Quality of US education

[SlavicWolf]

I have seen countless discussions on the web (maybe even here) in which people stated that the US education system needs reform...

 

...and it puzzles me up to this day. AS the US education system has the highest number of the best universities in the world and the highest number of Nobel winners (all best scientists want to work in the US), then why should there be any need to change anything?

 

 

[CharonY]

In general terms the pre-college/uni is considered somewhat lacking or at most mediocre (but with extremely wide variance in quality), undergrad is more or less on par with modern countries, it is really post-graduate level where the US really takes off. I can give pointers (laced with opinion) on some of the reasons, but I need a coffee first.

[swansont]

There's a notion that a quality primary and secondary education should be accessible to all, and there is a significant disparity in the education that is available from one region to another. Universities and Nobel prize winners are a reflection of the available post-secondary education, which is financed differently. So the two don't have a lot of overlap.

[Endercreeper01]

Even though the school system is bad in the US, the college system is much better. America holds some of the best colleges, but they have a different way of schooling.

[Endy0816]

I think the free public education just creates a general expectation that the State is solely responsible for educating, rather than parents and students seeing it as a mutual effort.

 

It is when the education stops being free that the average quality starts increasing again.

 

There are plenty of alternatives to the standard public school education, but they all come with additional costs in some sense. Either time invested by the students and their parents or money by the parents.

[Phi for All]

I think the free public education just creates a general expectation that the State is solely responsible for educating, rather than parents and students seeing it as a mutual effort.

 

It is when the education stops being free that the average quality starts increasing again.

 

There are plenty of alternatives to the standard public school education, but they all come with additional costs in some sense. Either time invested by the students and their parents or money by the parents.

 

I agree that parents and students need to collaborate more on the student's education. I also think the current quality of education in the US has been more the result of political efforts to discredit public education and pave the way for a voucher system that privatizes everything. At the state level, these politics are quite heavily entrenched in making sure the system doesn't work well, and have been even before Bush pushed through (and then underfunded) No Child Left Behind.

 

We saw the same thing with FEMA. If the administration in charge doesn't want the program to work, it won't. If they want it to work and they fund it right and staff it with people who also want it to work, it works really well.

 

There are some things that are better funded by public monies, and I believe education is one of them. I'd love to see us adopt some of the public education practices that are working for Norway in a big way.

[iNow]

I have seen countless discussions on the web (maybe even here) in which people stated that the US education system needs reform...

 

...and it puzzles me up to this day. AS the US education system has the highest number of the best universities in the world and the highest number of Nobel winners (all best scientists want to work in the US), then why should there be any need to change anything?

As others have pointed out, you seem to be conflating early schooling with university level schooling. One is good, the other is crap. We should change the crappy one because our children are already struggling to compete for high quality and well paying jobs in the 21st century, and that trend only worsens if we continue with the status quo and continue poorly educating them. Asian countries, on the contrary, seem to recognize the importance of early education and are doing amazing things for their kids. The US? Not so much.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12

The OECD is out with new global rankings of how students in various countries do in reading, science, and math. Results of the full survey can be found and delved into here.

 

You can see below how Asian countries are obliterating everyone else in these categories.

 

The United States, meanwhile, ranks below the OECD average in every category. And as the WSJ notes, the US has slipped in all of the major categories in recent years:

 

The results from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which are being released on Tuesday, show that teenagers in the U.S. slipped from 25th to 31st in math since 2009; from 20th to 24th in science; and from 11th to 21st in reading, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which gathers and analyzes the data in the U.S.

 

 

[hypervalent_iodine]

Interestingly on the money front, I was reading some statistics a few days ago that showed the US spends more money per student and in total than any other country in the world and for that you're getting back fairly mediocre results. Compared to Finland, which I think was fifth in terms of money spent per student and whose students are doing fantastically well. I found it interesting, though I am a little skeptical of how accurate the comparison between numbers actually is, since the age bracket for what the UN classes school aged is quite large. Nevertheless, here is the infographic:

 

 

From what I could tell from other readings, one difference between the US and Finland is that Finland doesn't appear to use any standardised testing until students reach the age of 15 and the teachers, who are very highly trained and respected, are given a huge amount of autonomy in the way they deliver classes to cater to the specific needs of their students. The push away from rote learning and treating education as a kind of check list of things they should know about has obviously been an incredibly effective strategy, but one that would require the existing systems of places like the US to undergo radical changes were it to be implemented there.

[SlavicWolf]

I don't understand all that fascination with these rankings... Can anyone explain? Because IMHO what should matters is the performance of the system as a whole (by system I mean economy and science).

 

These scores (like the ranking posted by iNow) have one serious flaw - they don't tell what's the distribution of abilities within the group. Results of such tests tend to follow the Gauss distribution -but with different standard deviations. So an average student from Finland may score higher than an average student from the US, but if we take for example top 1-2% of students, then the US outperforms all countries by a large margin. And in the US such students are given opportunities that people from other countries (maybe except Switzerland) can only dream of. And the US science beats all others.

 

Second thing is that the US there are groups that constantly underperform and those that perform well. African Americans and Hispanics score below average (dragging the average down) while Jews, East Asians and Indians outperform all other groups.

 

BTW Do tou really think that US K12 education sucks? As far as I know smart and ambitious students have no problem finding a good school well suited for their abilities... And later they go to elite universities.

Edited February 1, 2014 by SlavicWolf

[iNow]

These scores (like the ranking posted by iNow) have one serious flaw - they don't tell what's the distribution of abilities within the group.

Well, they actually do... If you bother to go and read them, instead of assuming the news story written in laymens terms is the sum total of the work performed.

 

So an average student from Finland may score higher than an average student from the US, but if we take for example top 1-2% of students, then the US outperforms all countries by a large margin.

Of course there will always be exceptions, but your suggestion that we should force a way to make the US look better by carving the sample population into one that no longer represents the population as a whole is rather ignorant and agenda driven. It's a modern day version of the ostrich effect... "Nope, no problems here... See, these 2 students do better than the South Korean mean. Now, let's go shoot some guns at beer cans cuz 'murca rox!".

 

And in the US such students are given opportunities that people from other countries (maybe except Switzerland) can only dream of.

Name one.

 

Second thing is that the US there are groups that constantly underperform and those that perform well. African Americans and Hispanics score below average (dragging the average down) while Jews, East Asians and Indians outperform all other groups.

It's not clear what point you're seeking to make here since those disparities you cite are clearly more tied to socioeconomic status, access to healthcare and quality health outcomes, differential treatment by administrators and different languages spoken at home and in school. Your comment here seems to support our contention that we should be doing better by these children.

 

I take it you are suggesting we invest more heavily into poverty reduction programs and universal healthcare and supplemental nutrition programs for these kids? If so, I wholeheartedly agree. It's tough to learn when you're sitting through class hungry and sick all of the time.

 

http://www.apa.org/ed/resources/racial-disparities.pdf

 

BTW Do tou really think that US K12 education sucks? As far as I know smart and ambitious students have no problem finding a good school well suited for their abilities... And later they go to elite universities.

You seem oblivious to the importance of having money to find those alternative schools or the luck to be born into a region with quality educational opportunities. You seem ignorant of the idea that our approach to schooling can actually impact how much of those childrens potential is realized, and that while some students do well IN SPITE OF the schooling system we have, they could do so much better if the system were setup to support their potential more fully.

[John Cuthber]

the highest number of Nobel winners

highest number of the best universities in the world

 

That's largely due to having lots of people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita

 

And I think that on a per capita basis the UK does rather well in this too

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking

[SlavicWolf]

@iNow:

I am not suggesting any affirmative actions or poverty reduction as they are all incredibly ineffective (socialism always creates problems that is later pretends to solve). There is no hunger in the US in the same sense as in Africa. Even the poorest US families live a better life than people from middle class in some developing countries.

 

Affirmative actions aren't going to work either. Instead of wasting money on helping the poorest students you should spend it on the best ones because they are the most important for the economy and science. For people who are able and willing there is no shortage of knowledge. The best example is Endercreeper - he's 11 and has taught himself math and physics to a level that most people consider mind-blowing - all by himself. Possible? Possible. You got teenage girls in Pakistan becoming experts in physics, thanks to the internet and libraries.

 

2. In the US students who are poor but gifted don't have to worry about fees - the US has an incredibly advanced system of grants for good students, most often financed by private companies. Even in my country has some privately run Catholic schools in which several % (10-15) of best students study for free. In my Uni there are huge grants for the best students even though it's an ordinary university. Like it or not, poverty and education are correlated because most people are gifted because they had gifted parents and if they are gifted, they aren't poor.

Edited February 1, 2014 by SlavicWolf

[Endy0816]

It is the average experience that most people are talking about in terms of education reform and mostly at the primary-secondary levels.

 

The general thought is that an educated populous is more productive and less likely to riot(assuming decent governance).

 

Whatever a child's values, family wealth, environmental influence; it is on us to try and improve their outlook and in doing so improve our own and that of our decedents.

[John Cuthber]

" In the US students who are poor but gifted don't have to worry about fees - the US has an incredibly advanced system of grants for good students, most often financed by private companies."

We used to have an even better one- Grants for every student, paid by the government in order to make sure that all our talented people got the education they deserved and the nation benefitted from their skills.

 

Perhaps you could explain how that was "incredibly ineffective " and how that example of socialism meets the idea that "socialism always creates problems that is later pretends to solve"

Unfortunately, the government decided to scrap it (the real reason was in order to keep the dole queues down- but that's another issue).

 

Also, you seem to be arguing against yourself when you say " Instead of wasting money on helping the poorest students you should spend it on the best ones because they are the most important for the economy and science."

 

We don't need to help the best students- their mummies and daddies can do that because, according to you " people are gifted because they had gifted parents and if they are gifted, they aren't poor."

 

Wouldn't it be better if you just stopped saying that sort of thing?

[CharonY]

I feel that this post is based on poor understanding of the US system and funding landscape. First of all, I would like to re-iterate that weakest part is perceived to be primary and secondary education. There are many issues that but I would like to discuss post-secondary education in more detail as I am more familiar with these elements. I would like to state for now that a system that only allows 1-2% of the kids to compete with or surpass the abilities of kids from other countries is not terribly efficient.

 

But let us talk about college for a bit. It is true that there is quite a bit of funding to support students, but first of all the majority (roughly by an order of magnitude) is state or federal money and much less from private sources. The majority of the private sources are endowment to universities which then grant scholarships to students. Thus, there it depends quite a bit on the endowments of a given uni whether a student that is admitted may actually be able to pay for it.

The vast majority of money provided to students from private sources are student loans, which have to be paid back.

As a result, the average debt per student is about 30k, though individual debt vary quite a bit.

There is also the disconnect in reasoning by stating that all high-performing students can get scholarships (which is not true) and then stating that high-performing students have rich parents and have no need for scholarships or grants.

The vast majority of scholarships are geared towards low-income students are usually merit-based. Following your logic there would be no need for scholarships.

 

Then there is the issue of identifying high-performance students. GPA alone is a relatively poor indicator for academic ability (and here I am talking only about undergrad level skills, not advanced scientific skills), if one does not take the school into account. In many cases the GPA is directly correlated with the high-school, and is not always a good indicator of academic performance.

A medium-high GPA student coming from a school with high averages often performs worse than an medium GPA student coming from a much worse school, for example.

 

Another thing to understand in the US system is that college quality varies much more than in many European countries. There are schools with high-level research and extreme support for students (e.g. high tutors/lecturers per student ratios, special support for individual students, career advice for students) to pure teaching unis with limited levels of degrees.

Looking at the top universities (top 50 or so) there is virtually no difference in the graduation rate of high-income students and low-income students, implying that support is more important than parent income.

 

Now, let us discuss undergraduate level and graduate level performance in more detail. One thing of note is that the quality of undergraduate teaching is often based on metrics such as grades and graduation rates. As such, students can benefit quite a lot from access to more tutoring, for example. Here, good teaching universities with decent endowments can compete with some ivy leagues. But in the end learning at undergraduate level is much more independent and a good student will learn pretty much the same thing everywhere. Average students will benefit more from the additional support found in better universities. There may be also differences when it comes to practical courses (e.g. lab equipment) but seeing fresh graduate students all over the world has not shown me dramatic differences either way.

 

Where the US really shines is on the graduate level. Here, disparities are more dramatic both within the US as well as between countries. Why is that? At that level students start to join up research group and this makes dramatic differences. If there is no high-tech equipment in an uni, a grad student will have no chance to learn its use. If a Prof has a great research program, there is more to learn than from someone who is underfunded can only do simple things.

 

So the next question is why does the US have great researchers? In short, it is the ability to attract people from all over the world. In almost any school you will find a higher proportion of foreign professors than in almost any European country. One thing is the tenure track system which allows earlier independence. Depending on discipline achieving tenure around the 40s is possible (things are worse now, so it is everywhere). In Germany for example you are usually part of a professor's group until you manage to secure a permanent position in one go. This results in plenty of mid-forties living from contract to contract. This is not to say that it is easy in the US, but in many ways it is easier.

 

Then, there is the effect of synergy. A strong faculty can attract people interested in collaborative research, resulting in better research output, more research money and more prestige. In addition, with English being the primary language, it becomes much less daunting for scientist to immigrate (similar things are true for UK, Canada and Australia).

 

Higher prestige due to better faculty , attracts better student and again, the US can pick from a much larger world-wide pool than any other country. On the undergraduate level you will find that around 80% (or higher) of all students are American. But going to the graduate level it becomes closer to 50%. While the actual system in terms of teaching, research and overall mission etc. is similar everywhere, the US has a good research infrastructure that makes it all possible.

 

But going back to the original point, this has basically no bearing on highschool level education and much less on undergraduate as one might expect.

[chadn737]

As others have pointed out, you seem to be conflating early schooling with university level schooling. One is good, the other is crap. We should change the crappy one because our children are already struggling to compete for high quality and well paying jobs in the 21st century, and that trend only worsens if we continue with the status quo and continue poorly educating them. Asian countries, on the contrary, seem to recognize the importance of early education and are doing amazing things for their kids. The US? Not so much.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12

 

 

 

Its very unfair how they single out specific parts of China (and specifically the best parts of China). If you were to do that for the best parts of the US, things would likely look very different.

 

Another aspect of this is how small and homogenous many of these nations are. The US is a vast nation with >300 million people of very different cultures, backgrounds, and starting points. You have large numbers of immigrants from places like Mexico who enter the school system barely able to speak English. These are not typical problems for places like Japan, Switzerland, or many other nations. If anybody misconstrues my statement here as racist, or being against immigrants, then you have made a strawman and I will hit you with a negative rep. I am not saying anything regarding the intelligence or ability of our immigrants, but rather pointing out the fact that when children enter a school system with such a disadvantage, its going to have an effect. Nations like Japan and Sweden are amazingly homogenous culturally and ethnically...which I think is a weakness to tell the truth. But it also has the effect that you eliminate the sort of problems that come with trying to create a universal education system for a vast nation of many cultures and complexities. We should not be surprised that nations of only a few millions and few social issues can create a more universal education than a vast nation with such diversity. If the scores for China (also a vast nation with lots of diversity) were averaged like the US, rather than having their top performers singled out, it would not do so hot.

Edited February 4, 2014 by chadn737

[iNow]

Its very unfair how they single out specific parts of China (and specifically the best parts of China). If you were to do that for the best parts of the US, things would likely look very different.

The problem with this argument is that only places like Massachusetts are equally advanced in the US. Go to essentially any other state and you have roughly the same problem as you describe for China (how Shanghai and Beijing are not representative of the rural provinces).

[CharonY]

In that case one could compare Canada to the USA. Canada has quite a heterogeneous population but manages to stay above OECD average. And the US is pretty much at the bottom when it comes to mathematics among the more advanced nations, which is a serious issue.

One explanation that has been put forward is that socioeconomic differences are larger in the US than in the high ranking countries. While systems used in other countries may or may not work in the US, it is clear that the current system does not result in terribly favorable outcomes.

 

China is an outlier and is handled as that. Why these comparisons are always likely to draw attention to national envy and antagonism, I doubt that anyone would confuse Shanghai or Hong Kong with the whole of China. It does provide insights for the Chinese government if used as a test ground for school policies, though.

[chadn737]

In that case one could compare Canada to the USA. Canada has quite a heterogeneous population but manages to stay above OECD average. And the US is pretty much at the bottom when it comes to mathematics among the more advanced nations, which is a serious issue.

One explanation that has been put forward is that socioeconomic differences are larger in the US than in the high ranking countries. While systems used in other countries may or may not work in the US, it is clear that the current system does not result in terribly favorable outcomes.

 

China is an outlier and is handled as that. Why these comparisons are always likely to draw attention to national envy and antagonism, I doubt that anyone would confuse Shanghai or Hong Kong with the whole of China. It does provide insights for the Chinese government if used as a test ground for school policies, though.

 

Even Canada would not be heterogenous in the same way as the US. For instance, if we consider illegal immigration alone (let alone legal immigration), which will have a much higher number of individuals starting from a disadvantageous state, then Canada has ~ 35k to 120k every year. In contrast the US has ~11 million. In terms of percentage of the population, that is ~0.3-4% for Canada (assuming the 120k!) versus ~3-4% for the US of the population every year. The US has a 10 fold higher percentage incoming every year. Furthermore, they are more likely to be from even more disparate situation than the illegal immigrants in Canada because of our borders. If it is a matter of socioeconomic differences....those immigration patterns alone will create huge disparities between the two nations.

 

In terms of population structure, dynamics, culture, and the starting point of incoming immigrants, the two are actually more dissimilar than similar.

 

I still think that it is cheating to treat Shanghai or Hong Kong differently and compare these to the US as a whole. Why not treat the wealthiest parts of New York, San Francisco, etc as separate than the slums of LA or the backwoods of Louisiana? Its the same sort of disparity that exists in China. Yet by singling out China's high performers, it creates the illusion that China is doing a better job than the US. I don't find that convincing based on such cherry picked statistics. It has nothing to do with national envy or antagonism. It simply a matter of clear cherry picking of statistics.

Edited February 4, 2014 by chadn737

[John Cuthber]

Illegal immigrants are not generally children so they can't affect those figures for education directly.

Even if they were completely ineducable, could 3% of the population really make that big a difference to the test scores?

The highest scores are about 600: if you take off 3% for people who can't do stuff you would expect the average to be somewhere like 580.

 

You will need to find something other than xenophobia to explain the scores.

Anyway, if you ignore China then you get beaten by another 27 countries.

Splitting China into regions may be "cheating" but it's not relevant. You still have a problem.

Edited February 4, 2014 by John Cuthber

[chadn737]

Illegal immigrants are not generally children so they can't affect those figures for education directly.

Even if they were completely ineducable, could 3% of the population really make that big a difference to the test scores?

The highest scores are about 600: if you take off 3% for people who can't do stuff you would expect the average to be somewhere like 680.

 

You will need to find something other than xenophobia to explain the scores.

 

Yes it can. 8% of children born in the US are the children of illegal immigrants...thats quite a bit. These children are likely to be born into poverty and in families where English is not the first language. Thats every year.

 

All told, there are ~5.1million children of illegal immigrants in the US, of which 1.1 million are foreign born and illegal themselves. We have around 74 million children in the US.

 

That means that the children of illegal immigrants accounts for ~7% of the children in the US.

 

In the US, students with a migrant background....not illegal immigrants per se...just migrant period, score ~35.5 point lower than the national mean. The caveat, however, is that the national mean includes the scores of children with migrant backgrounds, and so will be lowered proportionally. These children will have a much larger effect in the US, where they constitute a higher percentage, than in nations like Canada, where they are a much lower percentage.

 

So I think it reasonable that this will have an effect on scores. Is it the only reason...certainly not. I brought this specific issue up only to make the point of the complexity of the cultural factors at work in the US compared to very homogenous, low population nations like Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and even Canada. This again is why the China stats are cherry picking. If you were to treat China like the heterogenous and large population nation that it is....like we treat the US....rather than cherry picking its high performers...then we would have a different result for China.

Edited February 4, 2014 by chadn737

[CharonY]

Eh, the link you provided does not highlight the US as something special in this regard, however. It is based on PISA 2000 data and there you find that the average reading (which has potentially biggest impact due to migration) the score for the US is 496. Now the main argument is that this value is low due to the high amount of migrants. Within the study the proportion of students with migration background in the USA were 14.5%. Now for comparison the scores of other countries with similar or higher percentages: AUS: 526.6 (20.4%); CAN: 524.2 (12.2%); NZ: 527.3 (18.2%).

The country closest to the US is Germany with 497.7 (14%). At least based on this data it does not appear that migrants alone are the reason for low scoring of the US.

It should also be noted that migrant support appears to vary significantly between countries as in the US, UK and Germany the migrants are significantly worse than in other countries. Especially in Germany this can at least partially be attributed to about the worst immigration system that I have seen (though a part will also be because it is not an English-speaking county).

Edited February 4, 2014 by CharonY

[chadn737]

Eh, the link you provided does not highlight the US as something special in this regard, however. It is based on PISA 2000 data and there you find that the average reading (which has potentially biggest impact due to migration) the score for the US is 496. Now the main argument is that this value is low due to the high amount of migrants. Within the study the proportion of students with migration background in the USA were 14.5%. Now for comparison the scores of other countries with similar or higher percentages: AUS: 526.6 (20.4%); CAN: 524.2 (12.2%); NZ: 527.3 (18.2%).

The country closest to the US is Germany with 497.7 (14%). At least based on this data it does not appear that migrants alone are the reason for low scoring of the US.

It should also be noted that migrant support appears to vary significantly between countries as in the US, UK and Germany the migrants are significantly worse than in other countries. Especially in Germany this can at least partially be attributed to about the worst immigration system that I have seen (though a part will also be because it is not an English-speaking county).

 

1) I never claimed that migration was the sole or even primary factor. I have pointed out in all my posts that this is merely an example of the cultural complexities of the US compared to other regions.

 

2) While Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have significant number of migrants, my original point actually dealt with the effect of illegal immigration. All three of those nations are isolated in the sense that they are either surrounded by oceans, or share only one border...Canada....with the US. As I showed in earlier posts, the number of illegal immigrants and children of such families are very disproportionate in comparison to Canada. This is significant. While most of the immigrants to Canada are legal, and more likely to be of higher socioeconomic status, educated, and speak the language, the exact opposite is true of illegal immigration. This creates a very different cultural dynamic due in the immigration alone. This is probably why children of migrants in the US score so much lower than children of migrants in Canada. Canada is not drawing on the same pool of migrants as the US. This actually makes sense why Germany's situation is even worse. Many German immigrants are from Turkey and Arab speaking nations and also likely to even struggle in the context of German culture and language when it comes to education. In fact, that was a major point of the paper I posted, that language barriers were typically the most significant and universal barriers faced by migrant children.

 

3) Let me again reiterate that I am not saying this is the primary cause. I am merely pointing out one area where the US diverges significantly from many of the top scoring nations. We want to point to these scores and claim that it is a failure of the education system. I don't think its so simple.

Edited February 4, 2014 by chadn737

[CharonY]

That may very well be an additional issue and may need to be addressed. However, as outlined they cannot explain the bulk of the performance of the US (as we appear to agree on now). The OECD papers on the 2012 study show that the US has the 6th highest share of immigrant students but according to their calculations they explain roughly 3% of the performance variation (which is closer to an estimate earlier in this thread). It should be noted that since 2000 the US has improved in several areas including comprehension (roughly to OECD average), though mathematics the US is underperforming heavily as has not seen much improvement since the first studies.

 

The main issue is apparently that considering the means of the country, the US is at best mediocre. Many claim that diversity is the main issue (and I acknowledge that it has been clarified that this is not the main argument in this thread). Yet countries with similar percentages of migrants deal better with the situation than others (Germany does not consider itself an immigration country and does not provide accessible assistance as Canada does, for example) but still, it does not explain the bulk of it. The problem is that it is certainly multifactorial and when it comes to policy discussion everyone is going to cherry-pick on their favorite issue and overlook the interconnectivity of the issue.

 

From an uni science perspective I can clearly state that the standards in mathematics and natural sciences at least are too low and too variable. Getting first year US students I cannot be sure whether I can use integrals as not all of them have been taught calculus to that level. With international students (including Chinese) I have not had that problems, for example.

[chadn737]

That may very well be an additional issue and may need to be addressed. However, as outlined they cannot explain the bulk of the performance of the US (as we appear to agree on now). The OECD papers on the 2012 study show that the US has the 6th highest share of immigrant students but according to their calculations they explain roughly 3% of the performance variation (which is closer to an estimate earlier in this thread). It should be noted that since 2000 the US has improved in several areas including comprehension (roughly to OECD average), though mathematics the US is underperforming heavily as has not seen much improvement since the first studies.

 

The main issue is apparently that considering the means of the country, the US is at best mediocre. Many claim that diversity is the main issue (and I acknowledge that it has been clarified that this is not the main argument in this thread). Yet countries with similar percentages of migrants deal better with the situation than others (Germany does not consider itself an immigration country and does not provide accessible assistance as Canada does, for example) but still, it does not explain the bulk of it. The problem is that it is certainly multifactorial and when it comes to policy discussion everyone is going to cherry-pick on their favorite issue and overlook the interconnectivity of the issue.

 

From an uni science perspective I can clearly state that the standards in mathematics and natural sciences at least are too low and too variable. Getting first year US students I cannot be sure whether I can use integrals as not all of them have been taught calculus to that level. With international students (including Chinese) I have not had that problems, for example.

 

At the university level, you are getting the cream of the crop with international students, especially at the graduate level. So I am weary of comparing the average first year US student to international students coming to the US because the latter has already undergone a selective process.