The 400-Meter Race and Science Scores
August 21, 2008
In his last report from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, compares the performance of America’s fifteen-year-olds in science to the 400-meter.
In Beijing, three of the eight finalists in the 400-meter are Americans, including the two fastest qualifiers. But when it comes to scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in science, the United States ranks twenty-first.
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The High Jump Competition and Math Scores
August 19, 2008
In his latest video report on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, compares the performance of American fifteen-year-olds in math to the high jump competition.
At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Matt Hemingway brought home the silver medal in the men’s high jump. Unfortunately, American students are not faring nearly as well on international tests in math, ranking twenty-fifth out of thirty countries that participated in the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment in math.
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The 1600-Meter Race and College Graduation Rates
August 15, 2008
With a lot of the high-profile track and field events set to begin in Beijing, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, uses a track analogy to describe how well the United States performs in graduating individuals from college, noting that the United States was fast out of the blocks and a world leader for most of the 20th century.
Even as recent as 1995, the U.S. ranked second in the percentage of individuals who had a college degree. By 2005, however, several other countries have caught up and surpassed the United States, including Canada, Japan, and Korea. As a result, the United States has fallen to fifteenth.
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Basketball and High School Graduation Rates
August 13, 2008
With stars such as Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, as well as a roster of NBA All-Stars, the U.S. Men’s Basketball team is favored to take home the gold medal in Beijing. But imagine if the vaunted U.S. basketball team finished thirteenth?
In his latest report from Beijing, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, talks about how the U.S. ranking in high school graduation rates has fallen from first in the world in the 1960s to thirteenth today.
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Gymnastics and Reading
August 11, 2008
In the second video in his series of reports during the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, compares the performance of U.S. gymnasts against American students’ performance in reading. He notes that although the 2004 U.S. men and women both earned the silver medal in the Olympic team competition in Athens, Greece, American students finished a dismal 15th place in reading comprehension at the international level.
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Wise at the Olympics
August 6, 2008
Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, appears at the front of the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing comparing the performance of U.S. athletes at the Olympics against overall American academic performance in education.
For a comprehensive view of where the U.S. stands in international academic performance, please see "How Does the United States Stack Up? International Comparisons of Academic Achievement."
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