"U.S. teenagers have now fallen behind their counterparts in Ireland, Poland and even Vietnam in math and science." — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during a speech May 12 at the Manhattan Institute
"U.S. teenagers have now fallen behind their counterparts in Ireland, Poland and even Vietnam in math and science." — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during a speech May 12 at the Manhattan Institute
One part of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s resume sets him apart from many of the other potential Republican presidential contenders: a long-standing focus on education policy.
As he travels across the country giving speeches — and titillating political journalists and donors — Bush has highlighted some of the education policies he advocated as governor, which relied heavily on achievement benchmarks, and chastised those who resisted.
Bush likes to remind audiences how far Florida came on education benchmarks and how far the nation still has to go to raise its standards.
During a May 12 speech at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Bush said the U.S. lags behind other countries — including some unexpected nations — on some key educational measures.
“There is nothing more critical to our long-term economic security than a wholesale transformation of our education system,” Bush said. “The latest results from the Program for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, only confirm the urgency of our charge.”
He continued, “U.S. teenagers have now fallen behind their counterparts in Ireland, Poland and even Vietnam in math and science. Between 2003 and 2012, the United States flat-lined its results, but many other countries have made a command focus on this. … There have been more resources placed in this, and they have higher expectations of their children, and they have gotten a better result. So for those that think … poverty is the reason why we haven’t had the educational gains, I guess we should really look to the wealthy countries like Vietnam to determine whether we should be successful. Come on!”
We thought we’d check whether Bush was correct that teenagers in Ireland, Poland and Vietnam rank higher than their U.S. counterparts in math and science.
International comparison data
Bush cited the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, which includes every country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — a group of advanced industrialized nations — as well as some other countries. For the United States and the countries Bush cited, the data include students at both public and private schools.
PISA compares 15-year-olds from more than 60 countries in math, science and reading every three years. The study rates students’ levels of proficiency between 1 and 6 — with 6 being the highest.
Nine percent of U.S. teenagers achieved the PISA math proficiency level 5 or higher, while in Poland it was 17 percent, Vietnam 13 percent and Ireland 11 percent.
In science, 7 percent of U.S. teenagers achieved the PISA science proficiency level 5 or higher. In Poland and Ireland, 11 percent of teenagers hit that mark. In Vietnam, however, the percent hitting that proficiency level was 8. That’s just one point above the United States, a level that’s not considered “measurably different,” according to a research analyst at the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducts the test in the U.S.
Education experts weigh in on PISA
We sent Bush’s claim to a few education experts and asked whether they had any concerns about the PISA evaluations or Bush’s interpretations of the data.
“Unfortunately (for the country), he is dead right,” said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University who co-wrote a book that includes a discussion of how such international test results are related to economic growth. “I am convinced that it is a good index of important skills, particularly the math and science scores.”
University of Iowa education professor David Bills said, “The big question for me is that the distribution in the U.S. is so different than the countries we’re being compared with. The U.S. just tolerates a lot of really low achievement, overwhelmingly among poorer kids.” While top U.S. students are internationally competitive, “relative to other countries we badly underinvest in poor kids,” Bills said. “That tends to bring the overall mean down, mainly because U.S. scores are just much more skewed than they are elsewhere.”
PISA does have its critics, though, and much of the criticism has focused on either a general backlash against the “escalation of testing” or debate about whether PISA’s No. 1 ranking of China stems from its focus on Shanghai, a comparatively wealthy city.
Yong Zhao, a University of Oregon education professor, has written several posts critical of PISA on his blog, “Numbers can lie,” saying the comparison “glorifies educational authoritarianism.”
Zhao told PolitiFact that the statistics cited by Bush are correct. But he said Bush’s statement that U.S. teenagers “have now fallen behind” counterparts in Ireland, Poland and Vietnam is misleading.
“The U.S. PISA rankings were below Ireland and Poland in 2003, and Vietnam did not participate until 2012,” he said. “So the U.S. has not fallen behind. … in terms of international test scores, the U.S. has always had poor performance, behind many countries.”
Our ruling
Bush said “U.S. teenagers have now fallen behind their counterparts in Ireland, Poland and even Vietnam in math and science.”
Bush correctly cites data from PISA showing the United States trails those three countries. But it’s not so much that the United States has “fallen behind” — the U.S. has been behind Ireland and Poland for years, and Vietnam was first tested in 2012.
On balance, we rate the claim Mostly True.
About the Author
