A report recently published by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that United States schools may not be trailing behind those of other countries as much as previous studies have suggested.
The report was authored in part by professor of education Martin Carnoy, an economist specializing in education who has been a professor at Stanford for more than 40 years. The report analyzes international results of two assessments, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). It focuses on the usefulness, or lack thereof, of common metrics used to compare the U.S. with other countries in order to make conclusions about the relative statuses of international education systems.
“This report is essentially a continuation of an earlier report, which analyzed the results of the PISA and TIMSS tests in the U.S.,” Carnoy said. “But this time, we focused heavily on individual states. Our main idea is that the U.S. as an educational system doesn’t really exist; it’s really at least 51 separate systems [including each state and the District of Columbia].”
Carnoy emphasized that comparing average test scores across countries ignores students’ family backgrounds; in other words, test scores might not provide an accurate measure of the quality of education.
“The test scores themselves measure an aggregate of a lot of effects: family background, inequality of schooling and extracurricular commitments,” Carnoy said.
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