Stupid in America -- Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians

Reason ^ | January 13, 2006 | John Stossel

[JTN]

For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid."

We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.

The American boy who got the highest score told me: "I'm shocked, 'cause it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."

The Belgians did better because their schools are better. At age ten, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age fifteen, when students from forty countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth. The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from countries that spend much less money on education.

This should come as no surprise once you remember that public education in the USA is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.

In New York City, it's "just about impossible" to fire a bad teacher, says schools chancellor Joel Klein. The new union contract offers slight relief, but it's still about 200 pages of bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average, or way below average." One teacher sent sexually oriented emails to "Cutie 101," his sixteen year old student. Klein couldn't fire him for years, "He hasn't taught, but we have had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."

They've paid him more than $300,000, and only after 6 years of litigation were they able to fire him. Klein employs dozens of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in what they call "rubber rooms." This year he will spend twenty million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them. In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence.

When I confronted Union president Randi Weingarten about that, she said, "they [the NYC school board] just don't want to do the work that's entailed." But the "work that's entailed" is so onerous that most principals just give up, or get bad teachers to transfer to another school. They even have a name for it: "the dance of the lemons."

The inability to fire the bad and reward the good is the biggest reason schools fail the kids. Lack of money is often cited the reason schools fail, but America doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. Test scores and graduation rates stayed flat. New York City now spends an extraordinary $11,000 per student. That's $220,000 for a classroom of twenty kids. Couldn't you hire two or three excellent teachers and do a better job with $220,000?

Only a monopoly can spend that much money and still fail the kids.

The U.S. Postal Service couldn't get it there overnight. But once others were allowed to compete, Federal Express, United Parcel, and others suddenly could get it there overnight. Now even the post office does it (sometimes). Competition inspires people to do what we didn't think we could do.

If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom.

This already happens overseas. In Belgium, for example, the government funds education—at any school—but if the school can't attract students, it goes out of business. Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents. "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, "You can't afford ten teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."

"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."

Last week, Florida's Supreme Court shut down "opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of "uniform, . . . high-quality" schools. But government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.

A Gallup Poll survey shows 76 percent of Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school, but that's only because they don't know what their kids are missing. Without competition, unlike Belgian parents, they don't know what their kids might have had.

[jimbo123]

Okay, chocolate and waffles. But beyond this, Belgium is pretty much worthless.

[Tolik]

Nailed It!

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[AndyJackson]

We have a larger sample OBVIOUSLY we will score worse.

I hope you are being fasceitious, because if not, your knoweledge of statitistics is that of someone taught by someone protected by a teacher's union. If you randomly sample, once your sample size gets above about 30 or so the mean of the distibrition in IQ could maybe change 2 or 3 points with the next 300 million samples.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

This article correctly points out problems with our educational system in the USA. Public education has been dumbed down. In the 6th grade, our geography class could name every country in the world on a map. I don't think students study geography that way any more.
Also, teachers have no power to discipline troublemakers.
Another problem this article dodged. What is the average IQ of American students. Read "The Bell Curve," and you can understand that our total student population is probably dumber than the Belgian population.

[Darnright]

Bump

[Tolik]

Why to be so defensive? US scored 25th out of 40 countries tested. We are not talking about mambo-jumbo tests, but math, language, science.

Instead of bashing Belgians (full disclosure: never been there, don't have any relatives from there) we need to improve ourselves.

Our achievements in the future in the technological world do depend on knowledgeable workforce. You can run a successful business on street-smarts, but you can't run a technologically heavy business just on street-smarts: you need professionals who know what they are doing.

And anyway, who cares about Belgium. John Stossel is talking about our own stagnating schools. I think he is absolutely right in promoting choice in education and fighting against stifling teachers unions.

[Theoden]

They are also a comparatively wealthy and heterogeneous society. That definitely gives them a big advantage over us as well.

[Thermalseeker]

American parents bear a lot of the blame.

I agree that is the root of the problem.

A friend of mine, single mother of three, is home schooling her kids. Her oldest, 16, has just been accepted to Harvard on a scholarship and the next oldest, 14, is currently taking college level classes and also is shooting for Harvard. This lady lives in rural Tennessee and does not come from a big money family, either.

[Gondring]

I remember reading somewhere awhile back (though I don't remember where) that teachers actually make as much as or more than most professionals with similar educations when calculated on a per hour basis.

That was based on the absurd notion that a teacher requires no preparation time, no grading time, no extramural professional development/continuing education, no personal funds to buy classroom supplies and instructional materials, etc. The problem is that the very low-quality teacher who doesn't properly do his job (by putting in out-of-classroom time, etc.), should be fired, but isn't. The problem is not the compensation side being too high--I nearly completed a masters in education, but the salary would have been half what I get as a professional--but rather it's the lack of weeding out the quality side.

[Will_Zurmacht]

I don't know about the k-12, but the public university is a dirty little secret as well.

Here in my department we are interviewing for several full time, tenure track positions.

Each position is a min. 9 hour load for $67,000 and the full bene package.

So basically if you have a Ph.D in hand, you can teach 3 courses a semester and live pretty decent.
Teach 9am, 10am and 11am MWF and have T & Th off to take the kids fishing.
And take summer off too, while you're at it.
And Winter Break, Spring Break, and a half dozen holidays off as well.

You'll also get a modest cost of living adjustment, free tuition for kids and spouse, free parking, free gym, travel/research expense account, and a nice little office with a view.
Show up by 8:50, leave for lunch, and spend the afternoon complaining about the evil government...hehe.

Oh, sadly you may have to attend the committee meetings occassionally. Hope that's not a deal breaker...

And if you can publish something decent in the next few years you'll be granted tenure, a $10-20,000 raise and we can never fire you.

Honestly, when you consider the time it takes for MBA, JD, or Ph.D. and then consider the job opportunities and lifestyle.... The professor really has nothing to whine about. While young lawyers are out there punching each other in the face for clients, and recent MBA's are working the BK Drive-Through, a Ph.D (in a decent field) can live the life of Riley on the taxpayer's dime.

[syriacus]

Mandatory education should end at 16, as it did in the past. Kids who don't want to be in school should be given the freedom to get a job.

[xzins]

No one ever addresses the fact that European schools take 2/3rds of the class out of high school and send them on career tracks in the trades.

When Americans get to the 8th grade let's take only the top third of the students, send them to a special high school and then compare the tests.

Our full population is competing against their top third. That would make a huge difference.

[randog]

A Gallup Poll survey shows 76 percent of Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school...

What do they have to compare their kids' education with? It's all relative.

[31R1O]

You forgot Chimay, Duvel and Stella Artois.:-)

[jimbo123]

Okay, waffles, chocolate and beer. Actually, Belgium doesn't seem so bad now...

[George Smiley]

This from the country whose only notable achievement is the Belgian Waffle.

You forgot about the beer.

[George Smiley]

Ah the Technische Hochschule!

[wallcrawlr]

How about this Belgian achievement:

[jec41]

What is the average IQ of American students. Read "The Bell Curve," and you can understand that our total student population is probably dumber than the Belgian population.





Country IQ estimate Country IQ estimate Country IQ estimate
Hong Kong (PRC) 107 Russia 96 Fiji 84
South Korea 106 Slovakia 96 Iran 84
Japan 105 Uruguay 96 Marshall Islands 84
Taiwan (ROC) 104 Portugal 95 Puerto Rico (US) 84
Singapore 103 Slovenia 95 Egypt 83
Austria 102 Israel 94 India 81
Germany 102 Romania 94 Ecuador 80
Italy 102 Bulgaria 93 Guatemala 79
Netherlands 102 Ireland 93 Barbados 78
Sweden 101 Greece 92 Nepal 78
Switzerland 101 Malaysia 92 Qatar 78
Belgium 100 Thailand 91 Zambia 77
China (PRC) 100 Croatia 90 Congo-Brazzaville 73
New Zealand 100 Peru 90 Uganda 73
United Kingdom 100 Turkey 90 Jamaica 72
Hungary 99 Indonesia 89 Kenya 72
Poland 99 Suriname 89 South Africa 72
Australia 98 Colombia 89 Sudan 72
Denmark 98 Brazil 87 Tanzania 72
France 98 Iraq 87 Ghana 71
Norway 98 Mexico 87 Nigeria 67
United States 98 Samoa 87 Guinea 66
Canada 97 Tonga 87 Zimbabwe 66
Czech Republic 97 Lebanon 86 Congo-Kinshasa 65
Finland 97 Philippines 86 Sierra Leone 64
Spain 97 Cuba 85 Ethiopia 63
Argentina 96 Morocco 85 Equatorial Guinea 59