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Samuel Skinner

Ms. Hunter

English 1201-507

27 April 2021

Why has the United States’ Education System Fallen Behind?

It is common to hear on the news or just in casual conversation that the United States is

being outperformed by Europe or Asia in just about every imaginable area. Most of these areas

of underperformance by the United States are not of concern today, and will definitely not be of

concern in two decades time; but education is different. Education systems form the foundation

that kids learn and grow upon. Education is a training ground where children learn the rights and

wrongs of the world. Education is the environment in which students learn about and prepare

themselves for the real world. Education will have a massive effect 20 years later, not just on that

child, not just on that generation of children, but on the entire country as they serve as the

foundation for future generations. With this in mind, it is concerning, to say the least, that the

United States is falling behind other developed countries when it comes to education. This slow

and steady change will, if not corrected, eventually leave the United States in a disadvantaged

position not that far into the future. This has happened because the United States falsely believes

that it is superior to other countries and as a result doesn’t respond to its own failures. The

United States’ education system has fallen behind other developed countries because it refuses to

adapt and learn from other countries’ successes and instead prefers to develop its own

homegrown solutions with mixed results. The United States needs to admit its faults and

understand that other countries are surpassing it due to its refusal to adapt.
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Every country has its own way of doing things in its own culture. Each country also has a

slightly different culture surrounding its education systems. These minor differences are

collectively called educational doctrine and one must understand that even though individual

schools can be very different from one another, if they share common borders or bureaucracy,

they will probably have similar education doctrines. While these education doctrines are wildly

different across the world, educators communicate with each other and share ideas about their

systems in academia. The actual structure of a country’s education system is one of the biggest

variables, so it is typically simplified to make their ideas more understandable to an international

audience. This simplified form has three schools: primary, secondary, and tertiary schools. These

three steps represent the general pathway that a student can take in any education system. In the

United States’ system, primary schools roughly correspond to elementary and middle schools

encompassing years 1-8. Secondary schools correspond to high school, years 9-12. Tertiary

schools encompass any education that a student gets after their high school diploma such as ,

college, vocational training, medical school, on job training, etc.

This system of elementary, middle, and high schools is familiar and recognizable to

almost everyone from the United States, but other countries’ systems can be very different. In

Germany, their system is very different with a system of seven schools (Becker 7). The system is

designed to have different schools that can educate students to their respective levels. The

schools consist of a kindergarten for young children, then a separate primary school that teaches

kids up until grade five (Becker 9). After grade five students must choose, with the advice of

their teachers, which of the five secondary schools to go into depending on “the skill-level of

each individual child” (Becker 9). This choice of schools is not permanent, during a student’s

first two years they can switch which secondary school they are enrolled in depending on
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whether or not they are performing above or below expectations (Becker 17).  The bottom three

schools, Sonderschule, Hauptschule, and Realschule, are designed for students with significantly

below, slightly below average, and average performance in primary school respectively (Becker

18-19, 21). It is important to note that the Sonderschule is designed for children that are

“mentally and physically disabled” (Becker 18). While the upper two schools are designed to

prepare students for tertiary education in the form of technical studies or university (Becker 25).

In short, their system is designed to make sure that every student gets as much education as

would be useful to them while not using resources on over educating those that would not

receive its benefits. If a student attends

one of the three lower schools, they are

required to attend part-time job training

until they turn 18 to complete the

education requirements set out by the

German constitution (Becker 8).  

Fig 1. A chart showing the possible paths

a student can take in the German

education system (Becker 10).

Finland is another European country that is often talked about when educational reform is

discussed. Their system is similar to the United States’ system, but it offers options other than

college for post-high school education. The Finnish system starts out by offering Early

Childhood Education and Care, which “combines education, teaching and care in a systematic

and goal-oriented manner” (The Finnish Education System). Its goal is to serve as a government

subsidized service similar to daycare that assists in a child’s development (The Finnish
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Education System). Once a child turns six, they enroll in a comprehensive education school that

serves the goal of giving each child a basic skill set in a wide range of abilities (The Finnish

Education System). After graduating, a student

goes on to take three years of upper secondary

education, with an optional preliminary year if a

student desires (The Finnish Education System).

This upper secondary education consists either of

vocational training or training for the college

entrance examination (The Finnish Education

System). After upper secondary education, the

system is similar to the United States’ structure of

optional university enrollment, with the only

major differences being that bachelor's degrees

are only three years long and associate degrees

are not given. (Education system in Finland).

Fig 2. A chart showing the possible paths a student can take in the Finnish education system

(Education system in Finland).

These differences between the United States, German, and Finnish systems on their own

are interesting to note, but they do not tell the other part of the story, the performance

differences. There is some debate as to how far the United States is behind European nations.

Some sources such as Paul E. Peterson, an author who specializes in research into education

reform, stated that in 2012 German students “were outscoring their U.S. peers by 32 points in
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math, 27 points in science, and 10 points in reading” (Peterson par.4). While other sources such

as the OECD’s international PISA assessment found that in the same year, 2012, Germany and

the United States tied in mathematics and science, with the United States barely surpassing

Germany in reading by one point (PISA - Report). When the tests were administered again in

2018, the results showed that the United States surpassed Germany in reading by five points, fell

within the margin of error with Germany in science, and fell behind by five points in

mathematics (PISA - Report). In both rounds of this testing, Finland out-performed both the

United States and Germany by about two to three points on average (PISA - Report). It is

important to note that these score differences have arisen since the year 2000. Around the turn of

the millennium, both German and American students were neck and neck. Nowadays, the United

States falls, on average, just slightly behind Europe. This difference is small on a per student

scale, but once these data points are extrapolated to an entire education system, one can begin to

see the problems.

In order to understand why the performance gap exists, one must think about the parts of

an education system as well as understanding what has happened in the past. In general, there are

three main parts to the dance of an education system: the students, the teachers, and the

environment in which they co-exist. The students are a constant, acting like a blank slate ready to

be shaped by their teachers as well as their environment. The environment of education has

already been discussed and there are no major differences that would fully explain why the

United States is behind. That leaves the teachers; the people actually instructing students as the

most important part of an education system. This makes sense; they are the people most involved

in a student’s success. They give out the assignments, coach students on how to complete them,

and then assess their final work, all with the goal of teaching a student a new skill or ability. One
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can see how important teachers are by looking at Mr. Peterson’s article again. Around the turn of

the millennium, both the United States and Germany decided, due to independent factors in each

country, that some type of education reform was needed (Peterson par. 1). The United States

completed this goal by passing the No Child Left Behind act, often abbreviated to NCLB, which

was signed to law and gave funding and extra resources to ‘the lowest-performing 5 percent’

(Bauerlein par. 3). Germany took a different approach. They increased per student performance

by a significant margin (Peterson par. 4) probably by increasing teacher’s salaries, without

increasing taxpayer expenditures (Peterson par.7). Germany spends on average $2,400 less per

pupil than the United States (Peterson par. 7). A primary school teacher in Germany makes about

$10,000 more than a primary school teacher in the United States (Peterson par. 6), while a

secondary school teacher makes about $20,000 more per year than an American teacher

(Peterson par. 6).  With this performance increase in mind, it is reasonable to assume that even

though German students receive less money than the United States’ students, focusing this

money onto the teachers, the people actually instructing students, has been shown to increase

student performance. This makes sense too; a teacher that makes $20,000 more per year has

significantly less financial stress making it easier for them to focus on their job. The German

system spends its money where it matters, on the teachers. in an effort to encourage them to

work better at their jobs.

In response to this resounding success, the United States has done the exact opposite. In

2016, Mr. Peterson said that the average U.S. student had $12,700 spent on their education

(Peterson par. 7), while in an article just two years prior, he said that the United States spends

about $12,000 per pupil (Hanushek and Peterson par. 12). It is unknown what this increase of

$700 in funding will do, but if one looks into the past one will see that “increments in spending
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per pupil between 1990 and 2010 show no correlation with changes in student performance”

(Hanushek and Peterson par.12). As a result of spending money in the wrong places, everyone in

the country is impacted. Taxpayers are required to pay more money in unneeded taxes that would

be better spent in other parts of the community. Teachers are hurt because they will never see a

single cent of that $700 in their paycheck. As a result of the teachers being paid less, students

will receive an inferior education.

This action of the United States developing its own solutions to already solved problems

is not an isolated event. The NCLB act is a perfect example of this as it only solves half of the

performance problem. Its full title is “An Act [t]o close the achievement gap with accountability,

flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind.” (United States, Congress, House, No Child

Left Behind Act of 2001 par. 1). The NCLB act does not live up to its title because it only

addresses half of the issue, the underperformers. It only helps those who are in ‘the lowest-

performing 5 percent’ (Bauerlein par. 4). This helps alleviate the problem of students that are

falling behind an education system that is moving too fast for them, but does nothing to help the

students that are performing above average and are having their knowledge capped by an

education system that is working too slowly for them. As a result, every country needs some type

of effective, national gifted program that allows those gifted students to be the ones ‘[a]t the

forefront of creation, invention, and discovery’ (Bauerlein par. 7). Other countries have

established systems that allow students to have education tailored to their specific needs, but

countries, such as Germany, have taken it a step further and serve as the model. Germany has a

system of five secondary schools that are each tailored to a specific demographic of academic

performance (Becker 9). While this system has worked for Germany, countries like Singapore

have done a more traditional solution with less options for failure, a series of tests that isolate the
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top 1% of performing students and give them special education (Bauerlein par. 2-3, par. 9). They

do this because they know, statistically speaking, the “top 10 percent [of students] likely has

greater socioeconomic impact than what happens among the other 90 percent” (Bauerlein par. 7).

The end result is that statistically speaking, “Singapore's poorest kids far outperform the

highest-income quartile in the U.S.” (Bauerlein par. 9). The United States hasn’t directly

responded to this, but it has created its own programs that allow high performing students to

achieve more in high school. This solution is called by inconsistent names, but they are all

classified by giving students dual credit courses for free or extremely inexpensive tuition while

they are enrolled in high school (Matthews par. 1, par. 6). While these dual credit classes are

convenient and challenge students in a useful way, they only exist at the state level in some states

(Matthews par.14) to put a band-aid on the problem of prohibitively expensive college. In this

instance, the United States did adapt, but it developed its own solution when that was not needed,

and the solution only helps some people because there is no national program for this. 

These refusals to use best practices signal that the United States does not want to listen to

Europe and others; it wants to go its own way and evolve parallel to them. This reactive policy

change is not a great idea as it means that the United States will be, at best, equal with, never

ahead of other countries. What is worse is that occasionally the United States doesn’t even make

any reactive change even after it is encouraged to do so. For example, In the late 2000s, Europe

decided to standardize its universities by focusing on increasing the “transferability of degrees”

(Kim 1)  from its universities while decreasing the “inefficient use of public money that produces

less than stellar student progression” (Kim 3). It accomplished this standardization by adding a

“credit-based system” (Kim 1) that allowed standards to be put onto commonly obtained credits

by shifting which government agency was funding the universities. This series of decisions
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seemed to work and had a positive effect on Europe as it resulted in a “surge in degree

attainment” (Kim 1). Authors like Kim warned that these changes would have “implications for

American policy-makers” (Kim 1) as they would serve as a point of encouragement to the United

States to try and follow Europe in improving their tertiary education systems. In response, the

United States made exactly zero changes to how its universities are funded. This can be proven

by looking at the simplified diagram that explains how universities are funded on both sides of

the Atlantic. The diagram explains the United States’ funding system as of 2004. Judging that

that system is identical to today’s

system it shows that even when

pressured, the United States does

not adapt to other country’s

decisions, no matter how effective.

Fig 3. A chart showing how capital is raised for the United States’ tertiary education system

(Kim 9). 

Some might look at these examples and argue that the United States’ systems do not need

to be changed because they have already gotten us this far. While this argument works in a

vacuum, it does not hold up to scrutiny. In order to evolve, a country must change what is

holding it back. The previous system worked well up to a point, but eventually it will reach a

limit where something must be changed to progress; otherwise stagnation occurs.

One might counter this by saying that stagnation isn’t a massive issue. This argument is

technically correct, but only so in the short term. Once stagnation is talked about in the longer

term, the situation changes significantly. In the short term, a little stagnation isn’t a problem as

long as it is fixed, but the results of it in the long term are not great. For example, at the turn of
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the millennium both students in the United States and in Germany “were performing at roughly

the same level on international tests in reading, math, and science” (Peterson par.4), but just 12

years later, in 2012 the Germans were “outscoring their U.S. peers by 32 points in math, 27

points in science, and 10 points in reading” (Peterson par.4). In this case the United States

stagnated while Germany kept evolving. This example isn’t un-fixable, but it should not have

happened in the first place.

The final point most discussed as a counterpoint is that gifted systems like those in

Singapore shouldn’t be established in the United States because they discriminate and give an

unfair advantage to those students that test into them. The answer to this question is a little

harder because gifted programs, by definition, create inequality by giving extra education to

certain students. But this inequality is not one that can be solved. There will always be an

inequality with education systems because no two students are equal. It is a better idea to provide

specialized education because then students can achieve more than if an education system was

perfectly fair. The United States’ education system already provides specialized education for

underperforming students through acts like the NCLB. As a result, it should try and be as fair as

possible and provide specialized education for high performing students for whom the current

education system moves too slowly.

The United States needs to change and update its education system. Changes do not need

to happen immediately, but they need to happen relatively soon as to prevent students from

falling behind. Just because the system needs to be changed, does not mean that it should be

scrapped and completely replaced with a system transplanted from Europe. That would almost

certainly cause more harm than good but taking some of the more effective parts of competing

education systems would be a good start. Most of the solutions that would have the most effect
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would be stop-gap-style solutions. Examples would be expanding the No Child Left Behind Act

to include high performers, making college more accessible for those that would benefit from

going there, and most importantly, understanding that learning from others is a key part of

advancing one’s own skills. The United States has fallen behind other developed countries for

that exact reason; it refuses to adapt and learn from countries that have proven themselves to

have better, more effective education systems that benefit both the teachers and the students

involved. Doing some of these measures on their own would have a large impact on the

education system but doing all of them and starting proper education reform that adapts from

others would have a great impact on the entire country. No system, education or otherwise, is

perfect, but the United States has all the resources available to improve and make itself as perfect

as it can get. It just needs to use them. 

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Works Cited

Bauerlein, Mark. "High-achieving countries leave America behind: it's time to stop ignoring

smart kids." Education Next, vol. 16, no. 2, 2016, p. 89+. Gale In Context: Opposing

Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A448138336/OVIC?

u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=cd94ae1d. Accessed 26 Apr. 2021.

Becker, Christian. The German and American Educational Systems Compared. 2005. Bemidji

State University, Undergraduate Honors Thesis.

“Education system in Finland.” Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2020,

https://minedu.fi/documents/1410845/15514014/Education+system+in+Finland/7c5a920

b-47a5-c3ce-cbca-818ff3a5f848/Education+system+in+Finland.pdf.

Hanushek, Eric A., and Paul E. Peterson. "Higher grades, higher GDP: the stronger the student

performance, the more prosperous the nation." Hoover Digest, no. 1, 2014, p. 75+. Gale

In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A373680614/OVIC?

u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=f6fc9ac1. Accessed 27 Apr. 2021.

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United States of America.” Higher Education in Europe, vol. 34, no. 1, Apr. 2009, pp.

65–76. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/03797720902747041. Accessed 26 Apr. 2021.

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Mathews, Jay. “Bored in High School? Try Taking Some Classes on College Campuses.”

Washington Post, 19 Dec. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/students-

dual-enrollment-college-experience/2020/12/17/87d7a5a4-3f34-11eb-8db8-

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“The Finnish Education System.” Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2020,

minedu.fi/en/education-system.

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Education Next, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, p. 5. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A441690169/OVIC?u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=472547f8.

Accessed 25 Apr. 2021.

“PISA - Report.” OECD, https://pisadataexplorer.oecd.org/ide/idepisa/report.aspx?p=1-RMS-1-

20183,20123,20003-PVMATH-BMREAD,BMMATH,BMSCIE-FIN,DEU,USA-

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Office, 2002 107th Congress, 2nd session, House Resolution 1. Congress.gov, 

www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/1/text. passed 8 Jan. 2002.