Are American Public Schools Failing?

May 3, 2007 7:04 AM

Gerald Bracey has an editorial in today's Washington Post questioning common rhetoric about the failure of American public schools to measure up to schools in other countries. (See "A Test Everyone Will Fail."). He points to a recent American Institutes for Research study that raises serious questions about the conventional wisdom that American students lag far behind their peers in other countries.

By estimating what proportion of students in other nations would meet NAEP proficiency standards, the AIR study concludes that only one country--Singapore--brings over half its students to proficiency in 8th-grade mathematics. (Singapore barely clears this bar, with 51 percent of students reaching proficiency). In all, only 5 countries--Singapore, Chinese Taipei, South Korea and Hong Kong--outperform the United States on NAEP standards in math in science.

Bracey contends that overblown rhetoric about school failure emboldens critics "to do to your public schools things you would otherwise never allow." The crisis rhetoric can cause us to lose our heads, he maintains, and fuel public support for unproven, dangerous reform schemes--like wholesale privatization or the surrender of all public schools to private management organizations..

For a review of current research on how well American students fare in comparison with their international peers, see NSBA's Center for Public Education article on International Assessments. The folks at the center try to tone down the rhetoric on both sides of the debate, claiming that "our students aren’t failing, but they’re not number one, either." Visit the Center for accessible data and graphs on this important subject.