Looking Abroad for Ideas on Solving the United States' Problems in Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Education for sustainability: learning from abroad

Proposal

This paper summarizes the findings of a new book that includes chapters on the educational systems of the nations that surpass the United States on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The educational systems this research covers includes those of Finland, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China, Canada, and Estonia. The paper documents the policies and practices these nations implement that contribute to their high scores on the PISA. The purpose of this research is to explore if any of these countries implement practices that would enhance the United States’ public school system.

The paper offers a fresh perspective on this topic for several reasons. First, it offers a balanced perspective, offering the outstanding practices that world-class nations in education implement but also mentioning the problems they endure. For example, although South Korea has outperformed the United States on the PISA in recent years, many students there suffer from stress resulting from too many hours of study. Second, the most recent PISA scores are analyzed. Some countries that previously scored highly on PISA have declined as other countries formerly not recognized as world leaders have achieved impressive results. Some of the new world leaders in education, such as Estonia, use unique methods to achieve their success.

A wide variety of policies and practices that help world-class nations outperform others are discussed. Some of these involve teacher pay, teacher preparation, teacher selection, and educational opportunities for low-income students.

This paper also includes a discussion on the limitations of borrowing educational practices from overseas. In certain countries, for example, cultural attitudes towards education contribute to outstanding academic achievement. These cultural attitudes typically evolve over thousands of years. Values that originate overseas are virtually impossible to emulate in school systems located in areas where different cultural values prevail.

In addition, the paper explores the limitations of using the PISA to assess students. It also covers other controversies associated with this assessment. For example, many prominent scholars and activists collaborated to write a letter to the director of the PISA, hoping to stop this test. The Washington Post published a copy of the letter in 2014. The letter indicated that international assessments like the PISA promote an increase in standardized testing by pressuring policymakers to justify the use of policies similar to the Race to the Top initiative. The letter also indicated that since the PISA is offered every three years, it encourages poor-performing nations to fix the problems related to inadequate test scores quickly by using short-term solutions. Such an approach is problematic because successful school reform takes decades.

One of the limitations of using the PISA test involves creativity. Critics of the PISA sometimes object to using this test because some of the top-performing countries in testing lack people with creativity and entrepreneurial skills. They argue that the approach to education in areas like China and Singapore prevents schools from producing creative people, thwarting the chances for these areas of the world to produce many innovations. In 2008, for example, the world’s leading patent offices recognized only 473 innovations from China compared with 14,399 from the United States.

Although controversies exist about implementing the PISA to measure the quality of a nation’s education system, the PISA provides crucial data about the world’s educational systems. This data can be used to transform the systems of poorer performing countries into world-class nations in education. An analysis of a recent PISA test, for example, revealed that American schools with very low levels (fewer than 10%) of socioeconomically disadvantaged students achieved higher scores than many of the top-performing nations on the PISA, including Finland, Japan, and Korea. This information suggests that the United States could easily become a leading nation in education if the conditions that low-income students encounter in school and society improve.

The findings of this paper include recommendations on which methods used abroad would improve the public education system in the United States. To make these recommendations, the educational practices of the United States were compared with those of the highest-ranking countries on the 2015 PISA. The method of research used consists of policy analysis. Data from official reports from organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were analyzed. The findings indicate that although many high-scoring countries in international testing implement superior methods that would enhance the American system, some of these nations also implement practices that could worsen it. The findings also mention the policies and practices high-scoring countries implement that would benefit the public school system in the United States.

Author

• Hani Morgan, University of Southern Mississippi