Asian countries have been leading for quite some time now in terms of education compared to the United States. A report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in their official homepage shows that students in the U.S. who joined the Programme for International Student Assessment survey are low-performing.
Compared to countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, Shanghai and Hong Kong, U.S. got lower results with the assessment survey which had 12 percent of 15-year-old students with a score below the basic-proficiency level in subjects like Mathematics, Science and Reading. The Asian countries mentioned earlier that also joined got only lesser than 5 percent.
With all 64 countries that participated the assessment survey, the performance of students from the U.S. hit below the OECD average and much lower in the average of major industrial countries. What's more alarming is that the proportion of these U.S. students who scored lower than the average is also above the average for major industrial countries.
It has been reportedly said that there were arguments to what causes the low-performance of U.S. students in the assessment survey. According to a post from The Atlantic, the schools from U.S. does not count as a factor but the problem of poverty and minority is what affects the students.
This could be true but according to the data presented by OECD page, it can hardly be explained why countries like Vietnam and Latvia that are known to have lesser average income compared to U.S. have better-performing students. As explained in the same report, in U.S., students who are having issues in school are falling farther behind and losing their morale to continue which leads to dropping out and stop schooling.
What the Asian countries are doing, before even the student issues arise, they already have a way to stop or prevent it. The core of their educational system is the commitment to the idea that their students can achieve higher goals and greater standards. To make all the students high-performers, the school should not allow them to lag behind.
