Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove.
This post breaks results down by income segment and suggests that if you exclude poverty, the USA does indeed do great. Otherwise the USA as a whole is no better than average, maybe a little below average.
I have to say this agrees with my anecdotal experience of the USA. If you went to high school in Palo Alto, you might be having enriching experiences that even students in rich European countries can only dream about. Or you could be like the students some friends of mine tutored in North Carolina, who were not aware of what the Duke University buildings in their city were for.
I'm not actually knocking the USA. It faces social challenges that no other country faces, and often gets a bad rap from critics who've never even visited and think it's populated by sociopathic Randroids. But it is a country of enormous contrasts.
Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove.
It's trying to prove that US schools are just as good at educating European Americans as German schools are at educating Europeans. (Sanandaji also excluded immigrants from the German numbers.)
I.e., any gaps in output between US and German schools are caused by gaps in the input, not the school system itself.
This post breaks results down by income segment and suggests that if you exclude poverty, the USA does indeed do great. Otherwise the USA as a whole is no better than average, maybe a little below average.
http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3
I have to say this agrees with my anecdotal experience of the USA. If you went to high school in Palo Alto, you might be having enriching experiences that even students in rich European countries can only dream about. Or you could be like the students some friends of mine tutored in North Carolina, who were not aware of what the Duke University buildings in their city were for.
I'm not actually knocking the USA. It faces social challenges that no other country faces, and often gets a bad rap from critics who've never even visited and think it's populated by sociopathic Randroids. But it is a country of enormous contrasts.