Last week I reviewed some sad facts about American education. In addition to the problems of dropouts and those who are "at risk," we're facing another major problem: We're only producing a very small percentage of students who can really do college-level work. According to reports issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 2.6% of our graduating high school seniors can write a really good letter, 6% solve a two-step arithmetic problem and 5% read and understand a short, complex article. And these percentages apply only to the 75% who are still in school and have not dropped out. 

It's difficult to make international comparisons, but 17-27% of the students in the United Kingdom, Germany and France meet the standards set by those nations' national entrance examinations and assessments, which are much more demanding than the toughest in our NAEP assessments. The problem this poses for the U.S. was illustrated by a front-page story in the April 18 Wall Street Journal headlined, "Costly Export: Reverse 'Brain Drain' Helps Asia but Robs U.S. of Scarce Talent." Until now, the U.S. has compensated for its failure to produce enough engineers, mathematicians and scientists by employing foreign students who came here to study. But now, many of these countries, like Korea, are luring their scientists back because of the improvements back home and the opportunity to be in at the beginning of major technological development. Many U.S. companies are heavily dependent on their foreign engineers and scientists, who in some cases constitute over 25% of their scientific staff In the future, the U.S. may have no choice but to produce its own. 

Why is the U.S. in such bad shape? Why are we so far behind other western industrial countries in developing top talent? It's not possible to pinpoint exact "causes," but it's easy to see some of the key differences between our schools and theirs. Here are some important ones: 

School boards vs. professionals. Only the U.S. has local school boards as we know them. The U.S. is the only place where a superintendent much face the school board in a public meeting every week or two and answer for any mishap that has occurred in the schools. It is the only place where the school superintendent must manage a system and try to protect his job by maintaining majority support on the school board. In European systems, although elected officials are of course ultimately responsible to the public, school managers have much more freedom to run the school without such direct and constant oversight. 

Testing. The U.S. is the only country that places such great emphasis on standardized tests. Some countries don't use them at all. European students spend lots of time writing essays and essay answers while U.S. students spend time learning how to do well on multiple-choice tests. 

Staff status and quality. Principals, teachers and superintendents are selected from the ranks of the college graduates of each country. In the European countries, college admission standards are high, which means that the quality of all their entrants and graduates is equal to our very best students. 

College Admission Standards. Students in European schools work hard. Why? Because it makes a difference. If you don't do exceptionally well, you don't get into college. If you don't get good grades and New York Times -April 23. 1989 take tough courses, you're less likely to get a job, or if you do get one, it will be at lower pay. In the U.S., almost anyone who wants to get into college can find one that will accept him. For those who don't go on to college, the only thing that counts with employers is the high school diploma -- not what courses were taken or grades received. 

Tracking. All European schools teach kids the way we do. The teachers give lessons by lecturing to the kids most of the time. What's different is the way the children are grouped. At a pretty early age, the Europeans separate kids into a number of groups. Those who can sit, listen, answer questions, retain what they hear and read and can follow at the fast rate what the teacher is saying are put into the top group. Those who can't follow as fast, sit still as long, or retain as much are given a slower and different program. A third, and bottom group, is given less talk and reading and more to do with their hands. In other words, the schools have three different systems rigidly in place; students are sorted out and placed in accordance with how well they fit the three systems. In the U.S., we don't like tracking. It labels kids at an early age. The labels could be mistaken. And it violates our belief that schools should be a place where different kinds of kids mix. But what do we provide for all these kids who are mixed together? A version of the same education that Europeans have for their elite. Not at the same pace, of course, or many would fall behind. 

Kids are different in many ways. Both Europeans and Americans acknowledge that. European schools take this into account by tracking kids - putting different kids in different programs and classes. American schools, if they want to preserve the ideal of mixing kids, should develop educational programs within classrooms and schools that allow students to learn at different rates and in different ways. But we don't. We just mix kids and try to use the same methods used for the European elite on all our kids. When it doesn't work, we slow the pace and dilute the content. The result is a system that doesn't work for either the kids at the top or the bottom. There's no way you can take the total range of kids in a grade and give them the same lesson and the same reading assignments without boring some or baffiing others. 

So there's the dilemma. You can't successfully teach a classroom full of mixed-ability kids by using traditional methods. On the other hand, the early and substantial tracking employed by the Europeans -- while it seems to be one of the factors that contributes to their superior results -- flies in the face of our cultural values. The only way out of this dilemma is to develop schools that do things differently ... ways of teaching and learning and grouping that will achieve results that are equal to or better than those achieved by separating kids by "ability."