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The U. S. Produces the Lion's Share of Top Scoring Students

by Gerald Bracey

The United States has more than double the
number of students scoring at the highest level
in the science assessment of the Programme of
International Student Assessment (PISA) than
any other OECD nation. That's right, more than
double. We have about 67,000 students at level
6, the highest on the six-point scale. Second-
place Japan has about 31,000 and third place UK
has 22,000. Finland, the country with the
highest average score on PISA, has about 2,000
even though it has the second highest
percentage of high scorers (3.9% compared to #1
New Zealand's 4.0%). The United States has
about 315,000 kids scoring at Level 5, the next
highest level.

These statistics make two points:

1. Comparing nations on average test
scores is foolish.

2. The United States has more than enough
high-scoring students to fill job openings in
science, technology, engineering and
mathematics.

As for #1, we have so many more high scorers
than anyone else because we have so many more
kids than anyone else. We also have about 15
times the number of low scorers as high scorers
meaning there's lots of work to do in science
education, but the numbers show how silly it is
to be fearful of competition from tiny nations
like Singapore (with about the same population
as the Washington metro area) or Finland. China
and India are growing, but only 40% of Chinese
kids get past 9th grade and a third of Indians
are still illiterate.

We hear tall tales about places like Bangalore
and Mumbai, but consider this from Meerut, a
northern Indian city of 4.5 million: "Education
is nothing; what matters here is source and
force. 'Source refers to upper social classes,
and the entry they provide. 'Force' refers to
money and social muscle applied to the job
hunt." When Meerut advertised for a police sub-
inspector, thousands of people applied.
Researcher Craig Jeffrey asks, "what happens
when the second most populous country in the
world can't absorb a huge number of educated
men?" (Women still don't count for much).
(Degrees Without Freedom: Masculinities and
Unemployment in Northern India).

As for #2, I earlier reported on the blog a
study by Lindsay Lowell and Hal Salzman showing
that we mint three new engineers for every one
new engineering job and that within two years
of attaining a bachelor's in science or
engineering, 65% of the graduates were no
longer in those areas (lousy pay, lousy chances
for advancement).

Salzman and Lowell are also the source of the
statistics that opened this blog although
anyone can find them at www.pisa.oecd.org.
These statistics and others appear in their
piece, "Making the Grade" in the May issue of
Nature (www.nature.com, search on Salzman).
Salzman and Lowell compare ranking nations on
average test scores to ranking runners on
average shoe size, ignoring any performance
measure. "If as we argue, average test scores
are mostly irrelevant as a measure of economic
potential, other indicators do matter. To
produce leading-edge technology, one could
argue that it is the numbers of high-performing
students that is most important in the global
economy...Remarkable, but little noted, is the
fact that the United States produces the lion's
share of the world's best students." Well, for
that to be wholly true, one would have to be
satisfied with test scores in general and PISA
in particular as valid indicators of
performance. I am not so satisfied and as I
indicated in the 18th Bracey Report on the
Condition of Public Education (Phi Delta
Kappan, October 2008), a number of European
researchers have poked large holes in PISA.

Still, Salzman and Lowell give us a perspective
on U. S. performance seldom seen.



— Gerald Bracey
Huffington Post
2008-12-13


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