The Smartest Kids in the World

by Amanda Ripley

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  notes

  prologue: the mystery

  Crap: Ripley, “Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge.”

  Kimball Elementary School: Ripley, “What Makes a Great Teacher?” Unemployment rate for Ward 7 come
s from the D.C. Strategic Workforce Investment Plan.

  Dance of the Nations: The graphic, updated in July 2012 for this book, was also scheduled to appear in Hanushek and Woessmann’s forthcoming book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations.

  American kids were better off: OECD, PISA 2009 Results (Vol. II), Table II.1.1, 152.

  Eighteenth in math: The PISA test, the most sophisticated international test of teenagers’ critical thinking skills, is administered by the OECD. For this book, I relied primarily, though not exclusively, on PISA data. In an effort to be fair and consistent, I did not include non-countries (i.e. Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Macao-China) when I derived rankings from PISA data.

  Also, I considered countries with exactly the same average PISA score to occupy the same ranking. (In other words, since the most affluent kids in Australia and Germany had the same mean math score, I considered both countries to rank about tenth in the world, not tenth and eleventh.)

  The PISA test does not collect data on parental income per se, partly because students do not generally know how much money their parents earn. The test does however measure socioeconomic status by asking students about their parents’ education levels, occupations, and the number of books and computers in their home, and so on. Their answers make up something that the OECD calls the index of students’ economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS). Students’ answers to these kinds of questions tend to be surprisingly accurate—and the results can better predict educational success than income alone.

  This index reveals that American kids who rank in the top quartile on the ESCS index ranked eighteenth in math in 2009 compared to kids in the top quartile around the world (see U.S. Department of Education, Table B.1.71 at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/tables/B_1_71.asp).

  In 2003, when math was the primary focus of the PISA test (which has a different subject-matter emphasis every three years), America’s most advantaged kids ranked twenty-first. (See U.S. Department of Education, Table B.1.70 at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/tables/B_1_70.asp).

  Outside a handful of researchers at the OECD and the U.S. Department of Education, few people seem to have noticed this index, possibly because it was so hard to find. Instead, various education bloggers and commentators have seized on another, more readily available breakdown of scores. That data shows how different schools’ students did on PISA within the United States, broken down by the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch at those schools. Nothing wrong with that. And, indeed, that data, included in a U.S. Department of Education publication, shows that U.S. schools with very few low-income kids performed very well on PISA compared to U.S. schools with high numbers of low-income kids. It is a useful way to compare schools within the United States

  However, these same bloggers concluded that kids in affluent American schools performed better than all kids in Finland or other top-performing countries. Education pundit and New York University research scientist Diane Ravitch has repeatedly made this claim—on television and in print. “If you look at the latest international test scores, our schools that are low-poverty schools are number one in the world,” Ravitch said at the 2011 Save our Schools rally on the National Mall. “They’re ahead of Finland! They’re ahead of Korea. Number one. The schools that are less than 10 percent poor and the schools that are 25 percent poverty are equal to the schools of Finland and Korea, the world leaders. Our problem is poverty, not our schools.”

  That is nonsense. Other countries do not have data on which students would qualify for free or reduced-price lunch under U.S. regulations; that is an American policy with American definitions. This breakdown of PISA scores came from a survey of principals conducted in the United States only. The OECD does not collect comparable data from principals in any other country. So we cannot use the free-lunch data to compare different countries’ results.

  For example, Finland has less than 5 percent child poverty using one standard definition of poverty (i.e., the percentage of people earning less than 50 percent of the median income for Finland). That definition of poverty is totally different and unrelated to the criteria used to qualify kids for free or reduced-price lunch in the United States (i.e., parents earning less than 185 percent of the U.S. poverty level).

  The bottom line: The only existing way to compare how kids at different income levels do on PISA is to use PISA’s own index of socioeconomic status. That is the data I have cited here and throughout the book. That data does not show that low-poverty U.S. schools rank number one in much, unfortunately, except perhaps spending per student.

  Beverly Hills: Greene and McGee, “When the Best Is Mediocre.”

  Research and development: National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators. The United States still invests more money in absolute dollars than any other nation in research and development. It’s worth nothing, however, that the U.S. rate as a portion of GDP now falls below several other education superpowers, including Finland and Korea.

  The world had changed: Author interviews with Craig Barrett, former Chair and CEO of Intel, March 27, 2012; Sir James Dyson, founder of the Dyson Company, June 1, 2011; Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, August 18, 2010; Sir John Rose, former CEO of Rolls-Royce, December 5, 2011; executives at Adecco, a global staffing and recruiting agency, December 14, 2011; as well as economists, public officials, and other business leaders around the world.

  Apple pies: Author interviews with Paula Marshall, CEO of the Bama Companies, on November 9, 2011, and Shelly Holden, vice president of people systems at the Bama Companies, on December 16, 2011.

  Manpower: Joerres, Atlantic panel. “The bar has risen,” Joerres said. “Salespeople are the hardest to find—not because people don’t want to do it. Companies have changed the entire definition of what it means to sell.”

  Twenty countries: High-school graduation rates for 2009 come from OECD, Education at a Glance 2011, Table A2.1.

  Norway: Child poverty rates come from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) analysis of poverty around the world. Children are considered poor if they live in a household earning less than 50 percent the median household income in their country of residence. Scientific literacy scores come from OECD, PISA 2009 Results (Vol. I). Norway’s average scale score was 500 compared to the US score of 502.

  President Barack Obama: In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama applauded South Korean teachers’ reputation as “nation builders.” He spoke admiringly of Korean parents in 2009 remarks for the “Education to Innovate” campaign.

  Survey: This survey, conducted in collaboration with AFS in the spring of 2012, included 202 former exchange students from fifteen countries. Marie Lawrence from the New America Foundation helped design and administer the survey and analyze the results. A detailed summary of the methodology and results can be found in the appendix.

  chapter 1: the treasure map

  Andreas Schleicher: Details about the history of PISA come from many interviews with Andreas Schleicher, in-person, on the phone, and via email and Skype, between 2010 and 2012; interviews with Thomas Alexander; and archived newspaper clips from around the world. More details about Schleicher can be found in Ripley, “The World’s Schoolmaster.”

  A third of a million teenagers: OECD, Messages from PISA 2000. The coin question comes from the OECD’s PISA Released Items.

  Other international tests: There are other tests besides PISA, each of which provides valuable data in its own right; for the purposes of this book, I was most interested in which countries prepared students to think, learn, and thrive in the modern economy. PISA was designed with this purpose in mind. The OECD’s 1999 report, Measuring Student Knowledge and Skills, describes the difference between PISA and other international tests this way:

  “The knowledge and skills tested . . . are defined not primarily in terms of . . . national school curricula but in terms of what skills are deemed to be essential for future life. This is the most fundamental and ambitious nov
el feature of OECD/PISA. . . . PISA examines the degree of preparedness of young people for adult life and, to some extent, the effectiveness of education systems. Its ambition is to assess achievement in relation to the underlying objectives (as defined by society) of education systems, not in relation to the teaching and learning of a body of knowledge. Such authentic outcome measures are needed if schools and education systems are to be encouraged to focus on modern challenges.”

  “We were looking for the ability to think creatively:” Taylor, “Finns Win, but Australian Students Are a Class Act.”

  The education minister strode into the room: Author interview with Jouni Välijärvi, professor at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, on May 13, 2011. Välijärvi attended the Helsinki press conference and was interviewed on television afterward.

  “A tragedy for German education:” “Bildungsstudie - Durchweg schlechte Noten,” FOCUS, and Bracey, “Another Nation at Risk.”

  Others blamed video games: Heckmann, “Schlechte Schüler wegen schlecht gebildeter Lehrer?”

  A gulf of more than ninety points: The data on the performance of affluent and less-affluent teenagers in the United States and around the world on the 2000 PISA is from Figure 6.1 on page 141 of the OECD report, “Knowledge and Skills for Life.”

  “Average is not good enough:” Paige, “U.S. Students Average among International Peers.”

  Immigrants could not be blamed: OECD, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, 29.

  Private school: Compared to many other countries, the United States does not have a large proportion of students in private school. However, the PISA sample for the United States does include private-school students. OECD, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, 47.

  Money did not lead to more learning: OECD, Strong Performers, 28.

  “And he tells me the truth:” Author interview of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, March 21, 2011.

  “The most important man in English education:” Gove, “The Benchmark for Excellence.”