Education Spin

Big Country on Campus?
Obama misleadingly implied that American college graduation rates are falling behind:

Obama: In just a single generation, America has fallen from second place to eleventh place in the portion of students completing college. ... That is why, in my address to the nation the other week, I called on Americans to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training, with the goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020.

It's true that, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as recently as 1995, the U.S. and New Zealand led the way in percentage of college degree holders. But by 2006 (the last year for which OECD has data), 11 countries had a higher percentage of either two- or four-year college graduates among their 25- to 34-year-old populations.

As for "having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world" by 2020, well, that might not be so difficult, depending on what measure one uses. Among adults age 25 to 64, the U.S. already has the second highest percentage of college graduates with a four-year degree in the world (30 percent), trailing Norway by a single percentage point. Using the 25-to-34 bracket and including both two- and four-year degrees, however, the U.S. lags 16 percentage points behind Canada. It is unlikely that the U.S. could make up that much ground in 11 years.

But however one slices up the numbers, the fact is that U.S. graduation rates have actually been extremely consistent for the past decade. Americans are graduating from college at about the same pace as usual; other countries have simply caught up and, in some cases, moved ahead.

It's worth noting, too, that comparing college graduation rates across countries is a bit like comparing apples with lots of non-appley things. For starters, tertiary education varies significantly by country. In the U.S., a bachelor's degree requires approximately four years of study. In the U.K., however, programs are more typically three years, whereas in Germany, programs often last five or more years and result in a degree that is comparable to a master's degree in the U.S.

Perhaps even more significant, the OECD report compares countries that are vastly different. Norway, for example, has roughly the population and per capita wealth of Massachusetts, and according to the Census Bureau, Norway trails the Bay State's college graduation rate by about 6 percentage points. The U.S. bests the college graduation rates of the similar-size and prosperous European Union in every category but one, and that one is a tie.

U.S. vs. Singapore
Another line in the same speech also took us aback: "Singapore's middle-schoolers outperform ours three-to-one." Wow.

We asked the White House where that figure came from; a spokesman pointed us to the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). And it's true that the study contains two tables showing U.S. eighth-graders stacking up at least that poorly against those from Singapore: The percentage of U.S. eighth-graders who reached the TIMMS advanced international benchmark (the highest level) in science in 2007 was 10, while 32 percent of Singapore's scored at that level. In math, our students look even worse: Six percent of U.S. eighth-graders hit the advanced benchmark, while 40 percent of Singapore's did.

But Obama did a bit of cherry-picking to make the U.S. look that bad (although we suppose that it's more lumps of coal than cherries). In a study full of tables, he found the ones where U.S. students had their worst showing. Instead, he could have used the most frequently cited statistics from the TIMMS study, the average mathematics and science scores by country. Singapore's kids still do better than American ones, but not by nearly so much. Math scores for eighth-graders in 2007 were 593 for Singapore and 508 for the U.S. In science the gap was a bit narrower: Singapore 567, U.S. 520.

And had Obama taken the glass-half-full approach, he could have looked at trend lines. Between 1995 and 2007, average math scores of U.S. eighth-graders have gone up 16 points, while those of Singapore's eighth-graders have gone down by that same amount. In science, U.S. eighth-graders have gained 7 points during that period, while Singapore's have lost 13 points.

Some Education Stats Are Gloomy
To be sure, it's not that difficult to find figures that show our kids could do better or our academic standards could be more rigorous. Other claims in Obama's speech checked out, such as:

He said "our curriculum for eighth-graders is two full years behind top performing countries." That's based on a 2005 report specifically on math curricula by the then-director of the National Research Center for TIMSS. The report "estimated that at the end of eighth grade U.S. students are some two or more years behind." It's worth noting that not all states are at the same level. Minnesota, for one, worked with the author of that 2005 study, William Schmidt, to establish new math standards for fourth grade and saw its scores shoot up, surpassing the U.S. as a whole. The state would rank fifth in the world.

Obama criticized the wide variation in state proficiency test standards, saying: "Today's system of fifty different sets of benchmarks for academic success means 4th grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming—and getting the same grade." A study released by the Department of Education in 2007 did find such a wide gap between the proficiency standards for fourth-grade reading set by Wyoming and Mississippi. A look at the PowerPoint presentation on the results by the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics shows Mississippi trails all states in this regard.

Republished with permission from factcheck.org.

Correction, March 26: We originally said the quote in the College Board report pertained to students between grades nine and 12. We revised this section to reflect the College Board's correction.

Sources
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. "Digest of Education Statistics," 2007.

Day, Jennifer Cheeseman and Eric C. Newburger. "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings." United States Census Bureau, July 2002.

Barton, Paul. "One Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities." Educational Testing Service. Feb. 2005.

College Board. "Coming to Our Senses: Education and the American Future," Dec. 2008.

Haney, Walt et al. "The Education Pipeline in the United States 1970-2000." The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy, Jan. 2004.

Gonzales, Patrick, et. al. "Highlights from TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context." U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Dec. 2008.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS),1995, accessed 18 March 2009.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 2003. Table 5: Average mathematics scale scores of eighth-grade students, by country: 2003, accessed 18 March 2009.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. "Education at a Glance 2007," 2007.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. "Education at a Glance 2008: OECD Indicators," 2008.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates, Massachusetts, accessed 18 March 2009.

Schmidt,William H. "The Role of Curriculum." American Educator,. Fall 2005.

Michigan State University. "MSU scholars help Minnesota become global leader in math," press release, 9 Dec. 2008.

Schneider, Mark. National Assessment of Educational Progress; Mapping 2005 State Proficiency Standards onto the NAEP Scales. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 7 June 2007. 

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