Chinese Students are now the Smartest in the World
It appears that America isn’t so great when it comes to the education of our children. Chinese students are now the smartest in the world, at least according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD is an international organization made up of 36 countries that was founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. For the past 20 years they’ve been administering a triennial test to 15 year-old students across the world known as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). More on why an economics organization like OECD is closely following education to come.
The PISA assesses students’ performance in the subjects of mathematics, science, and reading. It is a widely accepted tracker of how well countries are preparing their students for the future. The latest test results revealed that China is far ahead of the pack—in all three subjects. Following China in all three subjects as well is Singapore. The PISA takes into account the socioeconomic status of the student and has consistently found this factor to directly predict scores, most notably reading. What’s astonishing is that the 10% most disadvantaged Chinese students outscored the OECD average in reading. On the other hand, the United States scored slightly above average in reading and science and below average in mathematics.
What I particularly like about OECD is that they’re continuing to modify the PISA to not simply reflect knowledge of subjects, but also education beyond traditional academics. In the latest test, they assessed global competency, asking students to express how they relate to others and what they think of their lives and their future. They plan to assess creative thinking when they administer their next test in 2021. PISA has found some concerning results regarding their questions on students’ sense of belonging and life satisfaction. I’ll summarize them here:
Only two-thirds of students reported being satisfied with their lives
Life satisfaction scores dropped 5 points between 2015 and 2018 tests
A quarter of students report being bullied a few times a month
6% of students report always feeling sad
Girls constantly express greater fear of failure than boys
As previously mentioned, international organizations have taken a keen interest in monitoring global education. This is largely due to student success being predictive of a country’s economic growth in the future. In fact, countries with a greater portion of their population attending and graduating from schools see faster economic growth than countries with less-educated workers. Many countries have placed greater emphasis on developing an education system that can produce workers able to function in new industries, such as science and technology. In conclusion, the education and training of a country's workforce is a major factor in determining how well the country's economy will perform.
I really wish I could follow this gloomy narrative up with something to be hopeful about, but it’s difficult to argue that significant positive change in America’s public education is coming anytime soon. Simply run an internet search on “United States public education” and I bet the majority of articles you find are negative. In my personal opinion, the best way for the majority of us to positively influence the system is with our votes, our dollars, and out time. I also believe that keeping the public “educated on education” will be key in maintaining focus on this important crisis and fostering positive change sooner than later.