One of America’s foremost testing agencies, the Educational Testing Service, has released a new report that is incredibly sobering, demonstrating that adult Americans, regardless of educational attainment are, as a group, less literate with respect to both words and numbers, and less capable of solving problems, than counterparts throughout the industrialized world. Moreover, if anything, the problem has worsened over time despite the fact that the formal levels of educational attainment have risen. We have more schooling than ever, but are, relatively speaking, clueless about the most basic knowledge needed to communicate and make decisions in a complex market economy. We are doing less with more – “learning per year of school” is almost certainly falling with respect to the most basic forms of knowledge needed to cope in an advanced economy. Moreover, the millennials (those born after 1980), despite their higher levels of schooling (as opposed to learning) know less than their elders. To be a bit harsh, in America, the dumb are becoming dumber.
On to specifics. Looking at 23 cohorts from different countries (or, in a few cases, parts of countries), the U.S. millennials ranked last in numeracy (along with Italy and Spain) as well as in “problem-solving in technology-rich environments” (PS-TRE). The youngest examined, those 16 to 24 years of age, ranked dead last in numeracy (along with Italy). Even our “best and brightest” fared poorly. Looking at numeracy, the scores of Americans aged 16-to-34 years ranked in the top 10 percentile of U.S. students taking the test, the score of 323 was statistically significantly below the OECD average of 334, and even more below that of such industrial competitors as neighboring Canada (336) , Japan (342), or Sweden (346). To be fair, we were only modestly below France and England on this measure. Relatively speaking, the American scores are only slightly better (less worse) with respect to literacy or problem-solving. (continue reading)