The media onslaught letting Americans know that they are dunces has gone on for decades. How stupid are we? You might be surprised that the news about our public education system in the United States is not actually as bad as you have been led to believe… Last week I travelled to Washington D.C. to participate in the Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education conversation series at the Albert Shanker Institute. The topic of conversation was the American Education in Global Perspective. The Shanker Institute writes:

Since the 1995 introduction of the TIMSS studies (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and the 2000 start of the PISA assessments (Program for International Student Assessment), much ink has been spilled on the subject of where American schools and American students stand vis-à-vis their international counterparts. While the TIMSS and PISA rankings themselves are straightforward, there is considerable disagreement, often contentious, over what those international comparisons tell us about the state of American education. Both market critics of American public education and critics of the market-based reforms of the last decade and a half point to American education’s international standing as evidence that supports their respective policy agendas, while others dispute the very suggestion that meaningful causal links can be drawn between the international rankings and broad policy agendas. Other flash points revolve around how educational performance is shaped by the rate of childhood poverty, by the professional status of teachers, and by the existence of a national curriculum and national standards. The panel discussed these and other facets of America’s education from a global perspective.

This post is video heavy rather than text. I have also included the web links to the powerpoint, prezi and report after the panelist names. without further ado…

Leo Casey
(moderator) Executive Director, Albert Shanker Institute

Tom Loveless (Powerpoint)
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings Institution

Julian Vasquez Heilig
(Associate Professor, Educational Policy and Planning; Associate Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies; Faculty Associate, Center for Mexican American Studies; Faculty Affiliate, Center for African and African American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin College of Education

Richard Rothstein (Carnoy and Rothstein report)
Research Associate, Economic Policy Institute; Senior Fellow, Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law.

and, finally, the audience and Twitter Q&A along with closing statements from each of the panelists…
 

p.s. For the basis of my remarks, check out the post Who’s Smarter Than Texans?: Math and Science Test Scores Compared to the World and Nation

p.s.s. See also David Berliner on PISA and Poverty

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Please blame Siri for any typos.

Erratum: My statement should have been that FL, CT and MA are over-sampled, not the sole sample.