I would go even further to say that the best US students are often "better" than the best international counterparts, because the US runs a primary and secondary education system with a philosophy to grow the standout students as much as possible. The best high schools encourage their top students to really dive deep into their subject of interest, rather than focus on improving the performance of laggards or generally concentrating on improving average performance.

I have zero doubt that the average Japanese student blows the average American student out of the water. But the US produces both a greater number and a greater degree of ridiculously talented and driven students.

Asian countries generally have a high average and low variance distribution in students. The US has a lower average but a much higher variance and thus has more outlier students on both ends of the spectrum. Whether this is good or bad would depend on your perspective.

This is definitely not the case for public schools in CA, for the most part. That's why I'm basically forced to sending my children to private schools at considerable cost ($30k/yr/child).

My Midwest school does, but it's usually rated as one of the better ones in the state.

Someone up thread seemed to think the average student of another country would blow away the average US student. I don't think this is true. The US pays lip service to universal education more then most other countries. Unfortunately we don't follow through on it and this leaves a large enough number of substandard schools to make a significant impact on US test averages. The sad fact is the tail end of these averages are so bad they bring down the score, but the "average" for the majority of US students is much higher.

This stratification of education is probably a significant contributor to the stratification of wealth in the US, and it's not OK.

Wait ! Private schools in the US cost $30k a year ?!

I am assuming you are talking about K12 education. That is pretty absurd.

I also live in California and I also send my child to a private school which costs upwards of 30k.

California currently spends about 10k per student for public education. That makes 30k sound crazy, but in 1970 California spent 5500 which is about 35k in 2017 dollars. California (and most of the US) is woefully underfunding it's schools.

Public schools also cost about $20k/year/pupil (I wrote $30 before but looks like I was mistaken). But this is paid from general budget so nobody cares too much, because tax money obviously aren't real money.

Cato claims these figures are grossly under-estimated though [1] and the real costs may be twice as much.

[1] https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/they-spend...

Yes the schools themselves have a high variance distribution in what they are like and who they seek to serve.

I don't know how you reach that conclusion. The rise of standardized testing and "no child left behind" means that school's energies are focused on making sure every student passes the tests. Schools that don't measure up get their funding cut.

> The best high schools encourage their top students to really dive deep into their subject of interest, rather than focus on improving the performance of laggards or generally concentrating on improving average performance.

This is certainly not my experience of the US public school system, either as a student or a parent. The typical US school has always cared more about getting 20th-percentile students to meet a minimum standard. And if the student makes an effort to work with the school, the school is very good at it. Public schools are evaluated based on how many students meet that minimum standard ("No Child Left Behind"), and they respond to that incentive.

The 80th to 90th percentile students, well, they're kind of an afterthought. I mean, they're going to ace all the standardized exams anyway. Now, some public schools will make an effort to help high-performing students, because teachers do care, but it's not incentivized.

Private schools, on the other hand, are evaluated on a very different metric—how many students get into Harvard/Yale/Stanford/etc.? They game this metric by offering generous scholarships to top-notch students, and by charging stiff tuition to rich parents.

>This is certainly not my experience of the US public school system, either as a student or a parent. The typical US school has always cared more about getting 20th-percentile students

Schools in the US are locally controlled.

There are places that run schools like this. And there are school systems that have fantastic magnet schools for gifted students.

> Mediocre Japanese student can remain in Japan and be relatively OK. Mediocre student somewhere in talent concentration point is screwed - he's where the top talent of the world is, and has to compete with them for any nice opportunities.

Given the lower salaries and longer working hours in Japan, I'm not convinced that the mediocre Japanese student is better of than the mediocre US student. Even if the Japanese student scores a "better" job (in relation to the opportunities available locally) than the US student, the absolute differences between job markets can make his job worse.

If you go to a "pretty good" college in Japan (Most often the "March" colleges and above", generally you have a solid paycheck, good social prestige, and decent (though declining) job security. The high level of public infrastructure and low cost of living (compared to US coastal cities, even Tokyo is cheap) means that your dollar (or yen) goes much further than in NYC or the Bay Area.

Overall it's not too bad a deal compared to the bifurcating job outcomes we see in the States.

Isn't the work culture pretty bad, though?

Hours are long and the commutes are (often) long. Culture is hierarchical and often seniority based. Groupthink, consensus, backroom deal making (rather than open argumentation which is the norm in the states), and not rocking the boat are priorities.

But you're basically never going to be fired and generally speaking companies do genuinely seek to "take care of" their people in ways that US companies no longer do (but used to, many decades ago). It's a highly frustrating environment for a restless high performer, but for the mediocre college grad I don't think it's a bad deal at all.

They grew up there, know the culture, and have been trained/educated to navigate its waters.

Oh please. The US is laughably poor in every aspect of education besides US top universities. Don't reframe things, he never said the top institutions of the US were worse.

And you are supporting this claim with... "oh please"? You want to prove US education system is inadequate to supply the workforce for technological companies, I believe it is not so, US has very good supply of necessary talent in the field. Please produce your evidence why you think it is not so.

Oh come on, every study puts the US in a mediocre position in education within the OECD. That's not a debate.

What is "position in education"? I notice that's the third person making claims without backing them up or even substantiating them enough to be verifyable ("US school sucks" is not verifyable, "US schools ranked number N according to metric M published by organization O" is). I don't know where these people are educated so not sure whether I can take it as anecdotal evidence to either side...

Also protip: "this is not a debate" doesn't make you automatically win a debate.

The US is also exceptional in how bad its bad schools are, this drags our averages down. While it's a tragedy for the kids who are not being served, it's a distortion to say all US schools are bad when most are not.

That's how averages work unfortunately.

Conversation looks like this:

A: X is true.

B: Please provide proof.

A: Here is metric using averaging over large populations.

B: Using averages over large populations is hiding important details about X.

A: How else we could compare large populations?! We must use globals averages!

B: Averages have the effect of very small number of very bad instances distort the result of large population which would have much better results, thus making it appear bad results are much more common than they are actually are. We know specifically this is the case for the question we are discussing.

A: Well, that's how averages work, nothing can be done about it.

Don't you think something is missing here?

No, not really. If your job is to compare countries, how else would you do it? Seriously.

PS: you know medians exist and those studies account for it, right? Nobody is saying YOUR school is mediocre.

Aside from population-wide sums or “averages” (in the specific sense of “arithmetic mean”), there's also models, medians, various distributional measures, etc. Which subset (which may include more than one selection) of these are most appropriate for a particular comparison depends on the specific purpose of the comparison. Arithmetic mean and/or sums are usually the easiest measures, but quite often not the most relevant.

I know, I'm trying to understand what studies contradict PISA and why is it faulty.

When I say it's not a debate, I don't say that to "win a debate". I mean it in a "debating the flat earth hypothesis is not a debate" sense.

There's many studies about this, it's not a controversial topic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_...

Averages often say very little about a population.

There are states and metro areas in the US with (and this is the important part) populations as large as many high ranked European countries that rank at the very top of the world in any educational metric.

Every country has good and bad parts. That's the point of averages. How else would you compare countries?

The study only compares averages and that's all that people are saying. It's totally possible that the best secondary school in the world is in the US but that's not the point.

And I don't see how population size is important, as you say. Schools in the US are locally funded, no?

>Every country has good and bad parts. That's the point of averages. How else would you compare countries?

Surely you understand that averages are often misleading and can be worse than useless.

The US is the most diverse large country in the world. Averages do not work well when comparing highly varied populations.

>And I don't see how population size is important, as you say.

There are many smaller countries with better average educational outcomes than the US. But none of the countries with higher scores are anywhere near the size and diversity of the US.

The only country even close to the US in population is China and you'll note that test scores are only available for the highest performing provinces.

If you want to make a proper comparison, you'd need to compare the US with something like the entire continent of Europe.

Finland is more analogous to say Massachusetts than it is to the entire US.

>>> Surely you understand that averages are often misleading and can be worse than useless.

So why are you complaining in a conversation talking about averages?

>>> The US is the most diverse large country in the world.

Brazil and India would like a word. Also, irrelevant.

>>> Averages do not work well when comparing highly varied populations.

That's why you have averages. Again, how else would you compare countries?

>>> There are many smaller countries with better average educational outcomes than the US. But none of the countries with higher scores are anywhere near the size and diversity of the US.

And? How are those things relayed? Seriously, how is diversity related to federally provided education?

>>>The only country even close to the US in population is China

Well great, in a conversation comparing China and the US that might be relevant, but this is not it.

>>> If you want to make a proper comparison, you'd need to compare the US with something like the entire continent of Europe.

Why? You actually think population and diversity are even close? Or relevant? Just trying to understand your logic because it doesn't make sense.

>So why are you complaining in a conversation talking about averages?

You're the one who is using averages. Everyone else here is telling you averages are a misleading metric here when trying to compare the US to other countries.

Averages are not useful for comparing diverse data sets.

The mean tells you a lot about a hypothetical population where everyone has an IQ of 100. It doesn't tell you a lot about a population where half the people have an IQ of 75 and half 125. Using mean scores to compare those populations is nearly useless.

>That's why you have averages. Again, how else would you compare countries?

That's just it, you can't use 1 number to compare countries. It's not meaningless, but it's close.

>>> You're the one who is using averages. Everyone else here is telling you averages are a misleading metric here when trying to compare the US to other countries.

What everyone else. The grandparent literally complained about three people in this thread mentioning a fact without sources about averages. I supplied said source. What are you responding to?

>>> Averages are not useful for comparing diverse data sets.

The US is not particularly diverse in the world. And again, how do you compare "diverse" data sets like kids literally being able to read?

>>> The mean tells you a lot about a hypothetical population where everyone has an IQ of 100. It doesn't tell you a lot about a population where half the people have an IQ of 75 and half 125. Using mean scores to compare those populations is nearly useless.

Right, because we actually have countries where half the population is 125 and half is 75, what can I say. /s

>>> That's just it, you can't use 1 number to compare countries. It's not meaningless, but it's close

Tell that to the OECD.

Why do you care so must about this comparison of averages? Why are you commenting?

I like how you literally don't answer half my replies, makes one think what's the point of this.

>What everyone else.

Me and the other person who replied to you. "The US is also exceptional in how bad its bad schools are, this drags our averages down. While it's a tragedy for the kids who are not being served, it's a distortion to say all US schools are bad when most are not."

>The US is not particularly diverse in the world.

I'm sorry I can no longer take you seriously.

>And again, how do you compare "diverse" data sets like kids literally being able to read?

An average is nearly useless if you don't know the distribution. Rankings based on averages are meaningless.

>Right, because we actually have countries where half the population is 125 and half is 75, what can I say

How could you think an example that works out with nice easy numbers is supposed to actually represent a real country?

>Why are you commenting?

Because of this

>Oh come on, every study puts the US in a mediocre position in education within the OECD. That's not a debate.

Because it is debatable. Using PISA rankings to say that the US is in a mediocre position in education is very controversial. In addition to using the mean of a set of test scores, they don't take into account the percentage of 15 year olds still in school, or the percentage of 15 year olds who take the test. The US goes WAY up in the ranks when those things are taken into account.

>>> What everyone else.

> Me and the other person who replied to you. "The US is also exceptional in how bad its bad schools are, this drags our averages down. While it's a tragedy for the kids who are not being served, it's a distortion to say all US schools are bad when most are not."

You really think this is not true elsewhere? Inequality doesn't exist in other countries? Do you really think medians are unheard of for scientists and they didn't take that into account? Please.

>>> The US is not particularly diverse in the world.

> I'm sorry I can no longer take you seriously.

You know there's studies ranking countries based on diversity right? You want me to Google them for you?

Oh wait, you probably think they're missing something clearly obvious like not knowing what a median is again.

>>> And again, how do you compare "diverse" data sets like kids literally being able to read?

> An average is nearly useless if you don't know the distribution. Rankings based on averages are meaningless.

Great if you think that. Show me a better way to compare countries when it comes to reading skills.

>>> Why are you commenting? > Because of this

You just said you don't believe the study is relevant. So why do you care what it says.

>>>Oh come on, every study puts the US in a mediocre position in education within the OECD. That's not a debate.

> Because it is debatable.

It's really not and it's the best we have.

> Using PISA rankings to say that the US is in a mediocre position in education is very controversial.

Again, it's really not. Haven't seen any counter studies, happy to see them.

Not saying there's no criticisms obviously.

> The US goes WAY up in the ranks when those things are taken into account.

Go on then, show the studies, I'm willing to change my mind.

Of course scientists are aware of medians. However if you look at PISA rankings, they use the mean scores not median.

You have way too much faith in rankings you see on the internet.

> Show me a better way to compare countries when it comes to reading skills.

Median scores, mean with standard deviation, box plots. All of those are better. None are great because comparing reading scores in different languages in a meaningful way is nearly impossible.

For example, Chinese children take much longer to develop their vocabulary than American students because of the way their language is written. Because of this you can't possibly construct a test that makes an accurate comparison between Chinese and American students.

You might as well try to make a test comparing how well American schools teach welding to how how well Chinese schools teach painting.

>You know there's studies ranking countries based on diversity right? You want me to Google them for you?

And only 1 of the countries that ranks higher than the US in diversity ranks higher than us on the PISA list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...

The countries the US is unfavorably compared to nearly all appear near the bottom of that list.

It also doesn't take into account the amount of difference between cultures. For example, an African country where 20% of the people speak a different language from and don't intermarry with the dominant culture, but that have lived side by side with the dominant culture for hundreds of years will be ranked the same as a country where 20% of the people are immigrants from a country on the other side of the world.

The US has a far larger percentage of immigrants than any other country, and from far more countries.

Furthermore the US has far higher income inequality than most of the countries that outperform it.

>You just said you don't believe the study is relevant. So why do you care what it says.

It's not. I care that people are pushing PISA rankings as some kind of objective measurement of countries' education systems, and because of that politicians use them to try to push changes without understanding what the rankings actually show.

I can assure that in among academics in education PISA rankings are very controversial. Despite all your insistence about not being debatable it most definitely is.

Here's an example of some of the criticsm

--From the Times Educational Supplement

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/long-read... https://www.tes.com/news/tes-archive/tes-publication/pisa-ra...

"With greater power comes greater scrutiny. In 2013, TES revealed damning new allegations against Pisa from statistical and mathematical experts who said that what had become the world’s most influential education league tables were, in fact, “useless”, produced “meaningless” rankings and were compiled using techniques that were “utterly wrong”.

In response, the OECD admitted that “large variation in single country ranking positions is likely” because of the methods it used. For example, in 2009 the organisation said that the UK’s Pisa ranking out of a total of 74 countries was between 19th and 27th for reading, between 23rd and 31st for maths, and between 14th and 19th for science.

But this admission has made little difference to how rankings are reported in the media, and Pisa does not put the caveats centre stage. The resulting league tables are often taken as definitive statements on the quality of schools systems. And the stakes have become so high that a slip of a few positions caused by statistical variation might today spell the end of an education policy or even a minister’s career."

--From an open letter to the OECD by over 100 academics

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/06/oecd-pisa-...

"Critique #1: Whereas the explicit purpose of ranking countries by average test score is to allow for inferences about the quality of national educational systems, the ranking is misleading because the samples of students in different countries have different levels of family academic resources (FAR)."

"Critique #4: The OECD has repeatedly held up Shanghai students and the Shanghai educational system as a model for the rest of the world and as representative of China, yet the sample is not representative even of the Shanghai 15-year-old population and certainly not of China. In addition, Shanghai schools systematically exclude migrant youth. These issues should have kept Shanghai scores out of any OECD comparison group and raise serious questions about the OECD’s brand as an international testing agency."

"Develop alternatives to league tables: explore more meaningful and less easily sensationalised ways of reporting assessment outcomes. For example, comparing developing countries, where 15-year-olds are regularly drafted into child labour, with first-world countries makes neither educational nor political sense and opens OECD up for charges of educational colonialism.

--From a guardian article

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/dec/03/pisa-methodolog...

"From the outset, Pisa has been met with scepticism, criticism and even outrage, most of which has stemmed from the claim that the study's findings are arbitrary. One such voice was Dr Svein Sjøberg of the University of Oslo, who claimed that a small change in question choice or weightings could result in a big change in a country's overall rankings."

"The sheer breadth of Pisa has also raised questions about the comparability of results within it. Even those who accept it is fair to assess countries and economies alongside one another question some of the cultural factors that divide them. Joachim Wuttke, a teacher of computer science in Germany, is one such sceptic. Wuttke looked at which students failed to complete the test and which preferred to increase their speed – even at the risk of increasing their errors. He found significant differences in student behaviour that affected student performance:"

"At a more fundamental level, some have pointed to the difficulties of testing students in such a wide array of languages. If such a thing as a perfect translation exists (few would argue it does) it might still not be enough to control for students' differing interpretations of the same set of instructions."

"There is also a temptation to grab at averages from Pisa to understand the performance of a country. Doing so would obscure the vast differences that can occur regionally within a country – such an oversight can be particularly dangerous, say critics, for understanding the true academic opportunities available in a country."

"Meanwhile, countries such as Finland, a consistent top-performer in the Pisa league tables, has been accused of failing miserably on other international academic tests such as TIMSS. Why? Gabriel H Sahlgren, the author of a book on the dubiousness of the Finnish miracle claims it is “because its centralised curriculum has ignored certain concepts that are not tested in Pisa”."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/...

http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2015/10/international-te...

https://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/v22n1/RELIEVEv22n1_M15eng.pdf

>>> And only 1 of the countries that ranks higher than the US in diversity ranks higher than us on the PISA list.

Irrelevant. You and the grandparent are making an irrelevant point again and again. Why bring up diversity at all?

>>> It also doesn't take into account the amount of difference between cultures. For example ...

I already said there was going to be a "median" example... I was right about that, shocker. /s

>>> The US has a far larger percentage of immigrants than any other country, and from far more countries.

Except Canada and Switzerland and many other countries, right?

Thanks for the criticisms about PISA, never said they weren't any (see my previous comment). I asked repeatedly for alternatives instead.

The criticisms are pretty weak as well.

"In addition, Shanghai schools systematically exclude migrant youth."

If they are migrants, they're not representing the local education system now do they?

>Irrelevant. You and the grandparent are making an irrelevant point again and again. Why bring up diversity at all?

Because it's highly relevant when talking about an average value. The more heterogeneous a population is the less likely an average is to be useful.

>I already said there was going to be a "median" example... I was right about that, shocker. /s

Ranking by mean often isn't useful...shocker

>Except Canada and Switzerland and many other countries, right?

Sorry I meant large countries.

>If they are migrants, they're not representing the local education system now do they?

They're talking about long term migrants that represent about 40% of the population.

Look at Australia were 90% of 15 year olds are enrolled in school, vs. a country like Vietnam where 15 year olds routinely drop out and work.

How does that comparison make sense?

Some other examples.

In South Korea parents force their children to spend 4 or 5 hours with private tutors after school each day. South Korea performs very well on PISA league tables, but it probably says very little about the efficacy of the Korean school system vs any other country where parent don't routinely force their kids to pull double school shifts with private tutors.

Finland spends much more time teaching fractions than algebra to 15 year olds. The US outperforms them on algebra questions, but Finland outperforms on fraction questions. But PISA weighs fraction questions much higher than algebra questions.

In the US homeschooling is common. In Germany it's illegal. Home schoolers score much higher on the SAT and ACT, so in the US you're pulling 3 or 4% of the likely highest scoring students out of the pool--of course that's going to drastically affect the mean score.

We can't come up with tests that accurately compare abilities across cultures in the US. How can we possibly do it across 65 countries.

The answer is, you can't do it. Attempting to do it, failing, and publishing data that makes it look like you can is more harmful than just not publishing at all.

The critiques are numerous and come from very respected publications, organizations, and academics.

You can disagree with the critiques all you want, but you can't pretend the debate is over, and that there is some kind of settled science here.

>>> Sorry I meant large countries

Do you? I thought we were talking about OECD studies not "big" countries. My mistake.

I guess it was just a matter of time until "big" came up after "diversity".

>>> We can't come up with tests that accurately compare abilities across cultures in the US. How can we possibly do it across 65 countries.

Well then, let's just give up and not compare countries anymore. /s

>>> You can disagree with the critiques all you want

I'm not, I said that before.

The thing is, when debating, it's useful to think if your opponent has a falsifiable claim. Since you don't, this conversation is useless. I literally cannot provide any evidence for country comparisons, because it's literally impossible from your point of view. So I'm done.

Many grad students at these premier institutions are international and will be forced to return to their home countries if they cannot secure H1B or similar visas.

It's not that MIT & others lagging, but the US certainly is.

The most significant research happens at the graduate level and beyond. US students are disproportionately under represented at the graduate level. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american...

The high cost for US students in undergrad is one reason for this. These schools haven't been lagging behind because grad students found a to H1->GC->Citizen. If that path becomes difficult, then these students will just stay in their home countries.

>>Mediocre student somewhere in talent concentration point is screwed - he's where the top talent of the world is, and has to compete with them for any nice opportunities. It is hard.

This is why its never a nice idea for most people to work at a place like Google.

Totally correct! Most education comparisons are Apples to Samsungs. While the national average might not be the highest, the top students are amazing!

Not to mention volume- the US has way more chances to develop the next genius from sheer numbers alone. Works the same way with Olympic sports.

I'm still waiting for​ a decent men's soccer team...

Kinda hard when other, more lucrative, sports steal most of your domestic talent. There is a reason the women's team is dominant in a way that then men's team is not, but the fact that a good US player really has to leave the country and take a gamble that most US collegiate athletes do not require does not help.

Sorry, but it just doesn't make sense. You just can't make excuses anymore. What happened this time around is beyond acceptable imo.

Iceland, with a population of ~300,000, was able to qualify in (arguably) the toughest region in the world. The US has about 1000 people for every Icelandic citizen, and yet we couldn't even qualify in (arguably) the EASIEST region in the world.

I'm simply dumbfounded by how bad the US team is. Let's just hope we get there next time.

Nobody (within small margin of error) cares for soccer in the US. So, no good team.

Tell that to the ~50,000 people who attend basically every Atlanta United game.

The thing is, we aren't just "bad": we're terrible by any standard out there. It's borderline pitiful. And look at how good the women's team is...

One of my "countries of origin" has basically qualified at least (Tunisia). Now we wait for Australia...

Crap, can't escape the depression of a World Cup without the US, even in Hacker News.