Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. The United States cannot long operate a world-class economy if our workers are as the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development statistics show among the worst-educated in the world" said Marc Tucker (right) president of the National Center on Education and the Economy.
In the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math literacy measurements for 2015 U.S. students ranked 40th in the world. And when it comes to math U.S. high school students are falling further behind their international counterparts according to the results released last Tuesday as part of an ongoing study that compares academic achievement in 73 countries.
The news is not much better in reading and science literacy where U.S. high schoolers have not gained any ground and continue to trail students in a slew of developed countries around the globe.
The 2015 U.S. average math score of 470 down from 482 in 2012 and 488 in 2009 was 23 points lower than the average of all of the nations taking part in the survey.
U.S. student performance in the most recent assessment of an international measuring stick should serve as a Sputnik moment" for U.S. leaders and educators said Tucker pointing specifically to the results from Chinese students.
The National Center on Education and the Economys leader says the United States should study how a country that is still relatively poor such as China can outperform students in the wealthiest country in the world.
Tucker said that he would advise the incoming Trump administration to focus like a laser" on the data provided by these results as it addresses education decision-making.
Donald Trump as candidate basically staked his candidacy on the plight of industrial workers in the United States" Tucker said.
The Chinese workers are vastly better educated than the typical American worker and willing to work for one-fifth of what the equivalent American workers are willing to work for. That is a proposal for economic disaster."
While just 6 of U.S. students who took the test had scores in the highest proficiency range 29 of U.S. students did not meet the tests baseline proficiency for math.- In reading and science U.S. students were basically treading water their rankings relatively unchanged from previous years.
- The United States ranked 25th in science literacy and 24th in reading literacy.
- Singapore topped all nations in all three categories.
- China Japan Korea Canada Switzerland Estonia Australia and New Zealand were among the other top-performing countries.
Begun in 2000 and conducted every three years the PISA was created to measure the performance of 15-year-old students in science math and reading literacy in the 35 industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The number of countries taking part has expanded to 73.
Approximately 540000 students took the assessment in 2015 including 5700 U.S. public and private-school students.
The PISA results come on the heels of another international study of fourth- and eighth-graders the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study or TIMSS that showed American students trailing their Asian peers in math and science achievement.
Education experts differ about what the new PISA results mean for U.S. standards of learning.
Calling the PISA results sobering news" U.S. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. acknowledged that U.S. students are well behind their peers.
Were losing ground a troubling prospect when in todays knowledge-based economy the best jobs can go anywhere in the world" King said.
