What Is the Matter with America's Schools?

Abstract

For almost four decades, politicians, educational leaders, and researchers have complained about America’s standing in international comparisons of academic achievement and thus cast broad criticism of the quality of U.S. primary and secondary schooling. Such complaints ignore and fail to address the source of America’s poor international standing. Only one thing is the matter with academic achievement in America’s primary and secondary schools: the achievement gap between non-Hispanic whites or Asians and the nation’s two largest minority groups—non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics. Relative to other nations, the academic achievement of U.S. non-Hispanic whites and U.S. Asians is impressive. The fault here does not lie with minority youth, for we have the knowledge to address the achievement gap. The problem is political, not technical. By addressing the achievement gap in a serious and sustained way, our political and educational leaders could establish the United States as an international leader in academic achievement. First, I show that U.S. non-Hispanic whites and U.S. Asians have high test scores in reading, science, and mathematics relative to the highest scoring nations, both on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). That is, there is no global problem with American primary and secondary schooling. The problem is that U.S. non-Hispanic Blacks and U.S. Hispanics have lower average scores on these assessments, and that accounts for the lower overall scores of U.S. students. Further, I show that differences in social and economic background are unlikely to account fully for observed racial-ethnic differentials.