Desrtopa comments on Problems in Education - Less Wrong
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This post is popular not because it is accurate, but because it repeats the popular misconceptions about the US education system, and tells both left and right what they want to hear:
American students generally outperform their racial group in other countries. White Americans have higher PISA scores than any European country except statistical outlier Finland. Asian Americans beat every Asian country, and are second only to the wealthy, elite Chinese city of Shanghai (another statistical outlier).
Hispanic Americans are mostly Mexican-Americans, but outscore Mexico by a healthy 41 points. They are only 15 points behind Spain--and note that many Hispanic-Americans are recent immigrants and don't speak English as a first language (but had to take the test in English), while Spaniards take the test in Spanish.
African-Americans outperform Trinidad (Trinidad is a developed country with a high per capita GDP, and has a substantially African population, which makes them perhaps the most comparable group.)
This really seems to disconfirm both the liberal and conservative talking points. The US education system is not underfunded, as liberals say, nor is it underperforming, as conservatives say. It also is not correct that the US is systematically failing racial minorities due to institutionalized racism (as the OP claims).
The picture I have of the US education system is that there are a large number of smart, dedicated, people spending a lot of money trying get the best outcomes they can with the students they have to work with. This is all irreconcilable with the claims the OP makes.
Not so irreconcilable, if you don't suppose that "a lot" means "most."
The current average likelihood of a high school freshman in America making it to graduation is about 78%, and that's the best it's been in quite a while.
At the public high school I went to, it was a pretty big deal if a year passed where someone failed to graduate, and students would ask each other, not if they were planning to go to college, but what college they planned to go to. The only student I ever asked or heard asked that question who said they weren't planning to go to college, went to college. And not a two-year or community college, but a pretty decent state college.
That was a good high school, but it wasn't by any means renowned. With schools like that bringing up the national average, consider the state of the schools dragging down the national average.