This is actually a piece of very good news because these interstate differences can be tied to differences in state educational practices, and educational practices can be easily changed. Further, by showing what can be done, these data represent an irrefutable counter to the educational determinism of reform skeptics. What educationally successful school districts, states, or countries tell us is that the most important determinants of high academic achievement for non-disadvantaged students is offering them demanding academic content and instilling high academic expectations. This is well understood by those parents who spend enormous sums sending their children to elite private schools (whose success is based on these factors and not on their social cachet) and by the majority of Catholic schools, which serve less affluent children.
Table 2.9
Comparing U.S. States (top and bottom five) and Sixty-six Foreign Countries in Reading and Mathematics Proficiency, 2011
Source: Paul E. Peterson et al., Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?, Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, August 2011.
*On reading proficiency test.
THE EDUCATIONAL CAPSTONE: POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION
Probably the best overall qualitative measure today of a society’s educational system is how many of its young adults complete a program of higher education—in other words, college. American international superiority was once dramatically evident in this educational arena, even more so than in elementary and secondary schooling. As noted in chapter 1, Americans established colleges and universities—public and private—at a rapid pace from the seventeenth century through the twentieth and aimed at educating not just the children of the affluent (as was the case in the world until very recently), but all who had the desire and (ideally) the aptitude. As a result, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a higher percentage of Americans had a college education than the citizens of any other country.
Despite this impressive heritage, by many indicators the United States is now lagging increasingly behind its global peers. In 1970, when 19 percent of American young adults (i.e., age thirty to thirty-five) had gotten a college education, the United States was well ahead of all other countries in the world, including Canada (11 percent), Japan (7 percent), France (4 percent), and Germany (3 percent). By 2010, the latest year for which comparative data are available, the proportion of young Americans with college degrees had risen modestly (22 percent), but the United States had been overtaken by Japan, Australia, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, and even Spain. Comparing American college graduation rates (of those entering college) to the average for all the advanced OECD countries, in 1995 the U.S. rate of 33 percent was well above the OECD average of 20 percent. Today, at 37 percent, it is slightly below the OECD level.
Table 2.10
High School Graduation Rates by State (top and bottom ten)
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
*Italics indicate that rates have fallen since 1990–91.
Thus, school reforms in elementary and secondary schooling need to be focused single-mindedly on having all schoolchildren graduate from high school and then preparing them for life after high school. Overall, current high school graduation rates fall far short of this goal, but, as in student performance generally, there is wide variation among the states (table 2.10).
Currently, two-thirds of those who do graduate from high school go on to some kind of higher education. The problem is that no more than one-third of these students are actually ready for college, something evident in today’s low college-completion rates (tables 2.11 and 2.12). While U.S. colleges and universities are not blameless in this, they are very much at the mercy of how well American high schools prepare their graduates—meaning that the link between high school and college academic expectations must become considerably tighter, an issue calling for more stringent college admissions policies and greater cooperation between colleges and their feeder high schools.
This problem has been bedeviling American higher education for decades, and mere exhortations to resolve it have proven futile. To reform higher education comprehensively, we need to generate more potent incentives for both students and the collegiate institutions. The most efficient and scalable way to do this is through the funding of college education, most of it directly or indirectly underwritten by the federal government. Changing the basis of that aid should motivate students and colleges to raise their game. Chapter 5 will review the extent to which college attendance and completion (by years of study) adds to individual and national human capital, how much of the population might actually benefit from going to college, how the quality of a typical American college education can be strengthened across the board, and how federal financial aid to students and colleges can be comprehensively restructured to ensure that most American college students are college-ready, that all who are can get a college education, and that they and the colleges are motivated to see that they graduate.
Table 2.11
College Enrollment by Gender and Status, 1970–2021
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics.
Table 2.12
College Graduation Rates of 2004 Entering Cohort (percent by race and gender)
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).
The most conspicuous of America’s human-capital failures, and the one that to date has been resistant to remedy on any kind of sustained basis, is the disappointing school performance of socioeconomically disadvantaged children, including a majority of those who are African American and Hispanic. As noted in chapter 2, lower-income white children are also performing well below their potential, and boys from low-income families of all ethnic backgrounds are doing worse than girls.