dmcblue

"Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."

A central misconception regarding American education is that we are a uniquely terrible nation when it comes to schooling. This assumption is not defensible. It’s certainly true that our performance does not look good relative to expenditures, but then school funding is not consistently or simplistically associated with student performance. Overall, I think the evidence is strong that the United States has mediocre mean academic outcomes and that this disappointing average performance is the product of a relatively small number of schools in economically-challenged parts of the country that perform truly terribly. Our median student does alright, not great but alright, but our worst-performing students struggle dramatically compared to the rest of the developed world. Meanwhile, the top-performing American public school students are competitive with those from anywhere; I would put our top 1% or 3% or 5% of students up against those from any country. In events like the International Chemistry Olympiad and the International Mathematics Olympiad, for example, American students have excelled for decades. American high school students go on to flourish in the most elite universities in the world. Our problem isn’t at the top. The story of American education is not of generically bad or even mediocre results but of extreme inequality. Which is the general American story.