Fiddling

It was a little strange to be sitting in the Mayflower Hotel this morning listening to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings say that "Rome is burning!" with respect to American educational outcomes when Wall Street really does seem to be burning, but these events get scheduled far in advance and her larger point that perpetual achievement shortfalls and large socio-economic educational disparities will seriously weaken American competitiveness is sound. The topic is always a little tricky to talk about, though, given America's pre-eminent global economic standing and unique combination of size and educational attainment.  Given that, politicians tend to pick which dimension happens to be convenient for their argument. So last week Barack Obama lamented the growth in the overall number of PhDs in China and India compared to declining U.S. numbers, while this morning Secretary Spellings noted that we're "behind Denmark and Finland" in terms of the percent of younger working-age adults with post-secondary degrees, and both things are true. But it remains the case that the United States is, relative to other countries, both unusually large (third biggest in both land mass and population) and extremely well-educated, and it will be some time before India and China catch up in educational attainment in percentage terms--or, I imagine, before Scandinavian countries (or other small high achievers like Singapore) manage to bring their success to U.S.-size scale. (One of) our big economic advantages is enjoying the advantages of high absolute numbers and perentages simultaneously. The more useful perspective, which really came out in Sir Michael Barber's lunchtime  presentation (note: American audiences can't get enough of references to Winston Churchill, George III, Charles I, etc.), is to focus on the U.S. position in terms of comparable learning results via international tests like PISA, because that gets you past international differences in secondary and postsecondary credentialing systems, and indeed this is an area where there's real cause for concern.