COMPETITION SEEMS TO BE OF GREAT VALUE TO LEARNING

Saturday, October 4, 2003

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 30 developed countries, puts out an annual survey of educational statistics called ``Education at a Glance.'' Since the current ``glance,'' which mostly uses 2001 data, encompasses 450 pages, I am indebted to Chester Finn of the Fordham Foundation for his review of the survey in the latest Education Gadfly, the foundation's weekly e-mail newsletter (www.edexcellence .net/gadfly on the Web).

Finn highlights some of the more intriguing differences between the United States and other countries. His downbeat summary: ``America looks strikingly average on most measures of education performance and efficiency, including some where we once beat 'the competition.' ''

We're way above average, however, in how much we spend. Not the ideal cost-benefit combination

The OECD pegs the rate of high school graduation (at the typical age) at 72 percent for the United States. Note that's much closer to the pessimistic number calculated by researchers from the Manhattan Institute and elsewhere than to the excessively sunny official state figures, which give credit for late graduation or alternative credentials like the GED.

Of the 17 countries for which this figure is available, five -- Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan and Poland -- have graduation rates over 90 percent. Or -- to look at matters from the other end -- the United States has three times as many high school dropouts as any of these countries, and twice as many as France.

What's French for ``Would you like fries with that?''

The United States is fifth-highest among the 30 countries in the proportion of students going on to post-secondary education, at 39 percent. Ahead of it are Canada, Ireland, South Korea and Japan. Several other countries are within a point or two of the U.S. rate, and closing fast.

Spain, for instance, has gone from 16 percent to 36 percent in just 10 years.

Repeating what is by now a familiar pattern, American fourth-graders are somewhat above average in reading. But by age 15, they are just average. Indeed it could be that if dropouts were included, the results would be worse than that, given that the high U.S. dropout rate starts to bite around ninth grade.

American 15-year-olds are also just average at math and science. And the U.S. figures tend to be far more variable than elsewhere, with, for example, more very low scores (dropouts in the making, perhaps) and more very high scores. So not only do American students perform worse, relative to other countries, the longer they stay in school, but schooling amplifies rather than damps whatever class and demographic differences children bring with them when they start school.

But in how much it costs the United States to achieve these notably undistinguished results, we're way ahead.

At every level, the U.S. spends far more per student than the average OECD country (figures are converted using purchasing-power equivalents).

For preschool education the mean is $4,137 and at $7,980 the U.S. is second only to Norway. For primary education the mean is $4,381 and at $6,995 the U.S. is second only to Denmark. For secondary education, the mean is $5,957 and at $8,885 the U.S. is second only to Switzerland. For post-secondary, the mean is $9,571 and the U.S. is tops at $20,358, with only Switzerland even close.

You can quibble with the suspicious precision of these figures, of course, but the pattern is clear.

What costs so much? People. The United States has more employees in K-12 schools, 116 for each 1,000 children, than the OECD average, 99.5. But tellingly, a much smaller number of them are teachers, 62 of those 116 compared with 71 of 99.5. The comparison would look a little better if ancillary classroom personnel such as teacher aides were included, but in the absence of compelling evidence that aides improve performance, it is approriate not to include them in the teaching staff.

American student-teacher ratios are just about average, though some countries such as South Korea have much larger classes and still turn in superior performance. American teachers earn above-average salaries at every level of their careers, though not necessarily relative to other careers, nor as much as in some countries where high-school teachers earn substantially more than primary teachers do.

These statistics do not explain the causes of the problems plaguing American education -- though they do indicate rather clearly that spending more is unlikely to cure them. But Finn points out one plausible reason why other countries get better educational value for their money. Compared with countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Britain, the United States maintains a public-education monopoly. Only a tiny fraction, less than 1 percent, of public money spent on American K-12 education goes to private schools. Elsewhere, the OECD report says, the private sector is able ``to provide a wider range of learning opportunities without creating barriers to the participation of students from low-income families.''

Other countries, it appears, benefit because competition brings lower costs for better results. The United States needs a lot more of it.