So, the U.S. Is Terrible at International Tests: Who Cares?

December 03, 2013

By Jordan Weissmann

Americans have been botching tests like the PISA for 50 years. It hasn't held back our economy yet.

The results of yet another high-profile international exam have arrived, and U.S. students have once again turned in a decidedly ho hum performance. This time, it's the Programme for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA. Our 15-year-olds lagged in math, remained average in reading and science, and, on the whole, were thoroughly trounced by their peers in places like Shanghai, Japan, South Korea, and Finland.

Thus, an American tradition lives on. U.S. teens have tended to botch these sorts of tests ever since the 1960s, when they finished close to last in nearly every category on the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS). In the now-famous report "A Nation at Risk," a White House commission on education declared that our inability to outscore the likes of Japan had even become a threat to our economic well being and national security.

And that was in 1983. Which raises a question: If we've been so bad at these tests for so long, why worry now? In the last 30 years, our growth hasn't lagged other developed countries. Our allegedly underdeveloped American minds still managed to build the Internet. And hey, while we might trail the world in high school math, our quantitative geniuses on Wall Street still nearly managed to destroy the world with their elegant-but-flawed risk management models.

One answer comes from Eric Hanushek, a well-known education economist and school reform advocate at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution (you might have caught him in the documentary "Waiting for Superman"). He and his collaborators argue that test scores really do predict economic growth, since smarter countries are more innovative and productive countries, and can attract more international investment. If the United States were to raise our test scores to Canada's levels, they say, it could add $77 trillion to the economy over the next 80 years.

Those claims are based on a 2012 study (now a book) comparing test scores and growth across 50 countries from 1960 through 2009. During that time, Hanushek & Co. argue, America's economy over-performed it test results. But those days might be drawing to close:

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