The above example also suggests how focus on the mean can lead to faulty conclusions about solutions for improving education that mask the real problems. The U.S. may have a lower mean score than other countries on various education measures, but it does not have a problem at the top or even in the middle, as just illustrated. It's the bottom end of education that needs attention and improvement.
And much of the needed improvement is not necessarily in education per se but rather in attention to issues like poverty, unemployment, social disorganization, drugs, and discrimination. Indicting American education as a whole based on mean scores would be like concluding from the Tom Thumb/Shaquille O'Neal average height that we need an emergency program to address why the height of that population is lower than the average height for the rest of the world. And others might scratch their heads wondering why that population with such a low average height had the greatest basketball teams in the world.
This analysis is supported by the finding that on the OECD measures: "Average scores from Massachusetts were above the international average in all three subject areas" and "Florida students on average scored below the international average in math and science and around the international average in reading." Further exposing the flaw in the reports of mean scores of students internationally is that Israel, a world leader in science and technology, shows mean scores on reading, math, and science even lower than the U.S. Like the U.S., though, Israel has a highly diverse population, including a constant inflow of immigrants with language, adjustment, and economic issues, which nationally generates extreme high scores and extreme low scores.
Perhaps politicians in the U.S. who oppose increased funding for education--even lowering support and decimating education with proposals like eliminating the Department of Education-- have figured out that all America needs to be the innovation leader of the world is its upper ten percent of the population, and, therefore, to hell with the rest of its citizens.
Compare the upper ten percent of American students with the upper ten percent of all the countries that reportedly are beating us and the rankings and conversation will take a dramatic turn.
Then we might attend to the real problems of American education.
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