Published: September 26, 2008 11:38 am         

Area schools fight to keep up with world

International tests show American students falling behind other countries

While area schools fight to achieve state standards, they now find themselves being measured against something new — the world.

As the world becomes more and more globalized, Americans are increasingly battling for jobs against people in other countries. With the new competition, there is added pressure on America’s schools to produce students who are able to compete.

Some recent studies have shown that the schools aren’t doing a great job.

American 15-year-olds ranked 35th out of 57 countries in mathematics and 29th of 57 in science on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 2006 Program for International Student Assessment. The U.S. fares better in reading, but isn’t usually in the top ten.

It’s a problem that area schools are responding to, said Jack Gardner, the principal of Logansport High School. The school has implemented new programs to help students compete in today’s “global reality,” he said.

“We feel that there’s a lot of room to improve in the areas of technology, math and science, and we’re keeping our skills on the cutting edge,” he said. “Our eyes are fully open to the challenges that remain ahead.”

The changes include more use of technology and “greater awareness of the challenges,” Gardner said.

Schools across the state are adapting to the “shrinking” world, said Suellen Reed, the state’s superintendent of public instruction.

“We used to think, ‘How well are Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky doing? How do we compare to them?’” she said. “Now we have to think about the other countries of the world and how we compare to them.”

Current Indiana standards were internally judged against Japanese standards before they were approved, Reed said.

But the state superintendent cautioned against reading too much into the international tests. The tests are inherently flawed because of language differences, Reed said.

Gardner says Logansport students stack up just fine to the rest of the world.

“Do we think about how our students are doing and how we can teach them to compete in the global marketplace?” asked the principal, calling the testing issue “a very complicated topic.” “The answer is absolutely yes. But do we feel that we’re behind? That answer is no.”

To say Americans are “falling behind” isn’t accurate, Reed said. Rather, we just have different priorities — such as art and music classes, Reed said.

Another reason for the difference between countries lies in the culture, Reed said. Other nations simply put more emphasis on education, she said, citing the documentary “Two Million Minutes,” which followed Carmel High School students and compared them to students in India and China.

“We have to understand that many parts of the world are much more serious about education than we are,” she said.

A culture shift will go a long way toward improving education in America, the state superintendent said. She added that other positive changes include giving more credit to academic honors and a renewed focus on learning foreign languages.

How do we get people to take up the changes?

The low international testing scores might help, said Greg Grostefan, the principal of Columbia Middle School.

“It can be something we think about in order to motivate us to do better,” said the 3-month principal. “It’s a motivator.”

Brian Rosenthal can be reached at (574) 732-5148, or via e-mail at Brian.Rosenthal@pharostribune.com