Report shows U.S., European students lose ground despite spending
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Press Services
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
South Korea and other Asian nations are outpacing the United States and Europe in gradeschool and university education, potentially threatening Western economic dominance, a new report says.
The United States spends more on primary and secondary education than most other developed countries, yet has larger classes, lower test scores and higher dropout rates, the Parisbased Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday in its annual report on education.
Britain, France and Italy are just meeting the averages on producing college graduates, and Germany has “fallen significantly behind,” the report said.
“The time when OECD countries competed mostly with countries that offered low-skilled work at low wages is gone,” Barbara Ischinger, the organization’s director for education, said in the report. “Today, countries like China or India are starting to deliver high skills at moderate cost and at an ever-increasing pace.”
The analysis is the latest report to raise questions about the performance of U.S. public schools, five years after President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to improve schools by requiring states to give annual tests in subjects such as math and reading and established penalties for schools that don’t meet the standards.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has credited No Child Left Behind with producing “more progress in the last five years than in the previous 28 years combined.”
Yet international tests such as the Paris-based organization’s Program for International Student Assessment, which compares 15-year-olds on reading, mathematics and scientific literacy, show U.S. students performing below average.
“In order for the United States to remain a global leader and for students to receive an education that will prepare them for great careers, it is clear our higher education system must adapt to the demands of a global marketplace and work force,” said department spokesman Katherine McLane. “Secretary Spellings believes we must take action to achieve those goals and she will announce her action plan to make higher education more affordable, accessible and consumer friendly on Sept. 26.”
Thirty years ago, the United States ranked first among nations in high school completion, Ischinger said. It now ranks 12th.
The report also warned about increasing costs of dropping out of high school.
Adults who do not finish high school in the United States earn 65 percent of what people make if they do finish high school. No other country had such a severe income gap. Countries such as Finland, Belgium, Germany and Sweden have the smallest gaps.
Last week, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education issued its annual report on education and ranked the United States seventh worldwide by its proportion of students completing college, as tuition becomes increasingly unaffordable.
The San Jose, Calif.-based center also gave 43 of the 50 states a failing grade for their ability to make college affordable for their citizens, up from 36 states two years ago.
“There is some cause for concern, no doubt about it,” Spellings said of that report.
Tuesday’s report found about 97 percent of all South Koreans aged 25 to 34 have completed high school, the highest rate among countries in the organization. The number of students attending university more than doubled in China and Malaysia between 1995 and 2004.
That’s especially true for the science and engineering professions, which have fueled U.S. economic dominance, Ischinger said.
The United States spends $12,000 per student on primary and secondary education, second only to Switzerland among the 30 countries in the Paris-based organization, based on 2003 figures, Tuesday’s report said.
Yet the
