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<p>Why being upset? That has not been part of our vocabulary when it comes to education. </p>
<p>That is why we are behind the rest of the industrialized world AND not receiving a good education. At least not an education as good as we think children receive. Of course, we seem rather content to compare to countries such as Slovenia and Turkey, as opposed to compare ourselves to countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, or Finland. </p>
<p>The performance of the United States is easy to track as one moves ahead in the K-12. We perform well to very well until middle school, become average to poor through middle school, and then the wheels fall off. In a way, we should be thrilled that PISA measures students’ perfomances for 15 years old. Since the longest students stay in school the more behind they get, it would be rather unappealing to measure high school seniors.</p>
<p>Again, rather than being upset, we will revert to the old set of apologies and dissect the data to demonstrate the researchers had an agenda or deliberately picked samples that would make “us” look bad. In the meantime, we still have our issues in Chicago, Detroit, or Milwaukee. </p>
<p>No reason to be upset, indeed!</p>