They're italicized and in brackets. The United States has never ranked at the top of international education tests, since we began comparing countries in 1964, yet has been the dominant economic and innovative force in the world the entire time. Despite this fact, a popular annual education report has once again stoked fears of America's impending economic mediocrity with fresh stats on how far the U.S. “lags” behind the world in college attainment, pre-school enrollment, and high school graduation. The reason for the apparent disconnect is because schools don't prepare students for the real world, so broad educational attainment will have a weak correlation with economic power. Research has consistently shown that on nearly every measure of education (instructional hours, class-size, enrollment, college preparation), what students learn in school does not translate into later life success. The United States has an abundance of the factors that likely do matter: access to the best immigrants, economic opportunity, and the best research facilities. School Isn't Educational The Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD), a forum of the top 34 developed economies, released one of its annual education reports yesterday comparing each member's performance on various school metrics. [The new 20112012 scorecard for the U.S. is not pretty. The U.S. ranks 18th in scientific literacy, with no measurable improvement from last year. Shanghai-China was the top performer. The U.S. ranks 29th in Math, with only 8.8% of students performing at top levels, compared to 55.4% of Shanghai-Chinese.] "Based on these trends, the U.S. may find that an increasing number of countries will approach or surpass its attainment levels in the coming years," reads the U.S. report card. However, the report implies that education translates into gainful market skills, an assumption not found in the research. For instance, while Chinese students, on average, have twice the number of instructional hours as Americans, both countries have identical scores on tests of scientific reasoning. “The results suggest that years of rigorous training of physics knowledge in middle and high schools have made significant impact on Chinese students'

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