The Best Schools In The World

Throwing piles of money into schools isn't necessarily the answer. Japan spends about 50 percent less per student than we do, and Japanese students consistently rank higher. In another measure of spending, the percentage of gross national product devoted to education, the United States is about average. Experts in international education say it's not the amount of money but the way it's spent that matters. We tend to spend more on buildings and administration and have relatively low teacher salaries. Other countries, especially Japan and Germany, spend more on teacher salaries and have modest buildings and fewer administrators. Not everything that works overseas can be successfully transplanted. Japan's schools, for example, don't have to worry about educating an ethnically diverse or domestically troubled population. By contrast, Europeans share some of our social problems--a high divorce rate, a growing immigrant population--but few European nations even attempt to offer equal educational opportunity to all. "When it comes to equal opportunity, we have the best hearts," says former education secretary William Bennett. "The problem is our education system doesn't produce the best minds. "

There's also a greater reliance on formal academic tracking in Europe and Asia. Tests, not individual preferences, determine who goes to a university and who enters job training. While many countries offer free college tuition, the government may, in turn, restrict a student's choice of major, sometimes in order to meet a particular work-force need. Perhaps the most extreme example is Singapore. In that country, if there's a forecast of a shortage of electrical engineers, the government looks for talented students and grooms them to fill those spots.

Even countries recognized as the best have problems. "I don't think there's any industrialized country right now that's complacent about their educational system," says Chester Finn, professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University. "The Eastern-bloc countries are thinking about reform because of their recent escape from the Soviet system. England's problems are closer to ours--a faltering economy and anxiety about that ... Japan wants to win Nobel Prizes, not just produce others' inventions more efficiently."

International comparisons are not about to disappear. Several education organizations are jumping in with new methods of assessing our status in the world. And as we know more, the competition will heat up. "It's like the Olympics," Finn says. "It's not just about sportsmanship. It's about who wins." Winning will mean a profound shift in values. "The U.S., as a whole, has never put much value on learning," says Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander. "Now we need to reinvent the public schools because our current system is an anachronism. And all this needs to happen in every community." Unfortunately, as a nation, we're happy to have a national Olympics team, but schools are left to the whim of each and every neighborhood. So when it comes to kids, think global, act local, and don't expect much from Washington.

© 1991