• Background
• Purpose of This Report
• Organization of the Report
• Data
• Highlighted Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• Reference

This report examines the elementary and secondary school system in the United States relative to the education systems in 11 other countries. This report also tries to connect selected educational inputs, such as teacher training and educational expenditures, to student outcomes, such as achievement and labor force participation.

The need to compete effectively in the international marketplace has convinced U.S. business, economic, and political leaders of the importance of understanding the education systems of other industrialized nations. Studying how other countries educate their citizens provides insight into the competitiveness of those nations, as well as a benchmark for comparing our own education system.

Data published over the last decade have shown the United States to be lacking compared with other countries in some areas of school performance, particularly at the higher grade levels. While U.S. students perform reasonably well at the 4th-grade level, especially in reading, mathematics and science scores at the secondary school level have raised some concerns. Subsequent to several reports published in 1990, the nation's governors established the National Education Goals, which included two goals relevant to international competitiveness:

• "By the year 2000, United States students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement"; and
• "By the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship" (National Education Goals Panel 1996, p. xvi).

Elementary and secondary education is the backbone of every nation's education system. These levels educate all persons from approximately age 6 through age 16, and for some students it is the only education they receive. Elementary and secondary education is available free of charge, and attendance is mandatory for all children of certain ages in each country discussed in this report.

To provide a broader perspective on these issues, the United States has participated in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Indicators of National Education Systems (INES) Project and several major international assessments. The latter include the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Reading Literacy Study, and the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).

This report attempts to analyze the role of elementary and secondary schools in preparing students either to continue their education or to enter the labor force and become productive, literate citizens. The story is told in four chapters, each focusing on a particular aspect of the elementary and secondary school system. Some trends and regional differences are examined within countries, and comparisons are made among 12 major industrialized nations.

The first two substantive chapters— Student, Teacher, and Classroom Characteristics and Education Resources and Expenditures— describe inputs into the elementary/secondary education system. The next two chapters— Student Achievement and Labor Market and Other Outcomes —analyze the outputs of elementary and secondary education systems. Finally, the conclusion attempts to draw links between the inputs described in chapters 2 and 3 and the outputs analyzed in chapters 4 and 5, and tries to answer the question "What matters?" Different contextual and financial inputs are correlated with achievement scores and education and labor market outcomes to determine whether certain factors appear related to these outcomes.

The data analyzed in this report come primarily from the OECD and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Countries selected for study in this report include the "Group of Seven" (G-7) countries as well as five other major industrialized nations. The G-7 countries are recognized as the world's major industrialized economies and include the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. These countries are relatively similar to one another in terms of economic development, and are primary commercial competitors with the United States. In addition to these countries, this report also compares the United States to Australia, Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. These five countries were chosen for several reasons, such as the availability of data, variation in types of education systems, range of findings, and the size and economic competitiveness of these nations as compared to the United States.

Across most industrialized nations, the range of student/teacher ratios is wide at both the elementary and secondary levels. The United States has a higher-than-average student/teacher ratio than the other G-7 countries.

Schools in the United States allocated as much or more instructional time than most other countries in terms of overall hours of education, minutes of subject instruction in mathematics and science per week, and frequency of lessons.

The United States had a greater incidence of child poverty than its G-7 counterparts. One-fifth of all U.S. children lived in poverty after the effects of government taxes and transfers in 1991 were taken into account, compared with just over 13 percent in Canada, about 10 percent in the United Kingdom, and less than 7 percent in France.

The majority of elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States and in most other G-7 nations are female. However, in Germany and Japan, approximately three-quarters of secondary school teachers are male. While it takes 15 to 17 years of education to become a teacher in most nations, Germany and Japan maintain more extensive mentoring and training systems for new teachers than the United States.

The United States allocated 3.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on elementary and secondary education, ranking below Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom, and above Australia, Italy, Spain, Japan, Germany, and Korea.

The United States had the highest per pupil expenditures of the G-7 countries in 1993, but was below all other countries except France and the United Kingdom in the percentage of current expenditures spent on staff compensation.

U.S. 9- and 13-year-olds performed at a level higher than most of their peers in other countries in reading, roughly the same in science, and lower in mathematics.

In eighth grade, boys and girls in the United States performed at roughly the same levels in mathematics and science. Internationally, where gender gaps did exist, they tended to favor boys in mathematics and science, and girls in reading.

Adults in the United States with only a high school diploma had weaker literacy skills than their counterparts in other countries studied. Approximately one-fifth of U.S. high school graduates with no postsecondary education were unable to perform beyond the most basic literacy tasks.

The United States has one of the highest percentages of 25- to 64-year-olds who have completed secondary education.

At 35 percent, the enrollment rate of U.S. 18- to 21-year-olds in tertiary (higher) education surpassed that of all other countries but Canada, whose enrollment was 40 percent.

Over three-fourths of 25- to 64-year-olds with an upper secondary education participated in the labor force in all countries studied, with the United States falling in the low to middle range compared to other countries. Participation rates for those who had completed upper secondary education were much higher than for those who had not, particularly in the G-7 countries.

Upper secondary graduates have substantially higher earnings than those who did not complete a secondary education. The biggest earnings differential was seen in the United States, where those without a high school diploma earned about 64 percent of the salaries earned by those with a high school diploma.

The final chapter of the report examines any connections between the various educational inputs and outputs by correlating countries' input measures described in chapters 2 and 3 of the report with output measures described in chapters 4 and 5. Overall, almost none of the measured classroom, teacher, student, or financial inputs correlated with any of the achievement measures—test scores in mathematics, science, or reading—with the exception of per pupil expenditures and ninth-grade reading scores.

Figure A shows the relationship between ninth-grade reading scores and per pupil expenditures. As seen in the figure, most countries are clustered toward the middle to high end of both measures. Because this report focuses on industrialized nations, the figure only depicts countries that have relatively high per pupil expenditures. No strong pattern emerges among those countries shown in the upper-right-hand corner of the figure. Spain, however, is an outlier, appearing by itself in the lower-left-hand corner. If Spain is removed, there is no significant correlation between ninth-grade reading scores and per pupil expenditures. No other input measure correlated with this or any of the other achievement measures.

Next, secondary school completion and tertiary enrollment rates are examined. Although no input measure correlated significantly with secondary school completion rates, one input did show a significant correlation with tertiary enrollment. Developed countries with high percentages of children in poverty, after accounting for government transfer programs, also had high percentages of 18- to 21-year-olds enrolled in tertiary education. The United States exemplifies this tendency by having high college enrollment rates and high poverty rates for children. Compared to some other developed countries, the percentage of U.S. children in poverty does not decrease as much after accounting for government transfer programs. The positive correlation of poverty and college enrollment may result from such factors as the interaction of government funding decisions, availability and perceived value of higher education, and the nature (e.g., public vs. private) of social service delivery programs.

Finally, input measures were correlated with the various labor market outcomes. One interesting relationship appeared between public expenditures and a labor market outcome. Figure B shows a positive relationship between expenditures as a percentage of GDP and labor force participation rates. In other words, the greater proportion of money a government spends on education relative to its wealth, the more students with an upper secondary education enter the labor force. For example, Sweden reported both the highest level of expenditures as a percentage of GDP (4.7) and the highest labor force participation rate (90 percent). Similarly, Germany had both the lowest level of expenditures as a percentage of GDP (3.0) and the lowest labor force participation rate (76 percent). Both the United States and the United Kingdom fell in the middle of both categories.

No other input measure was associated with any of the other output measures. These analyses lead us to conclude that very little of the variation in educational outputs can be explained through the quantifiable inputs most frequently measured. Yet, there is a wide variation in outputs among the different countries studied. If these measures are not related to student outcomes, what is?

Figure A.—Per pupil expenditures and ninth-grade reading scores

Figure B.—Public expenditures as a percentage of GDP and labor force participation rates for 25- to 64-year-olds who have completed a secondary education, 1995

Several explanations are possible. One explanation is that there really are no relationships at this macro level, as indicated by the research. Another explanation is that we are looking at the wrong measures. Another hypothesis is that some of these factors are significant, but interact in such a way that the significance cannot be measured using bivariate analyses. However, the limited number of countries precludes extensive multivariate analyses.

Another explanation is that we may not be focusing on the best measures. The inputs discussed in this report are primarily quantifiable inputs, and not indicators of quality. For example, no mention has been made of curriculum content, learning processes, or quality of teacher training. In addition, ways in which students learn (e.g., how teachers present subject material), the role of the teacher, the relevance of the homework assignments, or the kinds of activities in which students are engaged after class all relate to student learning, and thus to outcome measures. Studying these components of the education system is not as easy as collecting administrative data. Understanding these types of inputs requires a more qualitative analysis of curricula, site visits to classrooms, or interviews with teachers and students.

Few of the quantifiable inputs described in chapters 2 and 3 explain any of the student outcomes discussed in chapters 4 and 5. This is not to say that measures such as student/teacher ratios, intended instructional time, and financial resources are unimportant, only that they fail to explain large variations in achievement scores, completion rates, and labor market outcomes at the country level within a macro framework. Further multivariate research at the regional and school levels both within and among countries will be important in determining some of the effects of background characteristics on student outcomes. Likewise, a more specific analysis of expenditures—such as the allocation of resources—may illuminate where finances have the largest impact on student outcomes. For example, U.S. eighth-graders score relatively higher on the science assessment than on the mathematics assessment. Could the United States be allocating a relatively larger proportion of finances to science education than to mathematics education compared to the other countries? Answering these types of questions may help to explain the lack of findings at the aggregate level.

On the other hand, financial inputs and background characteristics could truly have less of an impact on student outcomes than curricular inputs and teaching methods. Other, more qualitative, measures may provide further insight into these differences among countries, but care should be taken in drawing inferences about cause and effect. For example, different teaching styles may work better in some countries than others.

Elementary and secondary education is a large and complex system. International comparisons allow U.S. policymakers to evaluate strategies that appear to be successful in other countries. However, further research within the United States is also needed to determine what strategies will be successful in our unique social environment.