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Why We’re Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don’t

A report showing that the nations that consistently outrank us on international comparison tests provide their students with a fulsome education in the liberal arts and sciences.

Excerpt: Letter from the Executive Director

Each of the nations that consistently outrank the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences. These nations differ greatly with regard to how they accomplish this goal. Some have a national curriculum and standards but no tests, others have both, and some leave everything up to the states. Interestingly, no state-based nation in our sample currently has a national curriculum or standards, though one is attempting to develop some.

So what is the common ingredient across these varied nations? It is not a delivery mechanism or an accountability system that these high-performing nations share: it is a dedication to educating their children deeply in a wide range of subjects.

Our report lists the subjects each nation requires in compulsory education. But it is the raw material—the excerpts from national curricula, standards, and assessments—that conveys the richness of education in these nations:

Fourth graders in Hong Kong visit an artist’s studio, study Picasso’s Guernica, and analyze the works of modernist sculptor Henry Moore.
Finnish 5th and 6th graders study how the invention of writing changed human life and the impacts of the French Revolution; they trace a topic such as the evolution of trade from prehistory until the 19th century.
Seventh graders in Korea are expected to know not just about supply and demand, but about equilibrium price theories, property rights, and ways to improve market function.
Japanese 7th to 9th graders “conduct experiments regarding pressure to discover that pressure is related to the magnitude of a force and the area.”
Eighth graders from the Canadian province of Ontario are expected to create musical compositions, conduct, and know musical terms in Italian.
Dutch 12th graders must know enough about seven events connected to the Crimean War to be able to put them in chronological order.
Canadian 12th graders in British Columbia are expected to identify the author of the words: “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and to what Admiral Nimitz was referring when he said: “Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged.”
On a Swiss examination 12th graders write an essay analyzing JFK’s October 1962 proclamation that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We believe more research should be conducted into the relationship between content and achievement. This research should be done now because if what this report suggests is true—that a comprehensive, content-rich curriculum is the key to high achievement—than we have a lot of work to do here in the United States.

In recent years, America has increasingly embraced education policies and practices that have made our children’s education narrower and more basic. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is part of the cause of this, but is by no means the only culprit. NCLB’s intense focus on reading and math skills has dumbed down the curriculum, but so have trends such as the 21st century skills movement, which promote the teaching of skills such as media savvy and entrepreneurship disconnected from content of any significance.

We must join our desire to compete with other nations with a willingness to learn from them. Common Core hopes that the materials assembled here will encourage that desire to learn.

Continued in the Complete Report.

Excerpts (PDF format)

Generation Z at Risk. What they don't know about history and literature.

Still at Risk: What Students Don’t Know, Even Now

Common Core surveyed 17-year-olds and found their knowledge of history and literature — from Columbus to Hitler and Oedipus to The Scarlet Letter — sorely lacking

By Frederick M. Hess

Complete Report

Excerpt: Letter from the Executive Director

Senator Joseph McCarthy investigated people who protested the war in Vietnam, better known as the Second World War. Fortunately, that war was over before Christopher Columbus sailed to America; otherwise, we might have never experienced the Renaissance.

A new survey of 17-year-olds reveals that, to many, the paragraph above sounds only slightly strange. Almost 20 percent of 1,200 respondents to a national telephone survey do not know who our enemy was in World War II, and more than a quarter think Columbus sailed after 1750. Half do not know whom Sen. McCarthy investigated or what the Renaissance was.

It is easy to make light of such ignorance. In reality, however, a deep lack of knowledge is neither humorous nor trivial. What we know helps to determine how successful we are likely to be in life and how many career paths we can choose from. It also affects our contribution as democratic citizens.

Unfortunately, too many young Americans do not possess the kind of basic knowledge they need. When asked fundamental questions about U.S. history and culture, they score a D and exhibit stunning knowledge gaps:

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed could not identify Adolf Hitler; 10 percent think he was a munitions manufacturer
Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century
Only 45 percent can identify Oedipus
A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion
Forty-four percent think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence

There are parents all over America for whom this is no surprise. They know that the focus of their child’s school day is increasingly on preparing for basic skills tests, not on learning history or geography, reading literature, or participating in the arts. And their child’s teacher often shares in their frustration.

Another concern the survey identifies is a consistent gap—the size of a letter-grade—between respondents who have at least one college-educated parent and those who do not. This is devastating for students who come from homes where the discussion of literature and history is rare because if the school doesn't impart this knowledge, these students are not likely ever to learn it. The burden on schools serving less-privileged students is great because they must somehow teach more just to get their students to the starting line. This survey shows that that challenge is not being adequately met.

When students graduate without knowing what Brown v. Board of Education decided or who told them to “ask not what your country can do for you,” they are being left behind in the worst way. Everyone’s children deserve to receive a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences. Of course they must be able to read and compute. But they must also possess real knowledge about important things, knowledge of civics, biology, geography, art history, languages—the full range of subjects that comprise a complete education. Any reform idea that diminishes the ability of schools and teachers to provide students with such an education is narrowing children’s futures, not expanding them.

Continued in the Complete Report.

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