Treating states as countries, education-wise

by David Safier

When the U.S. is compared to other countries in terms of education, it's always the U.S. vs. Finland, the U.S. vs. Sweden, and so on. And we always come out on the losing end.

But you know, some of our states have similar populations to European countries. So why not disaggregate our states, or groups of states, into countries?

When you do that, Massachusetts, population 6.5 million, holds its own with countries of similar population size like Sweden (9.5 million), Finland (5.3 million) and Norway (4.8 million). Massachussetts regularly scores in the top 5 to 10 "countries" on international tests of math and science.

Southern states tend to have smaller populations, so we can create a good sized country out of Mississippi (3 million), Alabama (4.7 million) and Louisiana (4.5 million). That southern-American "country" ranks very, very poorly in any international comparison.

The article that spurred this thought today was one ranking science education in the U.S. on the Science and Engineering Readiness Index (SERI).

Top 5: Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York.

Bottom 6: Arizona (number 45), New Mexico, Alabama, Lousiana, West Virginia and at rock bottom, Mississippi.

So when we talk about what's wrong with education in this country, when we say how we're not competitive with other countries, we should pull the data apart and see in which states and regions we're doing well on international comparisons and where we're doing poorly. That kind of study would yield far more valuable data.