Compared to other countries American students are mediocre, and they always have been
At least when it comes to test scores
In his speech to the Republican National Convention, Eric Trump frothily noted the “humiliation” of a public education system “ranked 30th in the world.” Now, we’ve heard this kind of statistic before, and it’s almost always accompanied by the hint that American eminence is eroding; that the performance of our nation must be put back on track.
Like other political points with tinges of nostalgia, this fact about American education is often cited without a clear reference to the actual past. Yes, American students score lower today than their counterparts overseas — but have they ever been exceptional?
Well, the short and rather certain answer is “no.” Since international test comparisons were first kept fifty years ago, American public school students always have fared unimpressively. In 1964, the First International Mathematics Study tested 8th and 12th graders, and it put American students at the bottom, with U.S. seniors placing 12 out of 12, and 13-year-olds 11 out of 12. A later study in the 60s, the First International Science Study, was a little more kind. Out of the 19 nations surveyed, American 14-year-olds ranked 9th, while high school seniors ranked 14th.
The pessimistic narrative we know today came into its own in the following decades. In the 1980s, when the results of the Second International Mathematics Study came to light, the news was greeted with headlines like “American Students Score Average or Below in International Math Exams” and “U.S. Students Top Only Third World in Math.”
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was first conducted in 2000, and continues to be administered at three-year intervals. The test is given to 15–16 year olds worldwide, gauging their competency in reading, mathematics, and science. The 2012 PISA test, which tested 65 countries, placed U.S. students in the middle-range for math, science, and reading—scoring 36th, 28th, and 24th, respectively.
There is good reason to be dissatisfied with numbers like these; what former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called “educational stagnation.” As a nation, it behooves us to remember the many poor, under-served students who are hidden at the bottom of these national averages. But to pretend that these figures are news or are unprecedented is ignorant, when in fact, they’re the norm.
Of course, it’s worth questioning the value of these rankings in the first place. As renowned NYU education researcher Diane Ravitch wrote in the wake of the latest PISA results, “Let others have the higher test scores. I prefer to bet on the creative, can-do spirit of the American people, on its character, persistence, ambition, hard work, and big dreams, none of which are ever measured or can be measured by standardized tests.”
