As the current U.S. presidency seeks to shutter the U.S. department of education, I keep seeing a common argument appear in support of their decisions. It goes something like this, “When the U.S. department of Education was first formed in 1979 the U.S. was first in the world in education and now we’re at or near the bottom.” The goal of this article is to examine that claim. In short, what evidence is there that the U.S. was first or near the top in education in the world at one point and what evidence is there that the U.S. has since fallen from intellectual superiority?
Here’s a link to the full paper with data from international tests.
tl;dr
In case you just want the results and do not want to bother with reading the article, here’s a high-level summary of how the US has fared in international test results since the inception of such tests in the 1960s.
Math: Results from international tests show that U.S. students performed at or near the bottom in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 1995, US students have scored slightly above (TIMSS) or below (PISA) the international median, depending which test you use.
Science: Results from international tests show that U.S. students performed in the bottom half of international comparisons in the 1960s and 70s. They have mostly maintained their place in the middle of the pack since then, increasing their ranking following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reading: US students have performed in the top quartile of international test takers or slightly above the mean, depending on which international test they take. Its ranking increased after the pandemic even though their scores stayed the same.
