U.S. Education & Research Statistics Compared to Other Countries

Don Vergano in USAToday in December 2010 reported on U.S. education and how it compares to other countries:

• 43% of U.S. high school graduates meet college readiness standards for mathematics.
• 78% of U.S. parents believe their children to be in the top 20% in math performance. That figure is statistically impossible as only 20% of parents should report their children being in the top 20%.
• 51% of parents in Singapore receive teacher advice on how to help their kids with math homework. In the U.S., the number is 25%.
• 42% of parents in Singapore use math tutors for their middle school children. In the U.S., the number is 10%.
• 92% of Singapore students “receive out-of-school math teaching”. In the U.S., the number is less than 50%.

The article references two reports, one called A Cross-Country Exploration of Math-Related Learning in the United States, England, and Singapore and the other called Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited.

The latter report, created by The National Academies, also mentioned the following:

• Federal government funding of research & development as a percentage of the economy (GDP) has declined 60% in the past 40 years.
• Over 67% of all engineers who received PhD’s in U.S. universities were not U.S. citizens.
• U.S. firms spend twice as much on litigation as they do on research.
• U.S. K-12 education is behind other countries even though the U.S. spends more than any other OECD country.
• “China is now second in the world in its publication of biomedical research articles, having recently surpassed Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Canada and Spain.”
• “The United States now ranks 22nd among the world’s nations in the density of broadband Internet penetration and 72nd in the density of mobile telephony subscriptions.”
• In 2009, 51% of U.S. patents were awarded to non-U.S. companies.
• “Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (computer manufacturing) employs more people than the worldwide employment of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Intel and Sony combined.”
• “Sixty-nine percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a degree or certificate in mathematics.”

To read the entire USAToday article, click on Report: U.S. parents overconfident about kid’s math. To read the original A Cross-Country Exploration of Math-Related Learning in the United States, England, and Singapore report and press release, click on Raytheon-sponsored Study Examines Global Math Learning. To read the original Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited report, click on Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited.