Is the performance of American students as bad as most people believe it is? According to Gerald W. Bracey ("Why Can't They Be Like We Were?", Phi Delta Kappan, Oct. 1991), the "evidence overwhelmingly shows that American schools have never achieved more than they currently achieve. And some indicators show them performing better than ever."
There certainly is good news. American high schools are graduating a higher percentage and a more diverse group of students than ever before. Scores on commercial tests and on the National Assessment of Education Progress are about where they were 20 or 30 years ago, when students were more advantaged. And, while SAT scores, especially on the verbal portion, have declined over the past 20 years, some of that's because more students from the bottom half of their class are taking the test, and therefore challenging themselves, than ever before. Moreover, minority students' scores on all these tests have shot up. The American education system has a lot to be proud of.
But does performing as well as or somewhat better than we did 20 or 30 years ago, which wasn't great to begin with, mean that we really don't have a crisis in education? No, American students may look pretty good when they're measured against themselves, but when we look at the performance of students in our competitors' nations, our kids look very bad indeed.
This point is driven home forcefully in "National Tests: What Other Countries Expect Their Students to Know" (National Endowment for the Humanities, Wash., DC, 1991). As the NEH chair, Lynne V. Cheney, reminds us in the introduction, it's not enough to ask how well students are doing; we also need to know what kinds of tests they're taking and what the standards are. So let's compare what we expect our college-aspiring high-school students to know with what some other countries require.
The first thing to notice is that both the SAT and the ACT, one or the other of which the overwhelming number of American colleges require, "avoid testing for factual knowledge that a student might have acquired in the classroom." Of course, taking rigorous math and English courses helps enormously in doing well on these tests because they only assess math and verbal skills. But their real point is to assess aptitude, not achievement.
Other nations' college-entrance or high-school-leaving exams assess students' mastery and application of knowledge they studied in school. Aptitude surely helps, but achievement -- that is, hard work, diligence and effort in school and at homework -- is what counts.
Consider Japan's one-hour world history exam. Students are given short passages to read that have a number of underlined phrases they are questioned about. The test is multiple choice, but getting the answers right takes knowledge of criticisms against trade liberalization between England and France in the late-eighteenth century, for example -- with no clue in the passage.
French students write lengthy essays in such core subjects as history and geography and French and philosophy. For example, one of the questions in the four-hour history/geography exam provides a chronology of major events in "The Evolution of Domestic Policy in the Soviet Union from 1953 to Today" and asks students to develop an essay based on these events. The four-hour philosophy exam for students concentrating in math and science gives a choice of topics like: Is experimental result the test of scientific proof? Is it easy to be free?
German students take written and oral exams in four subjects that must cover three categories -- languages, literature and the arts; social sciences; and math, natural sciences and technology. A sample topic from the three-and-one-half hour general history exam concerns "The Weimar Republic and National Socialism: 1. Describe the political conflicts that took place at the national level between the proclamation of the republic and the opening of the constitutional assembly. 2. Determine Ebert's political convictions from Document D ... "
And what kinds of questions are American students asked? "Select the lettered pair that best expresses a relationship similar to that expressed in the original pair: YAWN: BOREDOM:: (A) dream: sleep (B) anger: madness (C) smile: amusement (D) face: expression (E) impatience: rebellion."
It's a mistake to think that only a small elite of Japanese, French or German students take the rigorous exams required for college or meet the high standards set for them. That was true in the past, but it isn't now. In Germany, 30 percent of the total high-school-age cohort pass the Abitur. In France, 67 percent of all 15-16 year olds were enrolled in college-track secondary schools in 1990; 50 percent took the college-entrance exams and 38.5 percent passed. In 1982, the last date for which I have figures, 36 percent of Japanese students passed the college-entrance exams; the number now is probably higher.
America still leads the world in the percentage of high-school students going on to college, 50 percent, and in the diversity of those students. We're rightly proud of that. But when we compare what our college-bound students, who are supposed to be our best students, know and are able to do with what our competitors' best students can achieve, the experience is very humbling. We have lots of warm bodies attending college, but very few well-prepared minds.