Are America’s schools OK?

Jay Matthews has a long, solid essay in the Boston Globe about the alleged gap between American primary and seconday schools and the rest of the world:  The widespread feeling that our schools are losing out to the rest of the world, that we are not producing enough scientists and engineers, is a misunderstanding fueled by misleading statistics. Reports regularly conclude that the United States is falling behind other countries - in the number of engineers it produces, in the performance of its students in reading or in mathematics. But closer examinations of these reports are showing that they do not always compare comparable students, skewing the results. For those who look carefully at the performance of our schools, the real problem is not that the United States is falling behind, or that the entire system is failing. It is the sorry shape of the bottom 30 percent of US schools, those in urban and rural communities full of low-income children. We have seen enough successful schools in such areas to know that these children are just as capable of being great scientists, doctors, and executives as suburban children. But most low-income schools in the United States are simply bad. He's got some persuasive evidence, but I'm not sure about everything in this paragraph:  The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) of 1999, for instance, seemed to show that American high school students were far behind in advanced math. But the alarming news accounts that followed the study's release - and the politicians who echoed them - failed to note an important caveat. A significant portion of the US test takers, unlike the overseas students, had not yet gotten beyond precalculus. When the TIMMS experts later reanalyzed the data, comparing overseas students only with American high schoolers who had taken Advanced Placement calculus, the United States did much better. Perhaps more American students should be taking calculus, but when they did, they did well in comparison to foreign calculus students. Bracey found other differences that distorted international comparisons. In Europe, many teenagers who hold jobs are tracked into technical schools, but American youngsters commonly combine traditional school and work. Many of the European students on this track were not tested, but their American counterparts were, warping the comparisons. Now the point about vocational schools is well-taken.  The point about calc vs. pre-calc students, on the other hand, does not.  You can't say that a study showing Americans are behind in 12th grade math is biased because lots of foreign students have already taken calculus but American students have not -- and you sure as hell can't then alter the results by selecting on students smart enough to take calculus in high school.  That caveat aside, do read the whole thing.