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Your opinion is obviously contradicted by the facts. The American education system is a major reason people immigrate here in the first place. Many of the best

Your opinion is obviously contradicted by the facts. The American education system is a major reason people immigrate here in the first place. Many of the best universities and research centers in the world happen to be in America. You may have some gripe about your kid’s teacher or whatever, but if you feel that a single data point from a parent’s biased perspective is more informative than the facts and statistics, then there’s not much point trying to have a reasonable conversation with you on this topic. You are choosing innumeracy and anecdote over easily accessible data.

noobermin 8y ago
Private, elite prep schools and colleges in the US are the best. The average college or high school is dismal compared to the rest of the world. We consistently score below the average of OECD countries.
- core-questions 8y ago
  These stats are thrown off by a number of factors that it would be imprudent to get into here. Control for demographic samples similar to the other countries and you'll see a very different picture.
  - NeoBasilisk 8y ago
    So you're saying poor people in the US don't matter because they bring down the average?
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      They matter, but they don't negate the statistical extremes. For what it's worth, I didn't go to any elite universities and I make less than 35,000 per year, so I don't have a horse in this race.
    - core-questions 8y ago
      I don't think that's what I'm saying. Of course they _matter_, as much as any of us do anyhow. What I'm saying is that if you actually compare people with similar demographically-expected IQ and socioeconomic situations, Americans stack up fine. It's the extenuating circumstances that drag the overall averages down. All that really means is that overall averages across 300 million people aren't that useful.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    Singapore is a multi-racial country, and it does better than the US on PISA. So is Canada and it does better. And if your point isn't race or culture, but of economic disparity, that is sort of my point.
    - core-questions 8y ago
      "Multi-racial" is not a homogenous term you can just throw around as though it means the same thing everywhere.
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      Singapore is full of Chinese people. Now compare Singapore Malays to Chinese-Americans.
- graycat 8y ago
  Do the comparison again controlling on country of origin. E.g., how do US citizen students with families from Japan compare with students still in Japan? Instead of Japan, substitute Canada, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, England, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic countries, the Balkan countries, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Poland, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf States, North Africa including Egypt, West Africa, Central Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, .... The US is a uniquely diverse country, and such a diverse country necessarily will have a tough time competing in average performance scores with better countries that are not diverse and, instead, have a quite uniform culture. So, right away on average scores, the US will have a tough time competing with much of Europe and the better Asian countries. Also understand that the famous, prestigious US universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, MIT, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Columbia, most of the SUNY schools, most of the Big Ten, CMU, Chicago, U. Washington, most of the University of California campuses, Stanford, Caltech, University of Texas, Rice, Georgia Tech, etc. are RESEARCH universities and do not concentrate on technical or vocational training for software developer positions where H1Bs are common.
  - anonzzzz 8y ago
    The US is not uniquely diverse, Canada and Australia among other countries have a higher percentage of foreign born population.
    - refurb 8y ago
      Foreign born doesn’t necessarily mean diverse.
    - graycat 8y ago
      The OP was in part discussing education in the US and claiming that the education is inferior to the education in several other countries. Some of the evidence is some test scores on some tests given internationally. Okay: We're considering education quality and using test scores as evidence. Well, it is Social Science 101 (my wife's Ph.D. was in mathematical sociology, and my brother's Ph.D. was in political science) to control on other likely explanatory variables. So, an obvious candidate alternate explanatory variable is culture of the country of the recent ancestors of the students. So, to compare education in the US with that in, e.g., Japan, we should see how (A) US students of recent Japanese descent compare with (B) Japanese students in Japan. So, now are holding culture reasonably constant and, thus, doing better comparing the schools and whatever else we have not controlled on. Not to control on culture would be grade F in Social Science 101 and give total garbage results. I.e., no fair blaming the education in the US when the real cause of the differences is culture and not the education.
CodeMage 8y ago
Maybe it's my fault, but I haven't found "easily accessible data" on the quality of elementary and middle school education, which is something a lot of people seem to be ignoring in this discussion. Sure, people might be motivated to immigrate here by your universities. Even when I was a teenager growing up in an Eastern European country, I had heard of MIT and dreamed of studying there. But there's a long road to go down before you arrive at your university's doors. Another thing I would like to point out is that an important aspect of an education system is the access to it. It's kind of like your health care: some of the most advanced treatments are available here, but there's a huge inequality preventing vast numbers of people from having access to those treatments. Bottom line is that the overall quality of your education system should not only be measured by the quality and prestige of your universities, but a myriad of other factors that influence the final outcome -- that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens.
- camelNotation 8y ago
  If you want your children to be educated well in most regions of the United States, you either need to do it yourself or through private schools. There are a small handful of public schools that have the funding and leadership to do it well, but they are rare - and usually located in the richest counties. You can't pay attention to achievement metrics or school ranking systems either. They are almost all relative to American schools only and fail to measure well across different global education models. You may find your local public school as an "A" grade from some rating agency, but it means nothing. The only reliable metric is how many of the graduates are accepted into top tier liberal arts colleges. Frankly, I'm not even trying any of that mess with my children. We teach them ourselves.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  > that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens. The interesting thing is even when we had millions of people out of work who worked in technical fields, SV and other major tech hubs were pushing for even more H1-B's. It really has nothing to do with skilled citizens and more to do with the salaries they demand which tend to be on the scale of 1-3 times more expensive to hire and keep then the off-shore people they're hiring. Just an anecdote for you: I was hired as a contractor on a financial application at a major health care provider here in the states. I was the only US born developer on the entire team. That included developers, project managers, and scrum mangers, On a team of 18 people, I was the only American. Several times I overheard team members talking about salary and what they were getting paid. It was shocking to me that I was getting almost twice as much as they were per hour for virtually the same work. It's not the skills or education that are lacking, it's the cost of the labor which is considerably lower for off-shore talent or H1-B contractors.
corpMaverick 8y ago
May be, it is that the academic level after high school is much higher while the academic level in high school and below is very low.
poulsbohemian 8y ago
Why are you picking a fight with the parent poster when they are describing k-12 education (which is rotten; many studies have shown this) and using our universities (which are good) as your counterpoint?

noobermin 8y ago

Private, elite prep schools and colleges in the US are the best. The average college or high school is dismal compared to the rest of the world. We consistently score below the average of OECD countries.

core-questions 8y ago
These stats are thrown off by a number of factors that it would be imprudent to get into here. Control for demographic samples similar to the other countries and you'll see a very different picture.
- NeoBasilisk 8y ago
  So you're saying poor people in the US don't matter because they bring down the average?
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    They matter, but they don't negate the statistical extremes. For what it's worth, I didn't go to any elite universities and I make less than 35,000 per year, so I don't have a horse in this race.
  - core-questions 8y ago
    I don't think that's what I'm saying. Of course they _matter_, as much as any of us do anyhow. What I'm saying is that if you actually compare people with similar demographically-expected IQ and socioeconomic situations, Americans stack up fine. It's the extenuating circumstances that drag the overall averages down. All that really means is that overall averages across 300 million people aren't that useful.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Singapore is a multi-racial country, and it does better than the US on PISA. So is Canada and it does better. And if your point isn't race or culture, but of economic disparity, that is sort of my point.
  - core-questions 8y ago
    "Multi-racial" is not a homogenous term you can just throw around as though it means the same thing everywhere.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    Singapore is full of Chinese people. Now compare Singapore Malays to Chinese-Americans.
graycat 8y ago
Do the comparison again controlling on country of origin. E.g., how do US citizen students with families from Japan compare with students still in Japan? Instead of Japan, substitute Canada, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, England, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic countries, the Balkan countries, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Poland, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf States, North Africa including Egypt, West Africa, Central Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, .... The US is a uniquely diverse country, and such a diverse country necessarily will have a tough time competing in average performance scores with better countries that are not diverse and, instead, have a quite uniform culture. So, right away on average scores, the US will have a tough time competing with much of Europe and the better Asian countries. Also understand that the famous, prestigious US universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, MIT, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Columbia, most of the SUNY schools, most of the Big Ten, CMU, Chicago, U. Washington, most of the University of California campuses, Stanford, Caltech, University of Texas, Rice, Georgia Tech, etc. are RESEARCH universities and do not concentrate on technical or vocational training for software developer positions where H1Bs are common.
- anonzzzz 8y ago
  The US is not uniquely diverse, Canada and Australia among other countries have a higher percentage of foreign born population.
  - refurb 8y ago
    Foreign born doesn’t necessarily mean diverse.
  - graycat 8y ago
    The OP was in part discussing education in the US and claiming that the education is inferior to the education in several other countries. Some of the evidence is some test scores on some tests given internationally. Okay: We're considering education quality and using test scores as evidence. Well, it is Social Science 101 (my wife's Ph.D. was in mathematical sociology, and my brother's Ph.D. was in political science) to control on other likely explanatory variables. So, an obvious candidate alternate explanatory variable is culture of the country of the recent ancestors of the students. So, to compare education in the US with that in, e.g., Japan, we should see how (A) US students of recent Japanese descent compare with (B) Japanese students in Japan. So, now are holding culture reasonably constant and, thus, doing better comparing the schools and whatever else we have not controlled on. Not to control on culture would be grade F in Social Science 101 and give total garbage results. I.e., no fair blaming the education in the US when the real cause of the differences is culture and not the education.

CodeMage 8y ago

Maybe it's my fault, but I haven't found "easily accessible data" on the quality of elementary and middle school education, which is something a lot of people seem to be ignoring in this discussion. Sure, people might be motivated to immigrate here by your universities. Even when I was a teenager growing up in an Eastern European country, I had heard of MIT and dreamed of studying there. But there's a long road to go down before you arrive at your university's doors. Another thing I would like to point out is that an important aspect of an education system is the access to it. It's kind of like your health care: some of the most advanced treatments are available here, but there's a huge inequality preventing vast numbers of people from having access to those treatments. Bottom line is that the overall quality of your education system should not only be measured by the quality and prestige of your universities, but a myriad of other factors that influence the final outcome -- that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens.

camelNotation 8y ago
If you want your children to be educated well in most regions of the United States, you either need to do it yourself or through private schools. There are a small handful of public schools that have the funding and leadership to do it well, but they are rare - and usually located in the richest counties. You can't pay attention to achievement metrics or school ranking systems either. They are almost all relative to American schools only and fail to measure well across different global education models. You may find your local public school as an "A" grade from some rating agency, but it means nothing. The only reliable metric is how many of the graduates are accepted into top tier liberal arts colleges. Frankly, I'm not even trying any of that mess with my children. We teach them ourselves.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
> that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens. The interesting thing is even when we had millions of people out of work who worked in technical fields, SV and other major tech hubs were pushing for even more H1-B's. It really has nothing to do with skilled citizens and more to do with the salaries they demand which tend to be on the scale of 1-3 times more expensive to hire and keep then the off-shore people they're hiring. Just an anecdote for you: I was hired as a contractor on a financial application at a major health care provider here in the states. I was the only US born developer on the entire team. That included developers, project managers, and scrum mangers, On a team of 18 people, I was the only American. Several times I overheard team members talking about salary and what they were getting paid. It was shocking to me that I was getting almost twice as much as they were per hour for virtually the same work. It's not the skills or education that are lacking, it's the cost of the labor which is considerably lower for off-shore talent or H1-B contractors.

corpMaverick 8y ago

May be, it is that the academic level after high school is much higher while the academic level in high school and below is very low.

poulsbohemian 8y ago

Why are you picking a fight with the parent poster when they are describing k-12 education (which is rotten; many studies have shown this) and using our universities (which are good) as your counterpoint?