COMPARED GLOBALLY: AMERICAN STUDENTS ARE FAILURES

I'm going to graduate college and have never taken a chemistry class in the US, and while I probably would never have needed it anyway, it says something about our educational system. The summer between my 10^th and 11^th grade year I went to school in Panama, and while they have nowhere near the amount of funding as the US in education, I took chemistry there. I also took physics, biology and theory, and they weren't optional.

For the past four decades, OECD has been one of the world's largest supplier of data on global issues. They've created a snazzy little test, the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) which tests world-wide students' scholastic performance. Its purpose is to test and compare their performance globally, an excerpt from their website describes what the PISA assesses, "In all cycles, the domains of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy are covered not merely in terms of mastery of the school curriculum, but in terms of important knowledge and skills needed in adult life."

The test assures us that American students will not be able to compete on the same level globally with other countries in the future. According to this, we lack the important knowledge and skills needed in adult life. In 2006, we weren't even in the top 20 of any of the subjects (mathematics, science, and reading). In 2003, we ranked 24 out of the 29 countries compared. It also shows that we have a higher percentage of people with degrees, so in essence, we are graduating more people with less knowledge. We are a nation of "educated" dumb people.

The first PISA came as a huge shock to many nations that perhaps they thought they were doing better than they actually were, and while many countries have taken on the challenge to improve their school systems, the United States was not one of them.

Evaluations of results from the year 2003 showed that the amount spent on education and the ranking of PISA scores were not necessarily correlated either. Countries that spent less such as Finland, Japan, Korea, Czech Republic and Australia did a lot better than countries like the United States, that despite its greater monetary investment in education, scored below the OECD average. The Czech Republic, who spent a third of that of the United States, scored in the top ten, while the US ranked 24 out of 29.

Recently, I traveled throughout Europe with a friend and we felt dumber than ever. It's common, a thing of normality to know how to speak 3 languages, if not more. In the US if you know two you're super smart, three, you're a genius. So, if during the rest of my travels, someone calls us dumb Americans, I can't really argue because they're kind of right. How are we slacking so bad on something so fundamental?

For a PowerPoint on U.S. results compared with everyone else, provided by the OECD, visit this link:

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/1/39773685.ppt

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Leyda Hernadez

leyda.h.v@gmail.com

www.makingmovesincollege.blogspot.com