Dive Brief:
- The U.S. ranked 14th on Pearson's Learning Curve 2014 report, which uses a "global index" to rank the educational performance of 39 countries.
- Leading the pack were Pacific Asian countries (South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong), which the report claims got there because of their pervasive "culture of accountability".
- The Global Index ranks countries based on two things: academic performance and educational outcomes. Pearson Chief Education Advisor Sir Michael Barber pinned America's educational outcome score and overall ranking on its low graduation rate.
Dive Insight:
Despite the U.S. jumping three slots from No. 17, it still has a long way to go.
Barber said that U.S. graduation rates hover somewhere around 50%, while the UK, which came in at No. 6, has a graduation rate somewhere around 90%.
While the scores are calculated using hard data taken from Economist magazine's Economist Intelligence Unit, it is important to remember this report is being released by an education powerhouse with many U.S. clients. Pearson is not a neutral party and would certainly stand to benefit from rankings anxiety.
