<p>I suppose if all individual high schools were ranked worldwide, the US would have many at the top of the list. </p>
<p>The disparity of the education systems seem odd to me.</p>
<p>Fo example, Japan’s test scores for elementary and secondary schools are high. But their highest university ranking is 20. Belgium’s test scores are also high. Their highest university ranking is 41.</p>
<p>Any thoughts? If it seems like a stupid post, please ignore.</p>
<p>In america, nearly everyone is required to go to high school through age 16, and the vast majority receive diplomas at age 18. In many other countries, such as France, kids are split up at young ages based on scores from qualifying exams. Some are sent to academic high schools, while others are sent to vocational schools. Also, in the US, there are many more private schools than in the rest of the industrialized world. Children in private schools tend to come from wealthier households and have better-educated parents, so they perform better in the classroom. </p>
<p>At least, this is how it was briefly explained to me by a PhD student in the education school here. Also, I seriously doubt that the US is producing a lower number of top-end students per capita than the rest of the world.</p>
First, I can’t comment on the list in your second link because I know nothing about the statistical base. In the US, the standard of choice for tracking educational trends is the NAEP, informally known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” Participation is voluntary except for schools that receive Title 1 funds. Assessment is done annually in a representative sample of public (included in the state sample) and nonpublic (included in the national sample) schools. Here’s a link:
<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/</a></p>
<p>My husband is from India, a country whose students score high on those test. Not every child in India goes to school, however. And many of those that do are in environments so competitive it would make our heads spin. At our nephews’ school in Bangalore the bottom ten percent of the students were dropped each year. It didn’t matter if they scored fairly well or even very well, ten percent were automatically dropped. Everything is geared toward tests and class rank. My husband can remember his rank starting with kindergarten.</p>
<p>Agree with the above posters… it’s because we educate everyone. If you average in the less talented & motivated students, the average scores go down. Think of other countries as only counting their Ivy kids in those scores, while we count from Ivy all the way on down. Naturally, our average kids are worse than their average kids, but we aren’t lacking for the talented ones. </p>
<p>Just my thought, but I think our wonderful university system is a result of such educational practices. I know a lot of people who, if they lived in other countries, would never have made it far - their parents would have not put them on the college track, or they wouldn’t have shown aptitude early on, or they would have taken too long to mature. Here, people who do poorly in high school and get their act together later on can go to college, take night courses, get advanced degrees, and be very successful academically.</p>
<p>She’s mentioned it a few times… but one of the CC posters, Hanna, flunked out of high school. She later went to Bryn Mawr, transferred to H, and went to H for law school. In another country, she might have been done for after age 16; the top universities would have lost out on her talent. </p>
<p>Low “rankings” internationally is the price we pay for a wonderful practice. Thank God we don’t conduct ourselves like colleges in an effort to make ourselves look better! I cannot imagine how much our beloved “land of opportunity” would suffer.</p>
<p>So educating all types of children explains why our elementary/secondary scores are lower than countries that are selective regarding whom they educate. But why doesn’t India, Japan, and Belgium have universities of the HYP caliber?</p>
IIT Kanpur/Bombay/Madras? Tokyo University? While many in the US have never heard of them, they are without question “of the HYP caliber”. (Don’t know much about Univ. of Ghent, so I didn’t include that in the above list for Belgium. )</p>
<p>Edit: I guess your point is that these do not show up “in the top 10”. Sorry if I misunderstood, or told you something you already knew. I still maintain that the caliber of these schools is absolutely similar to the top US schools. I guess they can’t all tie for 9th place or whatever. ;)</p>
<p>Speaking as a 1975 graduate of IIT(Madras), while I personally think the interviewer goes a bit overboard in his praises, there are certainly plenty of smart kids in the IIT’s. The top 5% of the IIT graduates are super-smart, they were <em>way</em> out of my league. Hoewever, the quality of teaching was mostly average, with a few shining exceptions.</p>
<pre><code>But that’s just statistics in action. Start with a large enough population base in any country, and then take the top 5% of the top 1%, and you will wind up with a bunch of very talented people. For these individuals, the quality of teaching is hardly a factor - if they are interested enough in a topic, they teach themselves.
</code></pre>
<p>From what I’ve heard theorized, this is a result of our unique university system. Our universities, part private/part public and government funded, are much different from those of other countries. I don’t know too much about colleges outside the US, but I think most universities outside the US are public and very much under the control of the national govt. I think most Canadian universities are run by the government, French too, and so on. Even our public universities have a lot more autonomy than those of other nations, and our private universities allow for even more innovation and the like.</p>
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