Four Surprising Truths About U.S. Schooling

The OECD recently issued its new book-length report, “Measuring Innovation in Education 2019.” As I’ve previously noted (here and here), the authors offer some fascinating peeks at how the OECD nations compare when it comes to policy and practice around STEM and language arts. Today, I’ll dig into this one last time to flag a few surprising findings that seem to challenge received wisdom. Emphasis on testing is pretty typical by international standards: There’s been much talk in recent years about the rise of “test and punish” schooling, and I certainly share the sentiment that testing mania went too far. Notably, though, for better and worse, it appears that U.S. practice during the 2007-2015 period has broadly reflected OECD norms. In the OECD, in 2015, 77 percent of math teachers in 2015 reported that they “put major emphasis on classroom tests to monitor students’ progress”; the U.S. figure was 83. Both figures rose about the same half-dozen points from 2007 (Figure 9.3). In science, the OECD average increased from 60 percent to 73 percent; the U.S. figure from 52 percent to 66 percent (Figure 9.4). In other words, the U.S. was a bit above the international norm in math and a bit lower in science. While there may be too much testing across the globe, it’s hard to look at this and argue that the U.S. is an outlier.