Sunday, February 13, 2011

The Myth of Declining U.S. Schools

"The myth of declining U.S. schools: They've long been mediocre" by Jay Mathews

The Washington Post
Published online on February 11, 2011

Mr. Mathews' column is about a Brookings Institution study by scholar Tom Loveless that debunks the myth of U.S. schools being on the decline.  Mr. Loveless states the U.S. has never led or even been close to leading in international math and science tests - as far back as 1964.  Loveless' comments differ from those stated by Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education in the latest results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in December, where Mr. Wise stated the U.S. scores had been declining for some time.  Mr. Loveless disagrees and states, "There was no sharp decline--in either the short or long run," he says. "The U.S. performance on PISA has been flat to slightly up since the test's inception, and it has improved on TIMSS [the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, another major series of tests] since 1995."  Mr. Loveless is also quoted as saying the stories of India, China and Finland having better school systems than the U.S. are a myth also and that Finland's students were actually doing better on international tests before standardized tests were instituted in their country.

Mr. Mathews then states every country has its problems with their schools and the U.S. is no exception.  We need to stop degrading our nation's schools when for the most part they have been doing a great job.  He finds it extremely ironic that the U.S. has become the most powerful country, politically, economically and militarily even though we have been among the lowest scoring countries in international tests for the last 47 years.

As new teachers, this article and the studies it quotes assists us in going into our new positions with a realistic outlook that our nation's schools are not horrible and we need not be on the defensive regarding our job or the system that employs us.  Are there problems?  Sure there are (standardized testing maybe one of them), but as we discussed in our Educational Psych Class this past Wednesday, it always seems as if we as a culture are like someone looking back at life and saying, "Wasn't life so much better then than it is now?".

1 comment:

  1. I really liked this article because it points out that one of the biggest "educational concerns" we have as Americans (decling math and science skills) is actually a myth! Surprising, to say the least, but I'm not shocked. It seems that alot of American innovation, business, politics, you name are led by people that didn't do that well in school. I wonder why we have to fix this horrible math/science deficiency in our children to save our future. It seems blown out of proportion to me, and I don't like the idea of other subjects getting neglected, underfunded to finance science and math skills. Of course, they're important, but so is English, spelling, critical thinking, history, etc. I think that Americans in general have had a long held belief that we once had a great education system that is now in decline. I'm not so sure it was ever than good. We might have succeeded in spite of it!

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