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That may soon change. This fall a report on the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), commissioned by the National Science Foundation, will present a litany of unsettling findings on the quality of American public schooling compared with that of the rest of the world. One conclusion: the deficiency of America's average students is a major reason for the woeful U.S. performance in the TIMSS exams. Too many schools, the report says, "have sacrificed the attainments of more average students in an attempt to bolster the performance of better students." As a result, American eighth- and 12th-graders on the whole lag below the international average in math and are not even within earshot of top countries like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. "The other nations of the world don't subdivide children on the basis of content. The content is the same for ordinary, average students and for the very best ones," says Michigan State professor William Schmidt, the study's national research coordinator. "That's what makes all the difference."
What makes this trend even more troubling is its departure from the historic mission of U.S. public schools. Americans have always regarded education as a critical cog in the machinery of democracy. But they have also prided themselves on constructing "common" institutions that, unlike European schools, geared lessons to the middle and did not select elites early. Educators stressed that a program suitable for the best students was also good enough for the average ones. By catering to average students and preparing them for stable jobs, America's public schools would help build an educated, prosperous middle class.
But today that ideal of common public education is being subverted from within, as principals like Dinzle Adams, who heads Halls High School in Knoxville, Tenn., can attest. "We do a heck of a job with our high achievers and a good job with special-needs students," he says, "and it's almost like reverse discrimination against the average kid."
How did average students get handed this raw deal? Part of the answer lies in special education, which was established in the mid-'70s to cover physically disabled students and children with severe mental handicaps. And over the past 20 years, the ranks of another group covered by the law--students classified as learning disabled--have ballooned. In 1975 there were 800,000 public-school students (1.8% of the total) classified as learning disabled; today that number is 2.6 million, or 4.3%. It costs $9 billion a year to educate learning-disabled kids.