The George W. Bush Presidential Center (in Dallas) recently released data on international student achievement in both reading and math, which you can peruse in an interactive tool, the Global Report Card. The report card compares 2007 math and reading achievement levels between districts across the nation and 25 developed nations. The tool does not adjust for differences in race, socioeconomic status, or other classifications; however, the tool is still useful to get an idea of how our nation’s students measure up against their future global competition.
How does Ohio fare? In short, Ohio’s major city school districts don’t stack up well at all against their international counterparts.
Among the eight districts, Akron Public Schools had the best showing, ranking in the 28th percentile in math and the 41st percentile in reading. Dayton Public Schools and Youngstown City Schools struggled even more by comparison. Both cities ranked in the bottom 15 percent in math while ranking in the 24th and 25th percentiles respectively in reading. Chart 1 shows how Ohio’s major urban districts fared in comparison to their international counterparts.
Chart 1: International achievement benchmarking of Ohio’s “Big 8” districts
Source: The Global Report Card, George W. Bush Presidential Center
What is more concerning is that these numbers improve (significantly in math) when these districts are measured against just the rest of the United States, meaning the country as a whole is continuing to fall behind other developed nations. This is largely due to the fact that many wealthier suburban school districts are not doing too well either. Chart 2 depicts examples of some of the high-wealth, high-performing suburban districts surrounding Ohio’s big cities and how they compare to their international counterparts.
Chart 2: International achievement benchmarking of select suburban Ohio districts
Source: The Global Report Card, George W. Bush Presidential Center
Considering that most of these districts are among the highest performing districts in their area, the numbers are rather unimpressive. Not one of these top-end schools ranks even in the top 20 percent in math achievement, and only one district (Ottawa Hills) is barely in the top ten percent in reading achievement.
After examining these figures, it is evident that not only are Ohio city school systems falling by the way-side, but the best public alternatives in the state are struggling to keep pace internationally, especially in mathematics. Despite knowing U.S. schools have been falling behind other nations for some time, academic improvement is still proving to be elusive. In an age of globalization and increased worldwide competition these numbers combined with lackluster improvement paint a bleak picture for our future. Not to be redundant, but if the United States wishes to maintain a sense of global economic and political superiority then we still have work to do.
This analysis originally appeared on Flypaper, Fordham’s blog.
