The OECD has also published its own first tabulation of these results, with much additional discussion, in OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills. It note that only three countries have below-average scores in all of these domains: along with the United States, the other two are Ireland and Poland. In a fact sheet summarizing the US results, the OECD writes: “U.S. performance is weak in literacy, very poor in numeracy, but only slightly below average in problem solving in technology-rich environments.”
Taylor sees this as an indictment of the U.S. educational system. I am not confident that better teaching methods would have produced adults with more skills. However, I am pretty sure that we could have gotten the same mediocre results while spending a lot less money.
Any comment on the younger generation faring worse then the older in in the UK? Tables on pages 103 and 107. Any link to Thatcher policies?
Ha the USA and Ireland 2 of the richest countries in the world. Why do we think these test measure anything important? Perhaps we should measure education by GDP per captita.
Comparing the US’s educational outcomes to Japan’s, Estonia’s, Mexico’s or Nigeria’s is useless. The better question is; do Japanese have better educational outcomes in the US than in Japan? Do Mexican’s have better outcomes in the US or in Mexico? Nigerians? Estonians?
And the most important question, do educational outcomes as measured here have any causal relation with economic outcomes?