Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Truthout, a progressive blog, posted its synopsis of a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report comparing the US education system to thirty other countries under the headline: Shocking Report Explodes Five Myths About American Education. 

Here are some “highlights” from the OECD report, using the “myth” headings:

MYTH: The US education system provides more upward mobility than other nations.

REALITY: We rank 25th out of 28 countries who track this data… “The odds that a young person in the U.S. will be in higher education if his or her parents do not have an upper secondary education are just 29 percent — one of the lowest levels among OECD countries.”

MYTH: US teachers work less and get paid more.

REALITY: Only two of the 38 countries surveyed had teachers who worked more hours and our primary teachers work more than any country in the world… and in terms of pay? OECD reports: “Despite high overall levels of spending on education, teacher salaries in the U.S. compare poorly. While in most OECD countries teacher salaries tend be lower, on average, than the salaries earned by other workers with higher education, in the U.S. the difference is large, especially for teachers with minimum qualifications.”

MYTH: Big government funds higher education.

REALITY: We DO provide more government funding than nearly every country in the world for higher education… but our higher education costs so much  more that “…62 percent are from private sources. Across all OECD countries, 70 percent of expenditures on higher education come from public sources, and 30 percent are from private sources.” this is good news for banks who loan money to students to pay for these expenses but bad news for students who go into debt.

MYTH: We provide excellent pre-school education.

REALITY: Here’s our ranking: for three year-olds we’re 5th out of 36; for 4 year olds we’re 28th out of 38. Why?  “On average across OECD countries, 84 percent of pupils in early childhood education attend programmes in public schools or government-dependent private institutions, while in the U.S., 55 percent of early childhood pupils attend programmes in public schools, and 45 percent attend independent private programmes. In the U.S. the typical starting age for early childhood education is 4 years old, while in 21 other OECD countries, it is 3 years old or younger.”

MYTH: We have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world

REALITY: “The U.S. ranks 14th in the world in the percentage of 25-34 year-olds with higher education (42 percent).” 

why do we believe in these myths. Because they ARE true for affluent Americans. Kids in affluent districts

“…get plenty of early childhood education…don’t attend run-down schools… don’t run up debts in order to go to college. In fact, our elite (parents) are positioned perfectly to thrive in a global economy. They can attack public schools, teachers unions, big government and not suffer the consequences. (Affluent parents) are quite happy… to swallow the myth of American exceptionalism, even when reality shows how exceptionally bad we are at providing decent education for all of our people.

I omitted some phrases that implied the affluent parents want things this way because I don;t believe that is true. I think most parents DO believe the myth that poverty can be overcome by good teaching because it DOES happen in some rare instances and because NOT believing that myth loud require many affluent parents and communities to face the fact that they ARE advantaged, that their status is not “hard-earned”. The fact is that their status IS hard-earned even though they did have a leg up on their cohorts who were born in poverty… but the other fact is that their cohorts born into poverty started with a disadvantage that made their race a lot harder to run.