O n Aug. 16, Washington state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson told 1,000 educators in Spokane that our schools are falling behind. “That is worse than Sputnik.” she was quoted as saying in The Spokesman-Review.

But what do the data reveal?

In 1992, the National Science Foundation compared the achievement of 13-year-old mathematics students in the United States with performance by students in other nations. Taiwan was tops, followed by Iowa, South Korea, North Dakota and Minnesota. Twelve of the top 20 were U.S. states, including Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado in the West.

A 1998 report, issued by the National Center for Educational Statistics, compared 13-year-old science students in individual states against each other and other nations. It showed U.S. states would hold 14 of the top 15 places in the world if data were broken down by states rather than just for the nation as a whole.

The College Board News announced a most laudatory note in July 2001. American students in physics and calculus, who scored well on Advanced Placement exams in this country, went on to outperform students in the rest of the world. It showed dramatically that our best are clearly “at the top of the world in academic achievement,” Lee Jones, executive director of the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program, said. Indeed, Advanced Placement courses definitely illustrate that highly effective instruction is taking place in our high schools.

Three rather important studies need to be inserted here. The first is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a report issued in 2002 by The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The second is Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-8 Countries: 2002. The third is the recently released Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001.

The Programme for International Student Assessment survey focuses on reading literacy in 32 countries. Reading for Change, 2002, summarized some of the critical findings as follows:

“Finland, which led all countries, and the United States were both at the mean national level indicator among the more advanced nations.

“Children in the United States were among the highest scorers in reading skill, yet were among the “least engaged” — a measure of how much time they spend at it — in the world.

“No matter what country they live in, students whose parents had higher status jobs tended to have the best reading attitudes and habits.

The G-8 study, published by the National Center for Education Statistics, provides an interesting snapshot of student achievement in the eight most powerful economies of the world: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. Data sources were assembled from several different surveys, including the PISA mentioned above.

The study of G-8 nations is a virtual library of information about schooling and student achievement at various levels. A few items are selected to illustrate where the United States stands with its economic peers.

“In fourth grade mathematics and science achievement, only Japanese children were ahead of American children. (It must also be noted that in some G-8 nations, fifth graders took the exam, so caveat emptor.)

“Eighth grade math and science achievement found American children at about the median. (Keep in mind at grade eight most G-8 nations segregate students into academic and vocational tracks, but not in the United States.)

“The 14-year-olds in the United States lead the G-8 nations in total civic knowledge and civic skills. These same children reported that they would be “active citizens” and voters.

“In all G-8 countries, those who completed higher education showed significantly higher relative earnings when compared with those without higher education.

The PIRLS study, which surveyed 35 countries, found that only Sweden outperformed the Netherlands and the United States in reading literacy. It is also important to note that all of our students are being compared with the brightest of those in other nations — and competing very well indeed.

David C. Berliner, a noted education researcher and author, wrote last year, “The fundamental premise underlying the legislation known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is that the public schools of the United States are failing. But that is a half-truth, at best.”

The above data expose that “half-truth.” It is unfortunate that the Washington state superintendent of public instruction must resort to propaganda to frighten educators.