6 ms·

US adults score below average on worldwide test

35 points by Kilo-byte 13y ago

tzs 13y ago
> The findings were equally grim for many European countries — Italy and Spain, among the hardest hit by the recession and debt crisis, ranked at the bottom across generations. Unemployment is well over 25 percent in Spain and over 12 percent in Italy. Spain has drastically cut education spending, drawing student street protests. I'm not sure what they are getting at here. High unemployment, being hard hit by the recession and debt crisis, and recently cutting education would not affect adult reading, math, and problem solving skills, so I don't think they are offering those as an explanation for those countries doing poorly on these tests. Are they implying that because Spanish and Italian results are not as good as their neighbors they were not as capable as handling the recession and debt crisis, and so were hit harder?
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Where you would find money to spend on books, time to spend on reading, when all you care about is how to get money not to starve?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Yeah, but the recession is a fairly recent thing, while current adults received most of their education in the past decades.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Well speaking for Portugal, we have had education cuts since around 2000. Unless you live in big cities, there are also not that many libraries to go to, or the possibility to connect to the Internet in a workable manner. Sure, when one wants to learn, even with limited resources, they might try to. However, the majority just won't bother.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Yeah, I'm aware (fellow countryman here ;), but as far as I know Spain hasn't had our eternal crisis. In fact, I believe they had a decent surplus for a number of years.
        rett12 13y ago
        The problem with Spain is that every time a new government is elected they decide to change the education system. And not for a better one. So there's no plan for the near future, and the investment of R&D is ridiculous and inefficient (half of the funds are never granted). The best of the best have to leave the country.
  - forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
    "Where you would find money to spend on books, time to spend on reading, when all you care about is how to get money not to starve?" Oh man, I am from Spain. I believe you need to get out of your country for a while. There are few places in which I had seen more misery than in the US of America, India comes to mind. There some people live very well, the rest very bad. Spain is somewhat a socialist country, you are paid for not working, with lots of subsidies, like PER or paro, education and healthcare for the poor are free. Also lots of taxes. Spain exports food, there is plenty of it. If you are poor there are lots of rural places where you are given land free if you want to work it(as small villages get empty when population gets older). In Spain(and Italy) family is much more important than in the US, so it has a wide social net.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Maybe you need to travel more around in your own country. Not everyone has a family to fall on or gets the expected help from the social institutions. I travel regularly in Spain and am aware of such situations.
- danmaz74 13y ago
  I think what they imply is that a less prepared population leads to worse economic results (especially during a recession). Recent cuts for sure don't affect current scores, but they are an indication that things aren't likely to improve in the future - they could even get worse. I'll add that a less acculturated population doesn't just offer a worse workforce, but is also likely to choose a worse political class. This is very visible here in Italy.
w3dt 13y ago
This isn't surprising since in US, you get what you pay for. In Sweden for example everyone gets the same treatment in school, healthcare etc. Sure would you only count the top 1% Sweden would probably fall below US. But without that the rest of the 99% gets an higher rate.
- bjrnjs 13y ago
  Well, that's not completely true. In Sweden we have private schools just as they do in the US.
onion2k 13y ago
Was the test in Japanese? That would explain the results. :)
BlobbleBlab 13y ago
Quote from the article: "America's school kids have historically scored low on international assessment tests compared to other countries, which is often blamed on the diversity of the population and the high number of immigrants." America's diversity is a creation myth. Outside of New York, it isn't very diverse at all, and compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants. Or does the American definition of 'diversity' only refer to the number of black people? In that case, blaming their numbers for lower test scores is kind of ... racist, isn't it?
- jeltz 13y ago
  > compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants. This is true. America has an immigrant population of about the same size as Germany or Sweden (at about 12-13% of the population). > Or does the American definition of 'diversity' only refer to the number of black people? In that case, blaming their numbers for lower test scores is kind of ... racist, isn't it? I believe that is the main demographic difference between western Europe and America. We do not have a large population of former salves who historically have suffered heavy discrimination. Pointing out the results of historical (and current) racism is not racist.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    It is racist if the meaning is "we'd be scoring fine if it wasn't for them dragging us down with their genetic inferiority about which nothing can be done" rather than taken as a reason for improving schooling for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged.
- ubernostrum 13y ago
  and compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants. I suppose if you mean "people who've immigrated within the past two generations". Because, um, historically the US is where Western Europeans immigrated to.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
hacknat 13y ago
Sigh Yet another US Education hit piece. I love reading these because they all have the same myopic trope: 1. Other countries score better on subject tests than the US on average. 2. This has traditionally been blamed on the USA's high diversity and immigrant population. 3. Cue policy expert giving us a dire warning about how there are no politically tenable solutions to the US education crisis. 4. Cue 2nd policy expert talking about how devastating the skills gap will be on the economy. Can someone give us a different angle?
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  I get that it makes you uncomfortable, but it feels like you're asking for someone to give you the ability to stick your head in the sand and excuse the problem. The problem is real and will likely manifest itself dramatically over the next century.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Your parent is unhappy with these articles because they are basically doomsday proclamations. "Uncomfortable" doesn't even enter into it, because the message is simply "welp, we're fucked". That's why new angles would be interesting.
    - furyg3 13y ago
      But other countries aren't fucked. They did well on the test, so why can't the solution be to do what those other countries are doing? Flanders and Australia are every bit as 'incomparable' as Finland and the US, so let's just compare anyway. It turns out there are major consequences for income inequality, and most of the countries listed in the top categories have worked aggressively to reduce it and to alleviate it's consequences through social programs.
      - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
        What those other countries are doing is not having many Africans. But this is not a problem, and would be difficult to fix even if it were. Income inequality is a major goal of American politics. The poverty oligarchs farm the poor for votes. This will continue for as long as Americans practice the perversion known as democracy.
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
I don't live in US, but I think it's not very fair to measure US with separate countries. It would make more sense to measure separate states. Because if you take EU as a whole you would get worse result too.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  No one is particularly interested in "fair". Fair doesn't generate clicks.
  - JonnieCache 13y ago
    The OECD isn't interested in clicks. Not everything in the world is powered by banners.
- nextw33k 13y ago
  That doesn't make sense. They are measuring countries, the EU is not a country. In theory the USA could join the EU. The point is to measure how government policy affects education.
  - Jach 13y ago
    Yet another reason to break down the US into States, where local policies dominate. I glanced at the 466 page report for this and couldn't grep a US state... Someone should sell the OECD on an OLAP system so they can easily find this stuff out and publish it. (Or even let journalists and/or the public have direct access...)
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - trailfox 13y ago
      Local policies also affect other countries. Different provinces, different cities, different schools, different policies...
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
It's interesting that American adults are ranking 17th in problem solving on these tests. Still, I wonder... how much bearing does a problem solving test question have on actual, modern day problems? George Carlin's thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE
rob_mccann 13y ago
Measured reading, maths & problem solving. What about, creativity, critical thinking and arts? Harder to quantify, but just as important.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  A decent test for problem solving will measure creativity and critical thinking. Synthesis isn't always particularly aesthetic, but it does generally involve quite some creativity.
DominikR 13y ago
The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the masses. Often it's just access to natural resources or the ability to get access by force. (otherwise I would have to assume that neolithic societies like those we find in Saudi Arabia or Qatar would have one of the best educated populations out there) As long as the US is able to sustain its military apparatus and educate the top 1% well enough so they can innovate on technology they'll do fine. It's not as if no one knew that US education for the masses is average at best, but it didn't matter in the last decades, and it probably wont matter in the future.
- ig1 13y ago
  You realize that the majority of Engineering Phds in the US are foreign born ? - the US heavily relies on being able to attract international talent to maintain its advantage.
  - DominikR 13y ago
    This doesn't contradict my statements, because I never denied that the US has one of the worlds best education for the top 1% which in turn makes it more desirable for foreign born students to study at MIT or Stanford. Edit: And yes, you'll have more innovation if you can attract the brightest students, no matter in which country they happen to be born in.
  - vixen99 13y ago
    "Its advantage". You (not ig1) can get away with this if you're a typical HN reader but ignoring the rules of grammar is not advised for those alluded to in the article. Mistakes like that are likely to merely compound your problems. Sadly the rather smart folk who evidently inhabit these columns (and are meticulous when instructing their computers) sometimes don't set good examples for you. They really should, should they not?
- aleh 13y ago
  Strength does not equal resilience. As long as the prosperity is based on top 10% performers (whether educated workforce or economy sector) the system is inherently unstable.The price of natural resources can drop, highly educated people can easily migrate. Consider how much time it took for Detroit to degrade once auto industry shrunk and it became 'uncool' place to live.
stuaxo 13y ago
It would be interesting to see that list, against the amount each govt spends on health, education etc...
Deestan 13y ago
> It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either. That's not a twist. It's the exact same statement just 10 years later.
jdimov 13y ago
This is only news if you live in America, I guess :) It's common knowledge around the rest of the world. In fact, it has become somewhat of a defining characteristic of what it means to be american.
dwaltrip 13y ago
It would be nice if they explained how "scoring below average" results in "an underclass that is basically unemployable". The absolute measurements are what matter most. Everything else is pride, folly, and excessive nationalism. Although I suppose healthy competition could occasionally help us move further along the right path.
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
Lately, I have noticed several US news publications referring to the Netherlands and Belgium as being situated in Northern Europe. That bugs me, they’re actually in Western Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Europe From Brussels to the nearest Scandinavian country, Denmark, is a 10 hour drive. Here’s the paragraph I’m referring to: “But in the northern European countries that have fared better, the picture was brighter — and the study credits continuing education. In Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, more than 60 percent of adults took part in either job training or continuing education.” (I’ll refrain from making the obvious jokes about Americans being bad at general geography.)
- BlobbleBlab 13y ago
  It is absolutely wrong, ignorant and probably fascist to include Belgium and the Netherlands in the same geographic subdivision. The line between Northern and Southern Europe is somewhere between Rotterdam and Antwerp. Belgium is on the northern outskirts of the Mediterranean region.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    I understand it was an attempt at humor, but there is no line that divides Northern and Southern Europe. Western Europe is in between both (like Central America is in between North and South America). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_subregion_map_UN_geoschme.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_subregion_map_UN_ge... Also, ‘the Mediterranean’ is not the same as Southern Europe. For instance, France, Monaco, and Corsica are not part of Southern Europe, even though they are in the Mediterranean. Portugal is in Southern Europe, but it isn’t in the Mediterranean.
    - V-2 13y ago
      This post-Cold War classification is somewhat oversimplified.. The category of Central Europe (or Middle Europe) is more helpful in understanding the divisions. Vide "The stolen West..." by Kundera, for example

35 points by Kilo-byte 13y ago

tzs 13y ago

> The findings were equally grim for many European countries — Italy and Spain, among the hardest hit by the recession and debt crisis, ranked at the bottom across generations. Unemployment is well over 25 percent in Spain and over 12 percent in Italy. Spain has drastically cut education spending, drawing student street protests. I'm not sure what they are getting at here. High unemployment, being hard hit by the recession and debt crisis, and recently cutting education would not affect adult reading, math, and problem solving skills, so I don't think they are offering those as an explanation for those countries doing poorly on these tests. Are they implying that because Spanish and Italian results are not as good as their neighbors they were not as capable as handling the recession and debt crisis, and so were hit harder?

pjmlp 13y ago
Where you would find money to spend on books, time to spend on reading, when all you care about is how to get money not to starve?
- icebraining 13y ago
  Yeah, but the recession is a fairly recent thing, while current adults received most of their education in the past decades.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Well speaking for Portugal, we have had education cuts since around 2000. Unless you live in big cities, there are also not that many libraries to go to, or the possibility to connect to the Internet in a workable manner. Sure, when one wants to learn, even with limited resources, they might try to. However, the majority just won't bother.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Yeah, I'm aware (fellow countryman here ;), but as far as I know Spain hasn't had our eternal crisis. In fact, I believe they had a decent surplus for a number of years.
      - rett12 13y ago
        The problem with Spain is that every time a new government is elected they decide to change the education system. And not for a better one. So there's no plan for the near future, and the investment of R&D is ridiculous and inefficient (half of the funds are never granted). The best of the best have to leave the country.
- forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
  "Where you would find money to spend on books, time to spend on reading, when all you care about is how to get money not to starve?" Oh man, I am from Spain. I believe you need to get out of your country for a while. There are few places in which I had seen more misery than in the US of America, India comes to mind. There some people live very well, the rest very bad. Spain is somewhat a socialist country, you are paid for not working, with lots of subsidies, like PER or paro, education and healthcare for the poor are free. Also lots of taxes. Spain exports food, there is plenty of it. If you are poor there are lots of rural places where you are given land free if you want to work it(as small villages get empty when population gets older). In Spain(and Italy) family is much more important than in the US, so it has a wide social net.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Maybe you need to travel more around in your own country. Not everyone has a family to fall on or gets the expected help from the social institutions. I travel regularly in Spain and am aware of such situations.
danmaz74 13y ago
I think what they imply is that a less prepared population leads to worse economic results (especially during a recession). Recent cuts for sure don't affect current scores, but they are an indication that things aren't likely to improve in the future - they could even get worse. I'll add that a less acculturated population doesn't just offer a worse workforce, but is also likely to choose a worse political class. This is very visible here in Italy.

w3dt 13y ago

This isn't surprising since in US, you get what you pay for. In Sweden for example everyone gets the same treatment in school, healthcare etc. Sure would you only count the top 1% Sweden would probably fall below US. But without that the rest of the 99% gets an higher rate.

bjrnjs 13y ago
Well, that's not completely true. In Sweden we have private schools just as they do in the US.

onion2k 13y ago

Was the test in Japanese? That would explain the results. :)

BlobbleBlab 13y ago

Quote from the article: "America's school kids have historically scored low on international assessment tests compared to other countries, which is often blamed on the diversity of the population and the high number of immigrants." America's diversity is a creation myth. Outside of New York, it isn't very diverse at all, and compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants. Or does the American definition of 'diversity' only refer to the number of black people? In that case, blaming their numbers for lower test scores is kind of ... racist, isn't it?

jeltz 13y ago
> compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants. This is true. America has an immigrant population of about the same size as Germany or Sweden (at about 12-13% of the population). > Or does the American definition of 'diversity' only refer to the number of black people? In that case, blaming their numbers for lower test scores is kind of ... racist, isn't it? I believe that is the main demographic difference between western Europe and America. We do not have a large population of former salves who historically have suffered heavy discrimination. Pointing out the results of historical (and current) racism is not racist.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  It is racist if the meaning is "we'd be scoring fine if it wasn't for them dragging us down with their genetic inferiority about which nothing can be done" rather than taken as a reason for improving schooling for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged.
ubernostrum 13y ago
and compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants. I suppose if you mean "people who've immigrated within the past two generations". Because, um, historically the US is where Western Europeans immigrated to.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago

hacknat 13y ago

Sigh Yet another US Education hit piece. I love reading these because they all have the same myopic trope: 1. Other countries score better on subject tests than the US on average. 2. This has traditionally been blamed on the USA's high diversity and immigrant population. 3. Cue policy expert giving us a dire warning about how there are no politically tenable solutions to the US education crisis. 4. Cue 2nd policy expert talking about how devastating the skills gap will be on the economy. Can someone give us a different angle?

RyanZAG 13y ago
I get that it makes you uncomfortable, but it feels like you're asking for someone to give you the ability to stick your head in the sand and excuse the problem. The problem is real and will likely manifest itself dramatically over the next century.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Your parent is unhappy with these articles because they are basically doomsday proclamations. "Uncomfortable" doesn't even enter into it, because the message is simply "welp, we're fucked". That's why new angles would be interesting.
  - furyg3 13y ago
    But other countries aren't fucked. They did well on the test, so why can't the solution be to do what those other countries are doing? Flanders and Australia are every bit as 'incomparable' as Finland and the US, so let's just compare anyway. It turns out there are major consequences for income inequality, and most of the countries listed in the top categories have worked aggressively to reduce it and to alleviate it's consequences through social programs.
    - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      What those other countries are doing is not having many Africans. But this is not a problem, and would be difficult to fix even if it were. Income inequality is a major goal of American politics. The poverty oligarchs farm the poor for votes. This will continue for as long as Americans practice the perversion known as democracy.

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

I don't live in US, but I think it's not very fair to measure US with separate countries. It would make more sense to measure separate states. Because if you take EU as a whole you would get worse result too.

sliverstorm 13y ago
No one is particularly interested in "fair". Fair doesn't generate clicks.
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  The OECD isn't interested in clicks. Not everything in the world is powered by banners.
nextw33k 13y ago
That doesn't make sense. They are measuring countries, the EU is not a country. In theory the USA could join the EU. The point is to measure how government policy affects education.
- Jach 13y ago
  Yet another reason to break down the US into States, where local policies dominate. I glanced at the 466 page report for this and couldn't grep a US state... Someone should sell the OECD on an OLAP system so they can easily find this stuff out and publish it. (Or even let journalists and/or the public have direct access...)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - trailfox 13y ago
    Local policies also affect other countries. Different provinces, different cities, different schools, different policies...

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

It's interesting that American adults are ranking 17th in problem solving on these tests. Still, I wonder... how much bearing does a problem solving test question have on actual, modern day problems? George Carlin's thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE

rob_mccann 13y ago

Measured reading, maths & problem solving. What about, creativity, critical thinking and arts? Harder to quantify, but just as important.

maxerickson 13y ago
A decent test for problem solving will measure creativity and critical thinking. Synthesis isn't always particularly aesthetic, but it does generally involve quite some creativity.

DominikR 13y ago

The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the masses. Often it's just access to natural resources or the ability to get access by force. (otherwise I would have to assume that neolithic societies like those we find in Saudi Arabia or Qatar would have one of the best educated populations out there) As long as the US is able to sustain its military apparatus and educate the top 1% well enough so they can innovate on technology they'll do fine. It's not as if no one knew that US education for the masses is average at best, but it didn't matter in the last decades, and it probably wont matter in the future.

ig1 13y ago
You realize that the majority of Engineering Phds in the US are foreign born ? - the US heavily relies on being able to attract international talent to maintain its advantage.
- DominikR 13y ago
  This doesn't contradict my statements, because I never denied that the US has one of the worlds best education for the top 1% which in turn makes it more desirable for foreign born students to study at MIT or Stanford. Edit: And yes, you'll have more innovation if you can attract the brightest students, no matter in which country they happen to be born in.
- vixen99 13y ago
  "Its advantage". You (not ig1) can get away with this if you're a typical HN reader but ignoring the rules of grammar is not advised for those alluded to in the article. Mistakes like that are likely to merely compound your problems. Sadly the rather smart folk who evidently inhabit these columns (and are meticulous when instructing their computers) sometimes don't set good examples for you. They really should, should they not?
aleh 13y ago
Strength does not equal resilience. As long as the prosperity is based on top 10% performers (whether educated workforce or economy sector) the system is inherently unstable.The price of natural resources can drop, highly educated people can easily migrate. Consider how much time it took for Detroit to degrade once auto industry shrunk and it became 'uncool' place to live.

stuaxo 13y ago

It would be interesting to see that list, against the amount each govt spends on health, education etc...

Deestan 13y ago

> It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either. That's not a twist. It's the exact same statement just 10 years later.

jdimov 13y ago

This is only news if you live in America, I guess :) It's common knowledge around the rest of the world. In fact, it has become somewhat of a defining characteristic of what it means to be american.

dwaltrip 13y ago

It would be nice if they explained how "scoring below average" results in "an underclass that is basically unemployable". The absolute measurements are what matter most. Everything else is pride, folly, and excessive nationalism. Although I suppose healthy competition could occasionally help us move further along the right path.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

Lately, I have noticed several US news publications referring to the Netherlands and Belgium as being situated in Northern Europe. That bugs me, they’re actually in Western Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Europe From Brussels to the nearest Scandinavian country, Denmark, is a 10 hour drive. Here’s the paragraph I’m referring to: “But in the northern European countries that have fared better, the picture was brighter — and the study credits continuing education. In Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, more than 60 percent of adults took part in either job training or continuing education.” (I’ll refrain from making the obvious jokes about Americans being bad at general geography.)

BlobbleBlab 13y ago
It is absolutely wrong, ignorant and probably fascist to include Belgium and the Netherlands in the same geographic subdivision. The line between Northern and Southern Europe is somewhere between Rotterdam and Antwerp. Belgium is on the northern outskirts of the Mediterranean region.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  I understand it was an attempt at humor, but there is no line that divides Northern and Southern Europe. Western Europe is in between both (like Central America is in between North and South America). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_subregion_map_UN_geoschme.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_subregion_map_UN_ge... Also, ‘the Mediterranean’ is not the same as Southern Europe. For instance, France, Monaco, and Corsica are not part of Southern Europe, even though they are in the Mediterranean. Portugal is in Southern Europe, but it isn’t in the Mediterranean.
  - V-2 13y ago
    This post-Cold War classification is somewhat oversimplified.. The category of Central Europe (or Middle Europe) is more helpful in understanding the divisions. Vide "The stolen West..." by Kundera, for example