US 'In Denial' Over Poor Maths Standards

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20 May 2014 Last updated at 23:18 GMT
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US 'in denial' over poor maths

standards
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education correspondent
BBC Business Live

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The maths skills of teenagers in parts of the deep south of

the United States are worse than in countries such as
Turkey and barely above countries such as Chile and
Mexico.
An international study of maths ability in the US shows how individual
states would have performed if they were ranked against other countries,
using the OECD's Pisa results as a benchmark.
The study also shows that privileged youngsters in the US, with
highly-educated parents, are lagging behind similar
youngsters in other developed countries.
This analysis, from academics at Harvard and Stanford in the US and
Munich University in Germany, punctures the idea that middle-class US
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pupils are high achievers.

Southern states Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are among the
weakest performers, with results similar to developing countries such as
Kazakhstan and Thailand.
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West Virginia is also among the group of lowest performers, where maths
levels are far below western European countries or high-performing Asian
education systems in South Korea or Singapore.
The US has been a mediocre performer in international education tests,
based on average performance across the country, but this study shows
how this average conceals a remarkably wide range of successes and
failures.
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There is a band of high achieving states across the north of the US,
where maths results would be as good as many successful European
and Asian countries.
US 'in denial' over poor maths

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There is a complacency about mainstream US education standards, says

study
If Massachusetts had been considered as a separate entity it would have

been the seventh best at maths in the world.
Minnesota, Vermont, New Jersey and Montana are all high performers.
But there is a long tail of underachievement that dips well below the
levels of secondary school pupils in wealthier western European
countries. It dips into levels closer to the developing world.
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New York and California are similar in ability to countries such as

Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, well below the averages for the US and
OECD industrialised countries.
There are 23 US states which would be ranked below 30th place in an
international ranking of 34 OECD countries at maths.
The study also overturns the idea that middle-class children in the US are
as good as their international counterparts.
It shows that in the US, as in other countries, children from better
educated, wealthier families will achieve better results than poorer
children.
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Among children of parents with a low level of education, only 17% were
proficient in maths, compared with 43% of children from well-educated
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But this standard of maths among well-educated families in US is well

below their counterparts in other countries.
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In Poland, 71% of children from well-educated families were likely to be

proficient in maths. In Germany, 64% of better-off children were proficient
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Even such a poor performance was unlikely to set off alarm bells, said
Paul Peterson, report co-author and professor of government at Harvard
University and director of the Program on Education Policy and
Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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"There is a denial phenomenon," says Prof Peterson.
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He said the tendency to make internal comparisons between different

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much they are being overtaken by international rivals.
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"The American public has been trained to think about white versus
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There is a
denial
phenomenon
The outcome was a misleading sense of complacency about middle-class

education, which always appeared to be ahead, he said.
Paul E Peterson
Report authors, Prof Peterson, Eric Hanushek at Stanford University and

Ludger Woessmann at the University of Munich, wrote in Education Next
magazine: "Lacking good information, it has been easy even for
sophisticated Americans to be seduced by apologists who would have the
public believe the problems are simply those of poor kids in central city
schools. "
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"Our results point in quite the opposite direction," .
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The underachievement in some southern states was a reflection of deeprooted historical divides and disadvantages, Prof Peterson said, such as
slavery and segregation.
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Massachusetts has high results by international standards
But the study raises questions about how other southern states can buck
the trend, such as Texas.
Among the children of poorly educated families, Texas is a spectacularly
strong performer, equivalent to sixth place in the OECD rankings, just
behind Finland.
California raised another set of negative questions, said Prof Peterson,
with a very low performance.
"California was historically thought to have a good education system, but
it's plunged since the 1970s," he said.
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It has an economy big enough to match many OECD countries, but in

education comparisons it would be a lightweight, its maths performance
weaker than in almost any other industrialised country.
"It's where the rubber hits the road," said Prof Peterson.
There were long-term implications from all this, he said. Industries were
concentrating around areas with successful education systems. And
success in education was linked to healthier and wealthier lives for
individuals.
Rebecca Winthrop, director for the Center for Universal Education at the
Brookings Institution, said the findings would "raise eyebrows". In
particular, she thought it would be a wake-up call for well-educated
parents who thought that worries about education were a problem for
"other people's children".
But she said it was important to remember the great size of the country and that even getting down to state level there were still huge underlying
disparities and inequalities.
"California is in itself a huge place," she said. And any aggregate results
are going to hide the gulf between schools serving the Silicon Valley
super rich and the migrant poor.
Andreas Schleicher, responsible for the OECD's Pisa tests, said this
study was a challenge to middle-class households who thought that
debates about school standards did not apply to them.
"The general perception has typically been that this is mainly a concern
around poor schools in poor neighbourhoods and so middle-class families
have often not been particularly engaged in this," he said.
In the short term, he said, the US economy would be insulated against
this underachievement because it still had a "strong skill base, simply
because it was the first economy investing in universal education in the
1960s, and those people still make up a large part of the workforce".
But this legacy would not last forever.
"As time goes by, skill gaps will become increasingly apparent," he said.
The report authors conclude that as well as focusing on the gap between
rich and poor, the US needs to pay more attention to the rear lights of
their international rivals as they race away ahead of them.
Maths standards
How US states would compare with OECD member
states in maths tests
1. South Korea
2. Japan
3. Switzerland
4. Netherlands
5. Finland
6. Estonia
Massachusetts
7. Canada
8. Belgium
9. Germany
10. Poland
Minnesota
New Jersey
11. Austria
Vermont
Montana
12 Australia
13. Czech Republic
14. Ireland
New Hampshire
Colorado
15. New Zealand
16. Slovenia
17. Denmark
North Dakota
18. France
South Dakota
19. United Kingdom
Wisconsin
Kansas
20. Iceland
Washington
Maryland
21. Luxembourg
Texas
Virginia
22. Norway
Ohio
Pennsylvania
23. Portugal
Maine
Wyoming
24. Italy
25. Slovak Republic
North Carolina
26. Spain
Idaho
Alaska
Utah
27. United States
28. Sweden
Indiana
Rhode Island
Iowa
29. Israel
30. Hungary
Illinois
Nebraska
Oregon
Delaware
South Carolina
Missouri
Arizona
Michigan
Kentucky
New York
Hawaii
Arkansas
Nevada
Georgia
Florida
Oklahoma
California
31. Greece
Tennessee
New Mexico
32. Turkey
Louisiana
West Virginia
Alabama
Mississippi
33. Chile
34. Mexico
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20 May 2014 Last updated at 23:18 GMT