Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School

4. U.S. Advanced Performance in Global Perspective

47 To remain competitive in the global economy, we must . . . commit to an ambitious national agenda for education. —Bill Gates, 2007 Public discourse tends to focus on the need, particularly among disadvantaged students, to reach basic levels of achievement. That focus has been evident since the passage of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, when special attention to the needs of low performers was reinforced by concentrating federal funding on schools with high percentages of students who were economically disadvantaged. That focus continued in 2002 when the law, relabeled No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required that all students be brought up to a minimum level of proficiency. As welcome as the focus of the federal legislation may have been, we clearly cannot neglect the need to lift more students to especially high levels of educational Chapter Four U.S. AdvAnced PerformAnce in GlobAl PerSPective 13291-04_CH04_3rdPgs.indd 47 6/6/13 10:44 AM 48 u.S. advanCed perFormanCe in Global perSpeCtive accomplishment. In 2006 the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education Coalition was formed to “raise awareness in Congress, the Administration, and other organizations about the critical role that STEM education plays in enabling the United States to remain the economic and technological leader of the global marketplace for the twenty-first century .”1 In the words of the National Academy of Sciences report that jump-started the coalition’s formation, the nation needs to “increase” its “talent pool by improving K–12 science and mathematics education.”2 The U.S. position as the “world’s innovator” almost certainly rests heavily on the talents of our most highly skilled citizenry. We think of the advanced students as the pool from which our future scientists and engineers will come. Although some researchers say there is no shortage of technically skilled workers and expect the demand for them to decline, we think that misunderstands the dynamic and interactive nature of the American economy, which is increasingly based on innovation and entrepreneurship rather than manufacturing.3 As Bill Gates, chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, has put it, “We must demand strong schools so that young Americans enter the workforce with the math, science and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in the knowledge economy. . . . To remain competitive in the global economy, we must . . . commit to an ambitious national agenda for education.”4 In short, the United States cannot afford to neglect the performance of any of its students. High achievement by the most talented is no less important than raising the performance of lowachieving students, and improvements at the ends of the spectrum reinforce each other. Progress in both areas can accelerate growth in productivity.5 Advanced math Performance of the class of 2011 Unfortunately, the percentage of students in the U.S. class of 2011 who were highly accomplished is well below that of most 13291-04_CH04_3rdPgs.indd 48 6/6/13 10:44 AM 49 u.S. advanCed perFormanCe in Global perSpeCtive countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No less than twenty-nine of the sixty-four other countries that participated in the PISA math test had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level. While just 7 percent of U.S. students performed at or above the advanced level, 44 percent of students in Shanghai and 30 percent of students in Singapore did. Figure 4-1 shows these results as well as the relative rank internationally of each U.S. state. Several other countries also did dramatically better than the United States. At least 19 percent of students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Switzerland were highly accomplished. Eleven additional countries had more than 10 percent of highly accomplished students. In order of math excellence, they are Japan, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Macao-China, Liechtenstein, Australia, and Slovenia. The remaining countries that educate to a high level of accomplishment a higher proportion of their students than the United States are Iceland, France, Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, and Norway. This twenty-nine-country list includes virtually all the advanced industrialized countries of the world, most of which are members of the OECD. The only current members of the OECD that produce a smaller percentage of advanced math students than the United States are the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Turkey...