Understanding Others, Educating Ourselves: Getting More from International Comparative Studies in Education

Summary: The U.S. approach to education is not systematically informed by experiences with education in the rest of the world. Since the 1980s, many calls for domestic education reform have been justified by citing large gaps between the academic performance of U.S. students and their peers in other countries. Nonetheless, the U.S. public has been offered little evidence to explain these results and knows little about the limitations of the studies that produced them. Nor have U.S. policy makers and researchers used the limited information they do have about differences in education systems in various countries to systematically explore these results. It takes time and effort to understand other country's education systems well enough to learn what they can tell us about ourselves. The task remains for U.S. policy makers, practitioners, and the general public to test and adapt these ideas in ways that can improve education in America.