Techcrunch.com: American students educational achievement has always lagged behind other countries. It just doesn't matter.

[mota bhai 2,675]

Why It’s Never Mattered That America’s Schools ‘Lag’ Behind Other Countries

The United States has never ranked at the top of international education tests, since we began comparing countries in 1964, yet has been the dominant economic and innovative force in the world the entire time.

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The reason for the apparent disconnect is because schools don't prepare students for the real world, so broad educational attainment will have a weak correlation with economic power. Research has consistently shown that on nearly every measure of education, what students learn in school does not translate into later life success. The United States has an abundance of the factors that likely do matter: access to the best immigrants, economic opportunity, and the best research facilities.

The Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD), a forum of the top 34 developed economies, released one of its annual education reports yesterday comparing each member's performance on various school metrics.

The U.S. ranks 18th in scientific literacy, with no measurable improvement from last year. Shanghai-China was the top performer.

The U.S. ranks 29th in Math, with only 8.8% of students performing at top levels, compared to 55.4% of Shanghai-Chinese.

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The report implies that education translates into gainful market skills, an assumption not found in the research. For instance, while Chinese students, on average, have twice the number of instructional hours as Americans, both countries have identical scores on tests of scientific reasoning.

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The innovators at the helm of an economy come from the top quarter of students. While the United States has a dismal track-record of inequality, we treat our brightest minds quite well. The “average test scores are mostly irrelevant as a measure of economic potential,” write Hal Salzman & Lindsay Lowell in the prestigious journal, Nature, “To produce leading-edge technology, one could argue that it is the numbers of high-performing students that is most important in the global economy.”

The United States, they find, has among the highest percentage of top-performing students in the world.

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In some ways, the United States steals its way to economic superiority: it rangles the world's brightest minds to immigrate.

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A quarter of CEOs in technology and science are foreign born and 76 percent hold key positions in engineering, technology, and management, according to Stanford researcher and TechCrunch contributor, Vivek Wadhwa.

“More than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. were founded by immigrants or their children, and these firms alone employ over 10 million individuals. Some of our country's most iconic brands – including IBM, Google, and Apple – were founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. And nearly half of the top 50 venture-backed companies in the U.S. had at least one immigrant founder,” wrote Aol founder Steve Case.

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While it's difficult to speculate why the U.S. persists as a titan of innovation, we need not be scared into trying to be like other countries. America has been at the top despite a lack-luster education system.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

American education sucks. It is not for lack of money - we spent more per pupil than any other country. The Democrats Hippies and the unions Teacher's Advocacy Associations have taken over our schools, and our kids suffer. They would rather park some senile teacher waiting for retirement in the classroom to teach Math or Science. Math and science are not important, I guess. Learning how white males are cutting down all the trees so the woodland creatures have no place to live is an absolute requirement. Would you want David Crosby teaching your kids?

Edited December 3, 2013 by The Patriot

[GandD 5,966]

The United States. Everything here is the best................. if you can afford it. If you're reading this........ you can't.

Oh, and a good article btw.

Edited December 3, 2013 by GandD

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

American education sucks. It is not for lack of money - we spent more per pupil than any other country.

Same story all around, isn't it? Our healthcare system sucks, too. And that's not for a lack of money either. We spend more per capita than any other country.

Is that them hippies and unions fault, too?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Is that them hippies and unions fault, too?

Yes. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.