This time the cause is bad teachers protected by the teachers union. I'm all for busting up the teachers union, but I don't for a nano second believe that bad teachers are really the cause of what is being observed.
Instead, what's being observed is deliberately made up, mostly nonsense, mostly to spend still more money on K-12 education which, with some irony, would help the teachers union!
We went through all this just 17 months ago with
McKinsey's report, The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools, April, 2009,
then but no longer at
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/achieveme...
and
supporting materials (PDF - 1.0 MB)
then but no longer at
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/detailed_...
Cover to cover it is clear that the main concern of this, apparently pro bono effort by some dedicated McKinsey staff members, was to scream that US K-12 educational achievement sucks while what they really meant was that US Black K-12 educational achievement sucks. So, that pro bono effort was to save the US Blacks.
Throughout the two long PDF files, they omitted any view of the elephant in the room until they gave a glimpse on page 26 of
supporting materials (PDF - 1.0 MB)
where they did a little cross-tabulation, that is, started on the main technique in looking for causality in social-economic data.
So on page 26 we finally get the US students, White, Latino, and Black, compared separately with students in many other countries in the world.
So, wonder of wonders, the ranking goes:
Finland
Hong Kong
Canada
Japan
Australia
US whites
Korea
Germany
United Kingdom
Switzerland
Ireland
Sweden
The US Latinos? Just above Chile.
The US Blacks? A little ahead of Indonesia and Argentina.
Is there any question how the US Blacks would do against, say, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, Zimbabwe?
So wonder how US students of Finish descent would do against Finland, Asian descent, against Hong Kong, Canadian descent, against Canada, Japanese descent, against Japan, Australian descent, against Australia? The study didn't say. Ah, wonder why? Why oh why? Maybe they followed the old rule, "If you don't think you will like the answer, then don't ask the question.".
So the study mostly tried to obscure the obvious cause: For the data they considered, the main cause of good performance is country of origin. Right: In particular, parents are a still more important cause, and it might be possible to dig still deeper.
Then the main reason for the low average US ranking is that the US is a diverse country and the other countries are homogeneous.
So, Virgina, this statistical pattern has NOTHING to do with education or US education: Instead, take any 100 homogeneous populations, of anything -- kitty cats, puppy dogs, or billy goats. Then pick a measure, any nontrivial measure you want from length of hair, body weight, running speed, jumping ability, whisker length, nearly anything at all. Then from the 100 homogeneous populations, make a diverse population and apply the measure. Then rank all the 101 populations. Presto: Wonder of wonders, the diverse population will be ahead of some of the homogeneous populations and behind some of the others. Obvious. Trivial.
And that obvious, trivial observation is so far ALL the screaming is about. How 'bout that.
So, if want to tar and feather US education, which for other reasons I'm plenty eager to do, will build the fire to warm up the tar right away, then compare US education with apples against apples. So, compare US education on people from Finland with Finland education on people in Finland. In this way have compared US education with Finland education. Then rinse, repeat for Hong Kong, Canada, Japan, etc.
But the semi-, pseudo-, quasi-smart, partly objective McKinsey team last year and the movie people this year showed their grasp of education: All they showed was the same thing would see from 101 collections of kitty cats measured on length of whiskers.
There's another big point: Apparently actually there isn't much in K-12 in the public school systems of any of the countries so that at most not much is missed.
Another point: Let's compare college education and, there, GRE scores. Bet the top 100 US colleges and universities do quite well, thank you.
Another point: Let's compare graduate education and research progress -- as we know, the US by itself totally blows all the rest of the world off the court and out of the arena.
Another point: K-12 really should amount to something. So let's move to that.
Another point: It may be that the US should take vocational education as seriously as, say, Germany does. We should consider that.
Another point: In the classic Democracy and Education, John Dewey made a big point: He defined education as the passing from one generation to the next and mentioned that what gets passed is mostly just what was there, both good and bad, with maybe a little improvement at each passing. So, without some quite special efforts, tough to take teachers from the middle third of US educational accomplishment and have them pass on only the top 10% of educational content.
Another point: Once again we see that high accomplishment is mostly the responsibility of individuals and where their best help is from their own families. So, enter the promise of home schooling.
Here's my approach to improving US education (listen up billionaires):
First, set up educational certification in nearly all subjects of interest from math, physics, and chemistry to auto body repair, grass mowing, all the way down to, say, computer science, and from there way, way down to, say, programming in C++, if could find anyone so weak minded. The CEEB tests should be a good start.
Second, get most colleges to agree on the required subjects to be ready for college work.
Third, fund some efforts at educational materials and programs to prepare students for the tests. Of course should try to make heavy use of PDF files, video lectures on YouTUBE, Web fora, tutoring, etc.
Then, let free enterprise take over and develop still better educational materials.
For K-12, leave that to local school boards: Some will get it and let well motivated and guided students just pursue some of the better sets of materials and, then, be ready for college work at age 10 or 12.
Then have those 12 year olds compete with 12 year olds around the world.
Here we cut out a lot of nonsense: If someone wants to learn, then sit in a cubicle with a computer, work through some of the best educational materials, take the test, and see how well they do, and then all the credit and/or blame is just theirs.
For varsity athletics, f'get about it except for the cheerleaders -- wouldn't want not to have the cheerleaders, a crown jewel of the US educational system!