Comparing a heterogeneous group to homogeneous groups, in three charts. Broken out, America doesn't look so bad:

http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is...

It's only decline if the US is doing worse than it did in the past. But this data seems to be a single snapshot. It would be good if someone could find past results and see if there has actually been a decline.

A lot of this feels like measuring the results of education with standardized tests. Do they ultimately correlate to economic output/GDP? How does the US maintain it's current level of economic output if it's so stupid?

Maybe it doesn't hurt economically that larger chunks of the population are dumber in the US. Less intellectual competition might allow the best companies/players to rise to the top and multiply their effects.

Study but http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argu...

Where did a large number of our brightest math and physics students end up? Wall St. Their contribution is well known. The US doesn't seem to have enough productive places to stick educated people.

Things they actually tested (or at least, a sample): http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli...

I was surprised by the quality. These seem like really good tests of general competence. This gives a lot of weight to the results.

I always wonder when I see charts like this:

How would, say, the top 1 or 2% of each of those countries fare against each other?

The author's literacy, numeracy and problem-solving ability seem questionable. Decline means descent: going from a higher level to a lower level, of which the article demonstrates exactly none.

The charts seems a bit strange. What does England/Northern Ireland mean? Is it a combination of the two countries scores? Did they both score equally? Why leave out Scotland and Wales and not plot the UK?

It looks like they're comparing averages from all those countries, when we all know that the population of the USA is largest. Even though the distribution might be different, the number of people that fit into the distribution are very different.

We have some really smart people in Canada, but we also have 1/3 of the population of the US. Even if our average proficiency with problem solving is 10% higher, we still only have a fraction of the people who are proficient as the US.

People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and more.

At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

The school system has two purposes. One of them is to keep the teacher's union going. Union teaching jobs are unequivocally awful -- less than 50% of people who get teaching certificates can bear to work in the field, left with student debt and no income to repay it. (It's a good racket for the union teachers who teach the teacher thought.) They get rapidly discouraged and burned out but at least they get a defined benefit pension... For now.

The other one is to kneecap people... Specifically from Kindergarten all the way to college I was taught that I could be bullied with impunity and never see anybody held to the account.

This normalizes bullying in the workforce, which is exactly what they want because they want you to be weak and controllable.

I'm going through this crap with my son. I went to a meeting with the superintendent and he was gushing over how much he wanted feedback from the mother of a "special" kid and how she was a partner in her education but he didn't care what I thought because there was a new paradigm and don't you know homework is obsolete and spelling too and how my input is definitely not wanted and won't be listened to.

And they wonder why people vote Republican...

It seems ironic to me that this story has been submitted to Hacker News, a social news website at the center of Silicon Valley, an extraordinary fount of innovation unequalled worldwide. American "progress" or "success" will be determined much more by the pace of innovation than by the abilities of the general population.

We were ever that great, or is everyone else just finally catching up?

I'm not sure if it is possible to conclude that America is "declining" by looking at three simple charts.

Regardless of the fact that American students are lagging in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving, America has a huge landmass with a vast amount of (still) untapped resources. Not only that, it is also geographically isolated from the so-called "Old World," which gives it significant advantages in terms of physical safety and security.

Does this mean America will continue to remain the #1 world-power? Not necessarily. In fact, it probably won't, as all empires inevitably recede in power and collapse. But if it happens, it probably won't be due to simple differences on a few graphs.

Every set of graphs must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not in that order?

Compare Massachusetts to all of Europe and then Europe looks like it is in decline.