The U.S. Educational System: Can it be a Model for Europe?

This chapter is organized as follows. The first section gives a stylized description of the elementary and secondary education systems as they map onto the life course in childhood and early adulthood. The second section describes the persistent achievement gap between the races. The third section discusses some of the varied and widespread public and private responses to that achievement gap. Section four analyzes the present state of higher education in America. Section five examines diversity and inequality in access to that system of higher education, while section six presents issues of skill formation and returns to education. The seventh section returns to international comparisons as evidenced in the OECD, Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, and to the question of the relative quality of U.S. education. The concluding section revisits the question of U.S. education as a model.