Myth: Americans are bad at math.

I can't tell you how many snooty Europeans have informed me how ignorant we are here in America. We elected Bush. Twice. (But honestly, Gore and Kerry were the best that the Democrats could do?) There are actually people debating about Intelligent Design (or neo-Creationism) as it pertains to school curricula. We drive too much. Our cars are too big. We use too many resources. And, of course, we're ignorant in general about the world around us.

To them I say "Ach, that's NON-sense!"

To address this latter point, I'd like to regale you, dear reader, with a brief anecdote. I was listening to the BBC about a year ago I guess, on the eve of a very important diplomatic visit to England from the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy---it may have been actually Jacques Chirac, but I don't know if it was that long ago . The BBC reporter was wandering around the streets of London, interviewing people and asking them about this historical event. What wasn't surprising was that many of the people didn't know about this meeting between their Prime Minister and the French President. What WAS funny was that a large portion of the interviewees couldn't actually name the French President. This, of course, puts in light all the poor kids who can't find Iraq on a map, being put on the spot by a news reporter---not that this ignorance is excusable, mind you. It seemed, at least to me, that this bunch of plebes in London were no different from the people you'd find in New York...more concerned about Steinbrenner and A-Rod than about Elliot Spitzer and his whores.

So I told you that story to shatter whatever illusion you had about the "well-informed European Unionite", and now I'll shatter another misconception: Americans aren't (that) bad at math. Now, I know what you may think. Many of you have probably been forwarded an email that says something to the effect of "If the government were to divide up evenly the $700 billion financial bailout package, each American would cash a check for $200,000!" Now, I can tell you that 300 million x $200,000 is $60 trillion (with a `T') but still the email gets forwarded. Ok, it's a lot of money and people just tend to forward emails without thinking about it, but still...

Today, however, the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) was published by the U.S. Department of Education. The bottom line is that American students are pretty much average when it comes to Math and Science.

Of course, this is no reason to rejoice---we really should have a better education system in this country, and the disparity between the poorest schools and the richest schools is pretty amazing. The top tier is ostensibly filled with counties like Japan and South Korea. A bit surprising is the appearance of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation in the top bracket, but good for those guys---they've yet to figure Democracy out properly, but at least they can calculate missile trajectories.

On the other side of the coin, however, is that US students in 4th grade and in 8th grade out-performed most of their European peers. For example, the only European countries where students out-preformed Americans were England, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands. We beat countries like Germany, Italy, Australia (not in Europe, I KNOW) and Sweden. In science, the story is similar: the US beat most European countries which participated, but were outperformed by a few Asian countries, and Hungary, England, and Russia.

Past Performance

What's surprising to me, at least, is what this says about President Bush's education policy. Now wait, you say...isn't "No Child Left Behind" a complete and utter failure? I don't know, but it certainly doesn't get much good press. We can compare the previous study in 2003(math and science) and 1999. And, you can see for yourself, the US steadily improves.

I don't know what policies were in place before Bush came to office, but it's hard to argue with these numbers. Of course, the conspiracy theorists among you will be quick to point out that this is a study done by the Department of Education, staffed by Bush appointees. This is a fair point, but one that doesn't hold much water, I think. The studies aren't designed to make American students look good, they're (presumably) designed as an honest assessment of education policy. Of course, we can always add epicycles and invent a conspiracy, but then we're making the data fit the theory, and not vice versa.

So like him or hate him, you have to at least admit that during the Bush administration American students, on average, consistently improved in math and science when compared to their counterparts in other countries. Either in spite of Bush or because of him, we're performing better when it comes to math and science than we were 8 years ago.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Now, some people will be quick to point out that the numbers are meaningless, compared to each other. Each year the average is 500, and anyone who's prayed for a curve on a test knows that averages are based on how everyone else in the class does.

To this end, the people in charge of the study have worked very diligently to ensure that such comparisons can legitimately be made. The Appendix A of the study is dedicated to statistics. It seems that they've developed some sort of algorithm whereby the problems are ranked in difficulty each year. If one problem was ranked "very easy" in 2003, but became suddenly "very difficult" in 2007, it was thrown out. Further, each country's test scores were weighted a certain amount to account for the individual populations which took the test. You can argue that this weighting wasn't done properly, and I'm certainly in no position to refute you, as I only gave the Appendix a cursory glance.

Other Studies

Of course, you can look at the numbers yourself and take what you will from them. And certainly, one study doesn't prove anything. What we look for is a set of studies, all of which show the same general trends. For example, the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress showed the same general upward trend in Math, while showing a similar stagnation when it comes to science.

Ultimately, as the world's richest country, we should have the best educational system, bar none. Clearly, this is not the case---there are very good schools in America and there are very bad schools in America. The fact that the average is so high speaks to the quality of the best schools, not of the worst.

And there can be no excuses. Other countries face similar challenges as we do, with growing immigrant (and in the case of Australia, indigenous) populations and looming recession, and still manage to preform better than we do---take the Netherlands, for example.

Ours is a country built on opportunity, and there are places in this Nation where the lack of quality schooling prohibits children from actualizing themselves. Robbing someone of the opportunity to improve themselves---in the land of opportunity---is as un-American as it gets. So while you can safely ignore criticisms coming from your European friends when it comes to the overall quality of our primary and secondary education, none of us should be complacent in the fact that we are just average.