Only about one-third of U.S. students could read and do math at current grade levels on national tests in 2007, the most recent figures available. That means millions of kids are a long way from reaching the ambitious goal of former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law — that every student read and do math on grade level by 2014.

And the high school dropout rate is dismal — 1 in 4 kids.

But it’s all made to look worse than it is by international comparisons, which at best tend to be misleading and at worst are deeply flawed.

Well, let’s take a look.

The United States has a much bigger and faster-growing population than the other countries that participate in global assessments; China and India do not take part at all. Unlike many global competitors, the U.S. is growing ever more diverse, with a large share of children who are learning English.

Undoubtedly demographics can play an important role in assessing tests scores; consequently, they cannot be dismissed. Flood Singapore with a relatively large percentage students who do not speak Mandarin or English, and you’ll see falling test scores. That would not necessarily indicate that the education system is failing, and it doesn’t necessarily in the U.S. either.  However, it does indicate that a chunk of the future work force could be hobbled, and that is a problem.

Obama says the rest of the developed world is passing America by. “Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries,” he told the National Academy of Sciences on April 27. “Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Korea, among others.”

That is not the whole story.

The U.S. does trail the most high-achieving countries, mostly developed nations in Asia such as Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.

But the U.S. holds its own in the group that comes next, a group of developed countries that, depending on the test, includes England, Germany and Russia.

In fact, the U.S. has gained on some of its toughest competitors since 1995, making bigger strides in math than Singapore and Japan, and in science than Japan.

That is according to the most recent international tests, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, the study Obama was citing. A lead TIMSS researcher took issue with the idea the U.S. is trailing.

“Certainly, our results do not show the United States trailing the developed world by any stretch of the imagination,” said Ina V.S. Mullis, a Boston College research professor and co-director of the study.

“The Asian countries are way ahead of the rest of developed countries, but mostly the developed countries are relatively similar,” Mullis said. “And the United States might be one of the leaders of that group, depending on whether you’re talking about math or science in the fourth- or the eighth-grade.”

“Our children are competing for jobs against children in India and China today, and those children are going to school 25, 30 percent more than us,” Duncan said at Brookings this past week.

Obama himself said in March: “Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America.”

The president is in luck: The U.S. already is doing it.

South Koreans do have a longer school year, measured in days. But Americans actually spend more time in school. The average U.S. eighth-grader has 1,146 instructional hours a year, compared with 923 hours a year in South Korea.

Not true, if you take into account the hours Korean students spend in after-school hagwons (academic extracurricular programs). While living in Korea, I witnessed first-hand how students would leave school and go directly to hagwons for additional math, science, language and/or music practice. Based on my observations, every student whose parents can afford it are doing it. Now, you could argue that U.S. students are getting extra time also in after-school sports programs, real-life jobs, and clubs, but academically the time spent in class is not even close. Are the students as well rounded as American students? Hardly. But we’re not discussing holistic education; we’re talking about test scores and academic time, in this case.

In fact, the U.S. has more instructional hours than many better-performing countries, though that raises a separate question about how well American schools spend classroom time.

As for Duncan’s comparison, the department says there isn’t reliable data on how much time Chinese or Indian children spend in school.

Helping more students finish college is a priority among the many philanthropies that work on education issues. In a December speech at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., the [Bill] Gates said the U.S. problem is acute.

“In the case of college education, we were No. 1 in the world 20 years ago in the percentage of young adults with a postsecondary credential. Now we’re number 10 and dropping,” Gates said.

…

But those figures are misleading for several reasons, said Cliff Adelman, a former Education Department researcher now at the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

_They are based on entire populations, not on what actually happens to students who enter college in a given year. Graduation rates in a large, growing country such as the U.S. will not look as good as those of a smaller country whose population is declining.

_Countries have different definitions for who is counted; for example, some exclude noncitizens, while the U.S. includes them.

_Since 2000, many European countries have switched to three-year degrees from four-to-six year degrees, making their rates look better than before.

These are all good points which should be taken into consideration.

Quaid concludes:

What about high school? There again, international comparisons present similar problems. Other countries have more complex systems with many different types of high schools and can limit who is admitted.

No one disputes that the U.S. high school dropout rate, 1 in 4 kids and worse among minorities, is awful.

But as with other international comparisons, measuring the U.S. against the rest of the world is like comparing apples and oranges.

Quaid makes several good arguments in the piece but ultimately does not persuade that our international test scores are not indicative of serious problems within our education system. There are, of course, a multitude of factors not addressed in a test score, and the U.S. continues to lead the way in invention, inventiveness, ingenuity and creativity; however, if we continue to let our primary and secondary schools slip, our leadership will not continue for long.

There is a growing movement in many U.S. schools not to assign failing grades to students not meeting minimum standards. A Fox News story highlights the pros and cons of this approach.

I am inclined to oppose “failing” primary grade students and believe that social promotion, except in extreme cases, is in the best interests of the child. On the other hand, I’m not sure we are teaching older children what they need to survive in the real world by allowing multiple extended opportunities to reach learning goals. And results are showing that very few of these at-risk students are taking advantage when given the opportunity.  

It would seem to be important that students rise to the bar within a reasonable time period rather than having educators and/or parents lowering the bar to meet the learner. Students know when the bar is being lowered for them, and I believe that psychologically it’s just as potentially harmful to them as getting an “H,” “U,” or “E.” This approach reminds me of folks who say teachers should mark papers in green rather than red ink so the test or essay doesn’t appear to have been “bled on.”

The work place has its own performance standards and expectations. Students who have not been held to clear standards in school would seem to be likely not to adhere to them in their work life and there suffer more serious repercussions. Here are some excerpts from the article:

While administrators and teachers say the policies provide hope for underperforming students, critics say that lowering or altering education standards is not the answer. They point to case studies in Grand Rapids, Mich., where public high schools are using the “H” grading system this year and, according to reports, only 16 percent of first-semester “H” grades became passing grades in the second semester.

A representative from a parents’ and teachers’ group argues that no-fail policies will stem student drop-out rates:

 

But with the nation’s high school dropout rate hovering around 30 percent, Sherri Johnson, director of programs for the National Parent Teacher Association, said school districts should consider any measures possible to stop low-performing students from quitting school.

“Students ought to be assessed on how they master whatever skills they’re being assessed on, and one grade cannot achieve that,” Johnson told FOXNews.com. “If a teacher is not teaching to different learning styles, a student is always behind the 8-ball.”

 

If I’m following Ms. Johnson’s line of reasoning, if students meriting failing grades do not receive them, the drop-out rate will be reduced (presumably because the “failing” students are the same ones dropping out). This reasoning seems to be rather tenuous. Are all drop-outs failing their classes? Will getting an “H” rather than an “F,” for example, raise the students’ self-esteem enough to keep them in school, assuming Ms. Johnson is correct? She further seems to believe that failing grades are given in some sort of one-time vacuum and are not indicative of a student’s yearly performance. In the last sentence, she appears to be blaming teachers for drop-out rates because they are meeting the “learning styles” of the students. How does she draw that conclusion?

Michael Petrilli, a former U.S. Department of Education official suggests an opposing viewpoint:

“This is clearly about dumbing down expectations for our students,” Petrilli told FOXNews.com. “Some of these children are just a few years away from being in the workforce, in college or even in the military, and in none of those environment will they be coddled like they are in these programs.”

Petrilli said the policy also sends the wrong message to students.

“If you’re getting a zero, that usually means you didn’t turn in the assignment or do the job correctly,” he said. “All this does is create cynicism among educators and send signals to students that the education system is not serious about achievement.”

Photo by zoomar