Remember, the public K–12 system remains largely within the purview of the states.

An innovation operating in parallel with—but independently of—the nation’s public K–12 system could capitalize on the largely untapped potential of the 50% now being left behind while significantly enhancing outcomes for the top 50%. With success verified through hard-number metrics, such an innovation could ignite one of the greatest socioeconomic transformations in human capital ever achieved in the United States—or the modern world.

Yes. The United States ranks far lower in K–12 education among industrialized nations than many Americans might expect—and yet, families around the world make significant sacrifices to send their children to the United States to attend high-performing public and private K–12 schools, as well as high-performing U.S. colleges and universities.

One reason is that those families do not select schools at random. They examine the available data. Further, they recognize that many public K–12 schools appear to perform as well as—or better than—private schools, even though public schools generally do not select students based on academic performance. Moreover, many of the highest-performing students in public schools might also rank among the top students in the nation’s highest-performing private schools.

Consider the following observations from the World Population Review (WPR) article, juxtaposed with accompanying HSe4Metrics counterpoints. Those counterpoints may also reflect the perspective of families around the world—namely, that the U.S. public K–12 education system is exceptional and strong and is described throughout this explainer site as a windfall opportunity. Yet as those families may also recognize, some U.S. students participate fully in that opportunity, while others participate very little.

Countries with the Best Education Systems

• WPR point: Denmark (100.0), Sweden (99.9), United Kingdom (96.8), and Finland (96.6) rank as having the best education systems in the world.
• ⃝Counterpoint by HSe4Metrics: Absent from the article’s statistics are factors such as a country’s population, geographic scale, and relative per capita income—all highly relevant to K–12 student performance outcomes in both the United States and the 30 countries ranking ahead of it. These are among the determinants this HSe4Metrics explainer site is intended to address and overcome for the United States.
• WPR point: Top-ranked countries typically combine strong early childhood education, well-trained teachers, and more equitable school systems, all of which enable stronger and more consistent student outcomes on international benchmarks.
• ⃝Counterpoint by HSe4Metrics: At first glance, this conclusion may seem automatic and logical. However, a country credited with a superior K–12 system may be no different from a U.S. state taking credit for its K-12 system consistently outperforming other states. (To see the “Elephant in the Room,” click U.S. Department of Education and scroll to the subtitle “The elephant in the room.”)
  
  

Countries with the Worst Education Systems

• WPR point: Cambodia (1.0), El Salvador (1.0), Myanmar (0.8), and Honduras (0.6) rank as having the worst education systems in the world.
• Lower-ranked countries often face challenges such as limited access to schooling, lower literacy rates, underfunded education systems, and barriers to consistent student attendance and completion.
• ⃝Counterpoint by HSe4Metrics: Yes, these rankings reflect some of the worst conditions imaginable, but among the cited “challenges” and “barriers to consistent student attendance” may be commonplace threats to physical safety while traveling to and from school—factors that may have little to do with the quality of the K–12 system being ranked.
  
  

Where Does the US Rank in Education? (The final WPR article question)

• WPR point: The United States ranks 12th globally in education—an overall ranking that combines its 31st-place K–12 standing with its stronger higher-education results.
• Counterpoint by HSe4Metrics: Yes, the 30 countries ranking ahead of the United States in K–12 education may demonstrate stronger aggregate student outcomes. However, as this HSe4Metrics explainer site suggests, do those averages necessarily establish that their educational systems are superior?
  
• WPR point: The United States performs well in higher-education quality and research output. However, compared with top-ranked countries, it lags in overall system efficiency, cost, and consistency of K–12 outcomes.
• Counterpoint by HSe4Metrics: Again, the observation is valid. However, the “overall system efficiency, cost, and consistency” of the U.S. K–12 system—as imperfect as it may be—might be viewed with awe when one recognizes that its national student-performance results represent an all-in average across 50 independent and highly dissimilar states. Within and among those states exists an extraordinarily wide range of family cultures, educational values, economic conditions, and student backgrounds.
  
  

Obvious questions: Would the education systems of the countries ranking higher than the United States produce the same results if implemented at U.S. scale and required to address the same challenges facing the United States? Or would those systems struggle—perhaps even fragment—under those conditions?

So, what does the global community see when contemplating the U.S. K-12 system? Extreme variance in K-12 student participation. 

As demonstrated by NAEP assessments in reading and math, nearly 50% of U.S. students in the K–12 pipeline do not meaningfully participate in America’s extraordinary K–12 learning opportunity. Even among those who meet minimum proficiency—often just barely—their participation and performance frequently falls well below their true talent and potential.

As other industrialized nations may observe, it is this “subpar” participation by U.S. students that skews both domestic outcomes (e.g., NAEP) and international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS.

These nations note a striking disparity: one school in a U.S. community may rank among the highest performers nationally, while another school just miles away ranks among the lowest. The underperforming school may be of similar age, possess (or may once have possessed) comparable institutional resources, and serve students with similar potential. The gap in outcomes is vast; the difference in students is not. The difference is participation.

One final observation: Other industrialized nations may be struck by the sheer scale of the U.S. K–12 education system. It spans a vast geographic area, serves an extraordinarily diverse and non-monolithic population, includes students from every background, and—unlike many systems abroad—does not engage in selective filtering.

Do not reflexively conclude that the United States’ ranking of 31st means that 30 other K–12 education systems are inherently superior.

Do not rashly modify the U.S. K–12 system—arguably one of the most resilient and inclusive education systems in the world. Whether it should also be considered the Best in the World is obscured by the large cohort of K–12 students who do not fully participate. This explainer site offers a potential solution to that challenge: the HSe4Metrics platform.

Do not hastily impose administrative programs such as No Child Left Behind, or otherwise distract from—or add to the burdens placed upon—the nation’s dedicated teachers.

Instead, consider this: a competent and powerful U.S. public K–12 education system is already in place.

To unleash the public K–12 system’s full potential for all students—without disrupting the system itself—Congress can re-legislate the U.S. Department of Education (click link) and expressly establish a culture of innovation within the agency. At the same time, Congress can direct the Department to implement and test the HSe4Metrics platform.