
America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts - tokenadult
http://wamc.org/post/americas-high-school-graduates-look-other-countries-high-school-dropouts
======
gregatragenet3
Of course the US does poorly in this survey. The survey measures life skills.
We've spent the last decades changing our schools from teaching life skills to
pure college prep. A terrible disservice to young people. Here's some sample
questions
[http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli...](http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_online%20sample%20items.ppt)
.

~~~
tallanvor
I don't agree that this is the problem. I mean, it is a problem at times, but
that's a separate issue.

There's quite simply no easy fix here. The best schools (and yes, that
includes many public schools) are teaching a variety of skills that help the
students whether they're going on to college, a trade school, or straight into
work. And I suspect that those schools would be competitive or even beat Japan
and Finland.

But just look at the conditions of some schools. --Detroit is making the news
for schools that are falling apart and infested with rats and worse. When the
government won't even provide funds to provide a clean, safe space for
students to learn, just how much can you expect from the teachers and
students?

Most of us don't feel good about going through increasingly intrusive
screening at airports. Imagine how students at some of the schools in New York
feel having to stand in long lines and go through metal detectors every day
before class. Do you really expect them to respect an environment when they're
put through that?

In Kansas they're trying to defund the state's Supreme Court because they
ruled that the funding of public schools was inadequate and distributed
unfairly to the point of being unconstitutional.

Look at the Republican candidates all crowing about how they'll shut down the
Department of Education if they're elected. Don't get me wrong, like all
government agencies, some reform is needed, but there are plenty of examples
to show why the department is necessary!

There are other factors in play as well, of course - as much as people would
like to pretend otherwise, there are a lot of people living in poverty in the
US, and students living in poverty consistently do worse in school than middle
and upper class students.

So really, there are a LOT of reasons for the US scoring this way, and
unfortunately our country is not doing a good job of addressing these reasons.

~~~
zeveb
> Look at the Republican candidates all crowing about how they'll shut down
> the Department of Education if they're elected.

Please explain to me where in the Constitution the United States are given any
authority over the education systems of the individual states.

~~~
brooklyndavs
Really? Article V Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and
Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general
Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be
uniform throughout the United States;

The interpretation of "gerneral Welfare" varies of course, but providing SOME
sort of standards and funding at the federal level for education is well
within accepted US federal authority.

~~~
zeveb
> The interpretation of "gerneral Welfare" varies of course, but providing
> SOME sort of standards and funding at the federal level for education is
> well within accepted US federal authority.

You are correct that it is generally accepted, but you are 100% incorrect that
it is in any way a faithful reading of the text of the Constitution.

The power granted to Congress in that clause is that of taxation; its powers
concerning the common defence and general welfare of the United States (of the
states as a whole, that is, _not_ of the people of the United States), are
enumerated elsewhere in the document.

Your interpretation — common though it is — implies that there are no limits
to what the Congress may do, and that the Ninth & Tenth Amendments are
meaningless.

~~~
ap22213
Dialogues like this make me feel like I'm in some surreal universe where all
software evolved around one giant mainframe, and now, centuries later,
everyone is still programming in COBOL, and it's illegal to not be backward
compatible.

~~~
zeveb
> Dialogues like this make me feel like I'm in some surreal universe where all
> software evolved around one giant mainframe, and now, centuries later,
> everyone is still programming in COBOL, and it's illegal to not be backward
> compatible.

Being backward compatible is a feature in a legal system (e.g. forbidding ex
post facto laws). Moreover, it's entirely possible to change the Constitution
in any way one wishes, simply by passing an amendment. What you can't do is
claim that it says what it doesn't, any more than one could run an amd64 Linux
kernel directly on a 68000[1].

The Constitution's not perfect. It wasn't when it passed, which is why the
Bill of Rights was required. It still wasn't, which is why further amendments
were required (e.g., that banning slavery in most cases). Some of the changes
were themselves suboptimal (e.g. the 17th Amendment, which has been a
catastrophe, or the 18th, which banned alcohol). It's perfectly fine to amend
the Constitution to fix it (e.g. the 21st Amendment, which repealed the
fundamentally flawed 18th), but one can't just read whatever one wants into
the document (c.f. drug prohibition: if an amendment were required to ban
alcohol, then one must be required to ban drugs; and yet here we are).

[1] Yes, I'm sure that someone could in fact come up with a bitstream which is
both valid amd64 opcodes and valid 68000 opcodes, and that someone could use
that substrate to implement some sort of half-assed, tortured 'Linux' kernel.
You know what I meant.

------
esaym
I don't expect the public school system to teach my children anything. Hence
why they won't be attending. Most of the schools I attended growing up were
completely useless. Filthy, full of drugs and gangs. Sadly I even listened to
some of my teachers more than I did my own parents (indoctrination) which I
now see lead me down the wrong path.

I don't expect the public school to teach my kids any kind of career skills or
path. Think they'll teach them Python or Swift? Even if they did, it'd be
boring as heck and wouldn't happen until they're 16 years old. Conversely, I
fully expect to start "outsourcing" my web dev work to my children when they
are 13. My wife thinks it won't work. I think having them make $60 an hour
while their friends make nothing will be a large deciding factor.... And by
the time they're 16, I am expecting them to be taking classes at the local
community college which is just a few miles from here.

~~~
tcdent
As a publicly educated kid who started working when he was 15-1/2 (the legal
minimum age in CA for a work permit at the time), I'd encourage you to rethink
the importance of child-like innocence.

Not that I regret my choices, but that 13 is just a little too young to be
career-oriented, and 16 is probably the bare minimum. I was into computers at
that age, but if my decisions were based on profitability or professional
viability they would have been very different.

Don't underestimate the role of a crappy jobs and bad bosses, either. Hard to
say you'd want anyone to experience that intentionally, but a wide perspective
is priceless and can't be taught by explanation alone.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
> As a publicly educated kid who started working when he was 15-1/2 (the legal
> minimum age in CA for a work permit at the time), I'd encourage you to
> rethink the importance of child-like innocence.

Only adults think that any such thing as child-like innocence actually exists.
Children see and hear _everything_.

~~~
HemanHeartYou
That's the point, their innocence is lost too early.

~~~
oldmanjay
Clearly we'd better raise them in child jail to preserve our illusions.

------
tokenadult
Here is a link (hosted by the United States National Center for Educational
Statistics) to the study report referenced in the news story submitted to open
this thread, that is "Skills of U.S. Unemployed, Young, and Older Adults in
Sharper Focus: Results From the Program for the International Assessment of
Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2012/2014: First Look". The report includes a
summary of findings, including findings about numeracy and technology skills:

"In numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments, the United
States performed below the PIAAC international average. In numeracy, the U.S.
average score was 12 points lower than the PIAAC international average score
(257 versus 269, see figure 1-B), and in problem solving in technology-rich
environments, the U.S. average score was 9 points lower than the international
average (274 versus 283, see figure 1-C). Compared with the international
average distributions for these skills, the United States had

"• a smaller percentage at the top (10 versus 12 percent at Level 4/5 in
numeracy, and 5 versus 8 percent at Level 3 in problem solving in technology-
rich environments, see figures 2-B and 2-C), and

"• a larger percentage at the bottom (28 versus 19 percent 6 in numeracy, and
64 versus 55 percent in problem solving in technology-rich environments at
Level 1 and below)."

[http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf)

------
hackuser
_When it comes to technology skills, the story gets worse. The U.S. came in
last place — right below Poland.

The study looked at basic technology tasks: things like using email, buying
and returning items online, using a drop-down menu, naming a file on a
computer or sending a text message._

Something to consider about your users.

~~~
squeaky-clean
I was at a Walgreens a little while ago, and there was a lady buying some sort
of cable for a camera. I remember her literally asking the store clerk, "Will
this work with a laptop, or does it have to be a computer?"

I bring up this anecdote whenever someone else asserts "<simple technological
skill> is common sense, no one could be confused by it".

Help your parents with tech support at least once a year (or your friends'
parents if yours are technologically competent). It helps you keep a healthy
perspective of how other people see our trade :P

~~~
shkkmo
> Help your parents with tech support at least once a year

I did that for a while, then once, when she had a basic problem with her
printer, we spent a rather tense evening while I walked her through how I
think through technical problems piece by piece and google stuff I don't know.
She ended up figuring out a solution that I was unaware of.

She told me several weeks later she'd been able to solve a bunch of (to me)
tiny problems and how proud she was.

In my experience, it seems like often the biggest thing standing between
people like her, and technology is their own believe in their inability and
tendency to give up.

Some of that falls on us, every time we step in a solve a problem for them in
(to them) an incomprehensible manner rather than helping them find the
information the need to understand and solve the problem themselves, we help
reinforce that belief.

~~~
vacri
I used to work support for an agricultural telemetry company, and on helping a
user with a laptop-based problem over the phone, he said "lucky we have you
smart guys, I'm so dumb". To which I said "I know about computers, but I
couldn't concrete in a post. The stuff you find trivial around the farm is
stuff I'd struggle with"

I meant every word, too. I mean, I could describe the basic actions of
concreting in a post, but I'd do a terrible job of it from both lack of
interest in building and lack of practice. If you want a farm to fall apart,
give it to me to maintain :)

~~~
morgante
The difference, of course, is that the vast majority of the population never
has to concrete in a post, but they do have to use computers.

It's not like we're expecting people to have a specialized skill in
technology. They don't need to program.

Basic technical literacy should be treated like basic literacy: treated as a
basic requirement of being a functioning adult and as something you would
never outsource to others.

~~~
jimbokun
Maybe not "concrete in a post" specifically, but doing basic construction and
home maintenance tasks are very useful skills for almost anyone, and I'm
totally helpless at them. So I try to have empathy for anyone lacking "basic
technical literacy".

------
panglott
I always wish these reports would break out the average vs. the distribution.
America, more than any other developed country, tolerates a high level of
poverty. And poor kids just don't have the resources to do well in school, and
bring the average down. The single largest predictor of how well kids will do
in school is not any in-school factor, but rather the socioeconomic status of
their parents.

~~~
tokenadult
_I always wish these reports would break out the average vs. the
distribution._

The report does that for you, if you trouble yourself to look it up, and I
quoted that part of the report in a comment I posted yesterday. Here is a
longer quotation for you.

"In numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments, the United
States performed below the PIAAC international average. In numeracy, the U.S.
average score was 12 points lower than the PIAAC international average score
(257 versus 269, see figure 1-B), and in problem solving in technology-rich
environments, the U.S. average score was 9 points lower than the international
average (274 versus 283, see figure 1-C). Compared with the international
average distributions for these skills, the United States had

"• a smaller percentage at the top (10 versus 12 percent at Level 4/5 in
numeracy, and 5 versus 8 percent at Level 3 in problem solving in technology-
rich environments, see figures 2-B and 2-C), and

"• a larger percentage at the bottom (28 versus 19 percent in numeracy, and 64
versus 55 percent in problem solving in technology-rich environments at Level
1 and below)."

There is more detail for you to read about if you are interested in the
details, in the study report published by the international study group, with
the report linked here hosted by the United States National Center for
Educational Statistics.

[http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf)

------
nibs
This study does not surprise me. All four of my grandparents were educators
for their entire career. And as a result, my parents decided to unschool my
brothers and I.

In trying to be as objective and self-aware as possible, it is clear to us
that the homeschoolers/unschoolers we built a community with are vastly better
prepared for adulthood, regardless of level of general intelligence. There is
a reason the acceptance rate at Stanford is ~27% for homeschoolers vs. 5% for
those who went to school. [1]

Regardless of the pursuit, it seems like our friends who went to school the
whole time are stuck in this weird immature pergatory where they can't make
decisions or stick to things.

For the most part, the unschooler/homeschoolers are similar demographics, and
from all different "walks of life", and yet invariably omit this issue of
accepting adulthood.

Our thesis was always that school spoon feeds you, and you have to learn the
pain of learning independently to be successful and learn a real growth
mindset. But who knows. It is a complicated issue.

[1]:
[http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1011320109.html?FMT=AI&pubn...](http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1011320109.html?FMT=AI&pubnum=1511345)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> There is a reason the acceptance rate at Stanford is ~27% for homeschoolers
> vs. 5% for those who went to school.

Is it selection bias?

~~~
TheBeardKing
If Stanford were ineffective at selecting qualified students they wouldn't be
an effective school.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
I don't think that that is what he was referring to.

------
eldavido
American academia is the envy of the world.

I haven't met a single ambitious person in the US who dreams of teaching in a
high school.

It's kind of sad that secondary ed isn't high-prestige in today's American
culture, but it's not.

~~~
ktRolster
_I haven 't met a single ambitious person in the US who dreams of teaching in
a high school._

Maybe there's a problem here with how you define "ambitious"

~~~
nostrebored
Maybe his comment doesn't have the best wording, but it's true. I'd love to
teach high school, but the way that teaching is structured and the
compensation make me completely unwilling. My dream is to start a school
simply where I can teach without the hamstringing of the modern education
grinder, hopefully before my kid reaches high school.

------
InclinedPlane
This is why the college situation is so dire these days.

It used to be that a high school diploma meant something, and guaranteed a
certain level of literacy and basic familiarity with mathematics and other
useful basic skills. Now there are virtually no jobs where the core
requirement is literacy or basic math skills etc. which one can get as only a
high school graduate. The credential of a college education, or even just
having spent some time in college, is the new high school diploma. Except
whereas the public funds high school, it does not completely fund college.

And even though total government outlays to colleges have actually increased,
admissions have increased even more, and spending on administrators has as
well, so per student costs not covered by tax payers has gone through the
roof.

> _She offers a sample math problem from the test: You go to the store and
> there 's a sale. Buy one, get the second half off. So if you buy two, how
> much do you pay?_

> _" High school-credentialed adults, they can't do this task — on average,"
> says Carr._

High school graduates can't do what is basically a middle school level math
problem. It's no wonder employers don't want to hire them. As a society we
spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on K-12 students as they pass
through the school pipeline but when they graduate they aren't educated and
they have very little to show for all that time, effort, and expenditure.

This is unquestionably a national tragedy that will haunt our country for
decades to come. We've got a "lost generation" already with millenials who
were vastly underemployed for several years after the big financial crash
(which would be expected to have a lifetime impact on career and wealth
development). And we're seeing that there's a new lost generation of young
adults who have been ill served by the educational establishment.

Edit: even worse, HS education does a poor job of preparing students for
college, leading to the double whammy of debt + dropping out of college
without earning a degree.

------
camelNotation
The purpose of school is to equip students on how to teach themselves, not to
spoon feed them facts. For that reason, philosophy, rhetoric, logic, music,
literature, and mathematics should be the priorities. Students who are well-
versed in those areas WILL figure out the rest of it a million times faster
than some kid who drilled on history, science, or other facts. Teach the kids
how to study history, don't feed them names and dates. Teach the kids how to
research, don't make them regurgitate someone else's results. Teach kids how
to comprehend and analyze a text, don't make them read Homer and then
regurgitate the events. Modern education is bullshit.

~~~
fractallyte
'Science' is also a method - one that took a _long_ time to develop - and is
fundamental in understanding the universe. It should also be included in your
list of essentials...

~~~
camelNotation
I believe science as method would be included with philosophy, given the
direct relationship between the two. I imagine in a proper school, there would
be a "philosophy of science" course of some sort, but it wouldn't look like
the science courses we have today. Instead, it would be focused on allowing
students to pursue research projects, letting them learn a baseline of
information on a topic, propose a project, and then do their own research and
analysis. The problem is that today, they are given textbooks and told to
memorize data they won't use and that they can find on Google in five minutes.
It isn't teaching them science the process or asking them to engage in
questioning the validity of one study over another, which is the true-to-life
test of a person's understanding of science.

How great would it be for a kid to ask "why does rain slide off of leaves?"
rather than be told all the different leaf shapes and tree types? How
excellent would it be to have a kid spend time documenting all the different
types of clouds and offer a hypothesis on their purposes rather than just
telling them the formal names and descriptions? Teach them the process, don't
make them memorize. No one ever said, "wow, I really am glad they taught me
the difference between cumulus and cirrus clouds in middle school science."

------
victorhugo31337
This is what happens when no child is left behind. How can EVERYONE graduate
from HS without lowering the bar?

~~~
hackuser
Outcomes vary greatly by school, zip code, and socio-economic class. Are
children in the wrong zip code just lazy? Why do the children in poor families
perform so much worse than in rich families? It doesn't, by any measure,
appear to be a consequence of the children's efforts.

~~~
j1o1h1n
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151216082154.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151216082154.htm)

"the influence of genes on intelligence varies according to people's social
class in the US, but not in Western Europe or Australia. "

"That is, the relatively robust healthcare and social-welfare programs in
Western Europe and Australia may buffer some of the negative environmental
effects typically associated with poverty."

~~~
hackuser
One reason those studies are so controversial is the fear that people will
horribly misapply them. Their fears are confirmed regularly, even among
regularly sophisticated audiences such as HN.

What you write is not applicable, for many reasons.

------
2bitencryption
This also demonstrates the drastic disparity of quality.

You can either be getting a world-class education in the best high schools, or
apparently a terrible one. I'm glad I went to a good high school. I never knew
how good my education was until my first year of college, in my first writing
class. Yeesh.

------
rb808
I'm also a bit tired about hearing about how great Finland & Japan's schools
are.

How many illegal immigrants do these countries have in their school system?
How many with minorities who dont speak the main language at home? How many
kids in Japan/Finland dont eat properly because their families can't afford
food? Of course the American's student's results are going to be worse on
average.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
I love how you act like these are inevitable or aren't America's issues.

The fact that poor children aren't getting enough food in a affluent Western
country is abhorrent, the fact the US refuses to provide comprehensive
language classes to the children of immigrants is intentionally meant to
disadvantage them, the fact that the US school system has a massive disparity
of funding is on purpose so that those in rich neighborhoods get a better
quality of education.

Of course America's students results are worse when the American people
seemingly don't care about them. Maybe you should bring in a better class of
politician and instead of constantly whining about your "high" taxes you pay
MORE tax and help the disadvantaged. Or heck you could cancel all of your
corporate welfare and ultra-rich subsidies and use that money to help the
poor...

The US prides itself on being a Christian country, but they don't act like it.
Christians are socialist in nature[0].

[0] [http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2011/08/12/from-jesus-
soc...](http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2011/08/12/from-jesus-socialism-to-
capitalistic-christianity/10731)

~~~
TheBeardKing
I think OP's point is: given our obvious economic equality differences, of
course you can expect different educational outcomes. Economic inequality as
an indicator of social issues seems an obvious point by now.

------
ryanackley
As a parent of a school-age child, I hate studies like this. It's exactly the
sort of thing that leads to mandated programs like common core.

Here's the thing, my son spends more time doing homework and studying for
tests in elementary school than I ever did throughout my entire public
education.

I have worked internationally. From my own anecdotal experience, I didn't see
a difference in intelligence or ability to do the job between cultures.

~~~
pflats
>It's exactly the sort of thing that leads to mandated programs like common
core.

What exactly is wrong with the common core?

------
rb808
I thoguht the article was very positive:

> Americans who went to college and graduate school did well. They scored
> above their peers with similar degrees in other developed countries.

The _problem_ is that the bottom half does badly. I think this is largely due
to poverty, culture and low expectations rather than poorly resourced schools.
Maybe its also that its so easy to get a job in America that working classes
really dont need to study hard.

------
Cookingboy
And in this age of information and technology, many of these people are voting
to decide the next leader of the only superpower left on Earth.

This may sound grossly elitist, but democracy can be super scary sometimes.

~~~
Houshalter
Democracy is a really shitty form of government. It prevents tyrants, and it
prevents a single party from holding power for too long. Which are great
benefits over, e.g. monarchies. But the average voter isn't informed enough to
really understand all the issues. So who wins isn't really correlated with who
is best or who is right.

In my ideal form of government, the representatives would not be elected, but
randomly sampled from the population. There would also be an education and IQ
test, and it would only take from the top 5% of the population or so.

~~~
thwarted
A "representative democracy" is one specifically where the average voter
doesn't need to be informed enough to really understand all the issues, and
that's supposed to be its advantage. In contrast, direct democracy is best
when all the voters (have the time to) understand the issues. But that's not
very pragmatic, so we do representative democracy. But of course, that has its
own issues, as what to understand moves from "the issues" to "the candidates".

Somehow, this reminded me of this bit by Douglas Adams From "So Long and
Thanks for all the Fish" (in part):

    
    
        "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much
        assume that the government they've voted in more or
        less approximates to the government they want."
        "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
        "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
        "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again,
        "why?"
        "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said
        Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
    

[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-
very-...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-ancient-
democracy-you-see-you)

~~~
Houshalter
I understand the purpose of representative democracy. In theory voters vote
for representatives instead of policies, but in reality they do vote for
policies. And in practice representatives to pander to voters, and various
other interests.

------
bunkydoo
Well one thing to keep in mind is that some American States alone are the same
size in terms of population of some of these entire countries being praised
for having better education systems than the US. Sure we can learn from some
of the small nuances of their systems, but infrastructurally we are in a much
different situation than most of these examples (Finland/Japan)

------
smartbit
Nothing on creativity. I wonder why?

"creativity is essential to successful civilizations"
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907794883](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907794883)

[http://larstvede.com/lars-on-creativity](http://larstvede.com/lars-on-
creativity)

~~~
netheril96
Hard to quantify?

------
spike021
I won't go into much detail because I would wind up ranting and only be
somewhat understandable..

However, as an American citizen who went to public schools as a child/teenager
and am now finishing up at a public state university, I'm inclined to say that
the education system here is a complete wash.

It works for some people who fit the one-size mold that the system here seems
to target, but there are a large number of children/teenagers/college-aged
students for whom it does not.

That isn't to say one set of students are anymore gifted than the other. Just
that the approach to education is deeply flawed. It works for the type of
student it is set up for, and has little to no appreciation for other types,
least of which if they even exist. The approach needs a serious revolution in
order for our country to have a successful academic system.

source: I am from California and the state university I currently attend and
am almost graduated from is in CA as well.

~~~
m0llusk
This may be true, but oddly enough it might not really matter. If math such as
investigated here is required then those skills can be outsourced to those who
are so gifted. The most important thing is the gift of enterprise and
entrepreneurship which schools around the world are desperately trying to pick
up from the US. Math is great, but ultimately it must be used as a means to
some ends and that is where US students continue to excel.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Or perhaps it does matter, middle and lower incomes in the US have been
stagnating for a long time.

------
hourislate
The single largest factor in determining how well a student does in High
School is poverty.

Poor kids don't have the support nor the means to excel. They typically have
to worry about other things. Like earning money or working the farm or just
trying to keep the family together anyway they can. While other kids have
computers, you didn't even have a desk to do your homework. Other kids get
dinner, you go hungry. When your mom was sick it meant staying home to take
care of her.

The potential that is lost to poverty is no different than the potential lost
to Wars. Millions of people who could have changed the world never get a
chance.

------
kriro
"""things like using email, buying and returning items online, using a drop-
down menu, naming a file on a computer or sending a text message."""

Way to measure stuff! How about using instant messaging, swiping and dragging
stuff, taking pictures with a phone and sending them and doing tasks with
Siri/HG instead? We're taking about HS-level students, right? They seem to be
measuring stuff for older folks :P

------
madengr
Not able to send a text messsage? That I don't believe.

~~~
tokenadult
The study is about comparative data, and I can well believe (having lived in
another country) that there are countries where a larger percentage of adults
than in the United States can use commonplace technology of today. The math
literacy (numeracy) advantage for other countries I absolutely believe, as I
have read the textbooks from other countries (I am an American who can read
Chinese), and the textbooks are simpler better in other countries than they
are in the United States.

~~~
bigger_cheese
I think part of the issue is the corporate lobbying culture that exists in
America.

I read an article a while ago about what goes into selecting textbooks in
American schools apparently textbook companies lobby the education departments
to use their brand of books so rather than getting the best textbook schools
get the book from whichever company "bribed" the officials the most. Because
it all goes through politicians they can push their own agendas into textbooks
hence you get books trying to teach kids intelligent design or whatever.

From someone like me outside of America it seems absurd.

~~~
ivan_ah
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about better textbooks for university, but high
school textbooks are even worse. Total nonsense[1]. It's a shame. Hopefully
OER can improve things a bit...

[1] Richard Feynman has a revealing story about how textbooks are selected by
comitee
[http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm](http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)

------
Xeoncross
Has anyone ever studied the history of the "school system"? It was invented in
Germany to help standardize away individualism and help promote "patriotism".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo)

------
Jugurtha
There's a presentation by Stephen Krashen where he talks about the latest
research he wrote about in his book, "The Power of Reading".[0]

He addresses the problem of education and the ways it is being done. One
really important remark he has made was that one of the biggest differences
between children of well off families and others less fortunate is the
availability of books: kids of comfortable families have access to more books
since they are very young, contrary to their peers. The more important remark
is the follow up: libraries tend to offset the impact of economic differences.

It's an interesting talk.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSW7gmvDLag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSW7gmvDLag)

------
alanwatts
>when it comes to technology skills, we're dead last compared with other
developed countries.

Maybe because the education model in the US (and elsewhere) relies heavily
upon Ludditism.

Student's intelligence is measured on a single linear numeric scale based on
paper-and-pencil administered examinations and are strictly limited to using
computer technology (calculators) that was invented 40 years ago[1] even
though they posses in their pockets computers that are millions (billions?) of
times more powerful.

"Never memorize something that you can look up."

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_Business_Ana...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_Business_Analyst)

------
wmt
"Americans who went to college and graduate school did well. They scored above
their peers with similar degrees in other developed countries.

For young adults with a high school diploma or less, things did not look so
good. These Americans performed significantly worse than those in other
countries with the same education level."

Doesn't that just mean that smart kids in America are more likely to get a
higher education than in other many other countries?

------
pinaceae
Stats!

See the details on race/social rank and performance of high schoolers that
went on to college vs the ones that stopped after hs to fully understand the
data.

the US has layers, you have a first world country, a second world country and
a third world country intermixed, skewing all these data sets. well-off whites
perform as well in the US as everywhere else. Asians too. no need for
homeschooling or other panic modes.

if you're poor, you're fucked. just like anywhere else.

------
bawana
This is news? We have been devaluing education for decades as we pay teachers
less than a poverty level wage (unless you are in that unnecessary branch-
administration). Witness the populist appeal of Trump. Anyone with common
sense (which our school system has been so effective in extinguishing) would
recognize a demagogue even without the prior example of Hitler.

Solution: Khan academy. let them issue diplomas.

------
dclowd9901
I had to laugh when I got to this:

> She offers a sample math problem from the test: You go to the store and
> there's a sale. Buy one, get the second half off. So if you buy two, how
> much do you pay?

It doesn't even seem answerable. The closest I can think of a way to answer
that question is "75%".

------
breanwangji
It should not be judged so easily.

However I have to say when I was in MBA course in US, I don't know why the
teacher needs to teach the students how to calculate a linear equations of two
unknowns. In China that is a question in elementary school and less than grade
5. I wonder how they graduated from high school and learning business.

~~~
learc83
Virtually everyone in your class learned to solve systems of equations in
middle school or high school, and again in college math.

The reason the teacher explained it is that for many students in an MBA
program it has been many years since they had to use that particular skill.

------
ommunist
But! Maintaining brain drain from the third world and the UK, negates this
effect on the US economy.

------
Tehnix
As a non-native speaker this sentence actually got me a bit unsure (perhaps
because I looked too much at it):

"Buy one, get the second half off."

Is that meant as the second unit you buy, you get half off? Don't know if this
is a common way to phrase a discount like that in the US..

~~~
tronje
Not a native speaker either, but I spent a fair amount of time in the US and
Canada; and I don't think I've ever heard that phrase. Usually it's "buy one,
get one free" or some variation of that.

The phrase you mentioned would mean that you receive 2 units and pay for 1.5.

~~~
jessaustin
ISTM basic English comprehension was part of this test? That isn't a _common_
idiom as compared to BOGOF, but one will see it _sometimes_.

------
vox_mollis
Not just any "other countries". PIAAC measures against other European and East
Asian countries.

To put it politely, the US has much greater demographic diversity, with its
associated implications for IQ and consequently, all associated g factors.

~~~
kriro
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level)

------
Geojim
How else are you going to educate kids for a Donald Trump world....

------
chatmasta
I'd be much more interested in a study that compares the top 1 percentile of
graduates between countries.

Of course the bulk of US graduates are going to be unskilled... that's just
how the bell curve works, and the US has the resources to support lots of
unskilled laborers.

It's the top of the bell curve that matters. How do the smartest engineers and
scientists in the US compare to their counterparts in other countries?

Eventually we'll have a basic income so if people don't want to learn, they
won't have to.

~~~
Mikeb85
Well the top 1% in the US will look decent I think. The US had, at some point,
decided they wanted the school system to be unequal when they associated
funding with property taxes from each region, thereby ensuring rich
neighborhoods have well funded school, and poor neighborhoods poor schools.
This enshines inequality into the system, so the top will have comparatively
more resources.

And you're far too optimistic about the basic income. It's far from a
certainty, especially in the US.

~~~
naveen99
Funding doesn't help enough by itself, and the poor school districts get
supplemental funds from federal and state governments bringing their total
funding on par or higher than richer school districts. I went through poor
public schools and richer public schools. Resources were not very different.
If anything less competition at poor schools gave me an extra edge.

~~~
Mikeb85
> If anything less competition at poor schools gave me an extra edge.

How so? Are they curving grades? Smaller class sizes because of more drop-
outs? More teacher attention because you cared more than the 'poor' kids?

~~~
jessaustin
Obviously OP meant it is easier to get higher class rank/valedictorian at poor
noncompetitive schools than at rich competitive schools. Many colleges use
class rank when deciding admittance.

~~~
Mikeb85
The wonders of the US education system never cease to amaze me.

Are tests not standardized that class rank matters? When I first entered
university here, grade average was all that mattered. Certain grades even
guarantee university acceptance...

~~~
jessaustin
I would suggest two things. First, you have seriously underestimated the
variation among secondary educational institutions in USA, a mistake that no
USA college admissions process would make. Second, even in the context of the
fortunate realm in which you attend university, a "good grades guarantee
acceptance" policy probably somewhat underestimates the variation among
secondary educational institutions there.

~~~
Mikeb85
Probably because the country I live in has much less variation in the quality
of secondary education.

The fact the US hasn't figured out how to offer a consistent level of K-12
education is, quite frankly, mind-boggling (along with the lack of health
care, and many other things we take for granted in the rest of the 'western'
world).

~~~
jessaustin
It's probably because USA is inferior to your nation in every way. b^)

Don't believe everything you read.

------
tn13
Public schooling is trash in USA. As an Asian parent I can tell you it is more
than worthless. That is what happens when you put government into too much of
control.

Americans as a society have clearly traded job safety of teacher for good
quality education.

Stossel's Stupid in America : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-
aiofw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw)

~~~
lagadu
> That is what happens when you put government into too much of control.

This doesn't make any sense, most of the leading countries have _far_ more
governmental control over education than the US does.

If "governmental control" is your metric of choice, the US would need to
increase it badly.

~~~
jessaustin
If the government bureaucrats responsible for education in other nations had
performed as poorly as their American counterparts, they would have been fired
decades ago. (In China and similar polities, the firing might have been done
by a squad.) When people decry government control in the USA context, the
focus of the complaint is the complete lack of accountability by government
personnel for the results of their actions and decisions.

------
droithomme
The test checked literacy, numeracy, and IT skills. US did fine on literacy,
so-so on numeracy, and last on IT skills. Which is interesting given where
most tech comes from.

Here's an example of the sort of task you had to complete
([http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf)):

> Level 3: Meeting rooms (Item ID: U02) Difficulty score: 346 This task
> involves managing requests to reserve a meeting room on a particular date
> using a reservation system. Upon discovering that one of the reservation
> requests cannot be accommodated, the test-taker has to send an e-mail
> message declining the request. Successfully completing the task involves
> taking into account multiple constraints (e.g., the number of rooms
> available and existing reservations). Impasses exist, as the initial
> constraints generate a conflict (one of the demands for a room reservation
> cannot be satisfied). The impasse has to be resolved by initiating a new
> sub-goal, i.e., issuing a standard message to decline one of the requests.
> Two applications are present in the environment: an e-mail interface with a
> number of e-mails stored in an inbox containing the room reservation
> requests, and a web-based reservation tool that allows the user to assign
> rooms to meetings at certain times. The item requires the test-taker to
> “[u]se information from a novel web application and several e-mail messages,
> establish and apply criteria to solve a scheduling problem where an impasse
> must be resolved, and communicate the outcome.” The task involves multiple
> applications, a large number of steps, a built-in impasse, and the discovery
> and use of ad hoc commands in a novel environment. The test-taker has to
> establish a plan and monitor its implementation in order to minimize the
> number of conflicts. In addition, the test-taker has to transfer information
> from one application (e-mail) to another (the room-reservation tool).

Basically, users are given an intentionally badly designed user interface in
which they receive no training, and a task that is impossible to accomplish
within the obvious constraints of the interface, and asked to accomplish a
goal. It simulates the experience of being a low paid customer service rep in
the third world using crappy software and seeing if you can handle it or not.
If one has common sense, intelligence, and a sense of valuing their own time,
they will recognize this tasks as useless BS and refuse to cooperate further
in the test.

~~~
Hermel
> Basically, users are given an intentionally badly designed user interface in
> which they receive no training, and a task that is impossible to accomplish
> within the obvious constraints of the interface, and asked to accomplish a
> goal.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the test. The task is to manage incoming
reservation requests. Having to decline such a request does not mean the "task
is impossible to accomplish". It just means that the correct answer is to deny
the incoming request within the framework of the test. Also, the test
simulates an entirely realistic simulation. In everyday live, I often have to
decline meeting requests and propose alternate dates. Also, having to use
badly designed user interfaces without training seems very realistic to me.
Being good at handling that is a relevant skill in modern life.

------
pokolovsky
That's really funny.

------
avaku
On average

------
jorgecurio
yeah just talking to elementary school kids from America vs. Korea was an eye
opening experience. I couldn't help but feel that the future is kinda bleak
for American society because so much of it is centered around jock/warrior
culture that places far more emphasis on physical education whereas in South
Korean kids who study and is intelligent is revered as the alpha male model.

Kinda explains why South Korea ranks #1 for the most innovative economy.
There's no hazing of nerds although bullying and suicide due to over studying
is a definite problem....it just follows the trend that American kids are
seriously being left behind by other countries.

~~~
awa
Can you give a reference for "South Korea ranks #1 for the most innovative
economy"?

------
aaron695
Yet America, has lead and continues to lead the world.

Maybe we are barking up the wrong tree, maybe school isn't as important for a
country as what we take as just fact.

