In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development administered the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. The assessment evaluated literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving for representative samples of adults between 16- and 65-years-old in 22 participating countries. The performance of sampled adults from the United States was stunning. While they earned a problem-solving score that was slightly below average, their average score for literacy was well below the international average. The numeracy score was appalling, besting only Italy and Spain.
To better understand the PIAAC results, Educational Testing Service recently published “America’s Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future,” a follow-up analysis that focused for a single demographic: millennials. Millennials are the generation of Americans born after 1980. They make up approximately 27 percent of the U.S. adult population and around one-third of the civilian non-institutional labor force.
If our nation’s economic prospects depend on the skills, abilities, and habits of younger workers entering the labor force, then a future in the hands of U.S. millennials looks bright, at least on paper. The nation’s, as well as North Carolina’s, average mathematics score on the SAT is significantly higher today than two decades ago. Advanced Placement participation and achievement continues to climb. Most significantly, U.S. millennials are on track to receive more formal education and credentials than any generation in American history. According to the Pew Research Center, a third of millennials ages 26 to 33 have earned a college degree, which has outpaced the college completion rate achieved by previous generations in that age range.
Millennials may become the nation’s “most educated” generation ever, but the ETS report affirms that the quantity of schooling does not always produce a quality education. Compared to their peers in other industrialized nations, few U.S. millennials have adequate reading, numeracy, and problem-solving skills. In fact, it’s not even close.
ETS researchers found that only perennial bottom-dwellers Spain and Italy had lower average literacy scores on the PIAAC than U.S. millennials, and all three were among the lowest scoring nations on the numeracy assessment. U.S. millennials also ranked last, along with the Slovak Republic, Ireland, and Poland, on the problem-solving test.
But how do the highest-scoring U.S. millennials compare to their international peers? In other words, how do our best compare to their best? According to ETS, the highest-performing Americans still scored lower than their counterparts in all but seven participating countries. Perhaps the most startling finding was that U.S. millennials who earned a bachelor’s degree had scores that were similar to high school graduates in three of the top-performing countries — Japan, Finland, and the Netherlands.
Liberals likely will claim that the poor performance of U.S. millennials is a product of dwindling resources for public schools and universities. But the United States spends more per student on public primary, secondary, and postsecondary schooling than nearly any other industrialized nation. According to the latest international data available, the average expenditure across all levels of education in the United States was $15,300 per student, over $6,000 per student more than the international average and $4,700 per student more than top-performer Japan. Finland and the Netherlands spent an average of $10,900 and $11,700 per student, respectively.
As a nation, the most critical course of action is to recommit to instructional and institutional practices that raise student achievement, strengthen accountability, and meet the needs of individual students and families. Over the last five years, a number of states, including North Carolina, have implemented laws and policies that have begun to move our schools in the right direction. No less than the economic well-being of our state and our nation depend on it.
Dr. Terry Stoops is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.