Once per year, America goes through cultural spasms over international standardized tests. One group says only more money for government union employees will fix it while another claims young people are just dumber today while another claims that only dismantling education will restore America to its former glory.
They all claim they are being critical because they care; "it's for the children."
It really isn't, it is just politics.
Sorry Boomers, you didn't lead the world in standardized tests. Neither did you, Gen X. Standardized tests were not your thing either, Millennials.
They undermine their own argument that vague beliefs about culture impact educational performance here - and later on that there is a sex or gender gap. Mostly because the countries with the fewest difference don't make a distinction.
Gen Z isn't dumber or lazier, America has never led the world in standardized tests. Where we do lead is where it counts; in science output, in adult science literacy, in Nobel prizes, in technology. (1)
American kids don't do well on standardized tests because unlike Finland or Singapore or a lot of other countries in Asia, we don't 'teach to the test.' The only part of government that does teach to the test is the US military; they will make sure every soldier passes unless they are truly lacking in basic comprehension.
And if a French agency adds in their own "secret sauce" like subjective beliefs about disparities in economic, social and cultural status, countries who report the least, like China or Singapore, are going to look better than democracies.
In China, teachers are poorly paid and clean their own bathrooms. American education unions leave that out when they endorse more government control in the US. In Finland, teaching is prestigious, because it is also a meritocracy. Finland is conservative in their approach. The US education system is dominated by unions, they may want to use test scores in Asia with one outlier elsewhere, Estonia(!) to demand more teachers while ignoring that pedagogical culture in many countries is just the opposite.
Or that none of them actually lead in science.
Texas alone has four more world-class universities than the entire country of France. It is certainly the case that American education spends too much time doing social justice good works, and therefore leave a lot of educational messages for colleges to clean up, but clean it up they do.
That is what matters. Not standardized test scores against countries that teach kids by rote but who have very little creativity when it comes to science and technology, whereas American kids who are taught 'how to think' become adults and make 33 percent of the world's breakthroughs despite our country only having 5 percent of the population.
NOTE:
(1) All of that in spite of government tinkering, like President Obama dismantling a very good No Child Left Behind program so he could do to education what he did to space; remove the name of a Republican predecessor and replace it with something that had his brand. Why anyone would want their name on Common Core today is a mystery. Or the disastrous Affordable Care Act.
