The U.S. has problems, but the problems are not schools, teachers, or funding. The problem is Chicago, Philly, L.A., Detroit, etc. Places that have levels of crime and social dysfunction that simply do not exist at that scale in other OECD countries.
I live in Wilmington, DE. A city of 71,000 people. Last year, it had 26 murders. London, a city of 8 million people, had 99. That's a 30x higher murder rate (and 2x higher than Bogota, Colombia!).[1] These are mostly 20-somethings killed in gang wars. There's a pipeline from the schools here straight into these gangs. I'm not surprised that test scores aren't the first thing on the minds of kids here.
Also, I'll note that the U.S. has one of the highest fertility rates in the OECD, just behind Mexico and Turkey. I don't think its unreasonable to assume that this has an impact on the demographic distribution of children in schools. That is to say, I'm willing to bet that children in schools in other OECD countries were more likely to be planned and born to parents who intended to take care and properly educate them than children in American schools.
[1] Four major U.S. cities (five if you count Puerto Rico as part of the U.S.) make the list of the 50 most murderous cities in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate. The only countries with cities on that list that aren't in Latin America are Jamaica, South Africa, and Iraq.
Sure, and Wilmington is on I-95, a major drug trafficking corridor. Kids get caught up in gangs, and the gangs are minor or major players in that drug trade, and the gangs are a major presence in the schools.
I'd bet that ending the drug war and destroying the drug trade would have a much larger impact on test scores in the U.S. than even drastic improvements in school funding or teacher quality.
The U.S. has problems, but the problems are not schools, teachers, or funding. The problem is Chicago, Philly, L.A., Detroit, etc. Places that have levels of crime and social dysfunction that simply do not exist at that scale in other OECD countries.
I live in Wilmington, DE. A city of 71,000 people. Last year, it had 26 murders. London, a city of 8 million people, had 99. That's a 30x higher murder rate (and 2x higher than Bogota, Colombia!).[1] These are mostly 20-somethings killed in gang wars. There's a pipeline from the schools here straight into these gangs. I'm not surprised that test scores aren't the first thing on the minds of kids here.
Also, I'll note that the U.S. has one of the highest fertility rates in the OECD, just behind Mexico and Turkey. I don't think its unreasonable to assume that this has an impact on the demographic distribution of children in schools. That is to say, I'm willing to bet that children in schools in other OECD countries were more likely to be planned and born to parents who intended to take care and properly educate them than children in American schools.
[1] Four major U.S. cities (five if you count Puerto Rico as part of the U.S.) make the list of the 50 most murderous cities in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate. The only countries with cities on that list that aren't in Latin America are Jamaica, South Africa, and Iraq.