ANOTHER GOLDEN AGE MYTH DEBUNKED

(h/t Liz Dwyer at Good Education)

The Brookings Institution has published the latest Brown Center report on American education and it clearly debunks one myth:

Myth #1. The United States once led the world on international tests.
Many Americans believe that students in the United States ranked number one in the world on international tests several decades ago and that after years of bad policies fell to the bottom of the pack. Typical is a September 2010 story in Newsweek magazine, which states, “U.S. students, who once led the world, currently rank 21st in the world in science and 25th in math.”10 This is a myth. The United States never led the world. It was never number one and has never been close to number one on international math tests. Or on science tests, for that matter. For the sake of simplicity, let’s stick to math. It is more accurate to say that the United States has always trailed the world on math tests.

This chart shows that even in the supposed golden age of the early 60s, the U.S. was below average. NOTE: The numbers in this chart are Z-Scores. Z-Scores reflect the distance from the group mean. Thus a Z-score of 0.0 means the underlying score is equal to the mean, a z-score of 0.5 means that score is above the mean, and a z-score of -0.5 means the score is below the mean.  The units of measurement here are standard deviations.