Archive for June 16th, 2009

I have a column in this morning’s USA Today called “The Permanent Recession.”

My thesis? While lots of people think American schools are lousy, we tend to think the problem lies with other kids’ schools. While only 22% of Americans give the nation’s schools an “A” or a “B,” a full 72% give their eldest child’s school a good grade. But when you look at international comparisons, it’s not clear these good grades are justified, even for what most of us would consider “good” schools (i.e., those that give lots of homework, have AP classes, send kids to Ivy League colleges). The top 10% of American 15-year-olds score way below the top 10% of 15-year-olds in other rich countries such as Finland. This means that kids who’d make the honor roll here, who might qualify for gifted programs, would be considered, at best, B-team material in South Korea.

This is a problem, because we live in a global economy. Those better-prepared South Koreans are, in fact, going to be competing with US kids in the labor market of the future. While the US economy does efficiently turn high achievers into high earners, our underachievement has an economic cost. According to a recent report by McKinsey, if US students did as well as Finnish and Korean students, our GDP could be 9-16% higher. Just for comparison’s sake, the current recession is likely to shave about 3.7% off GDP.

Also interesting? This international gap is much larger than America’s black-white achievement gap. Yes, there are big problems at poor, urban schools. Too many black children are not challenged to achieve their potential. But guess what? Very few rich white kids are challenged at anything near the level they can handle either. I think that’s a real shame, and — if McKinsey is to be believed — really expensive, too.