FactCheck Sees Politics in Presidential Punditry

This from FactCheck.org:

Last year, the president [Bush] touted U.S. gains in education, saying that our "fourth- and eighth-graders achieved the highest math scores on record." He bragged that "African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs."

Last week, the president [Obama] said those eighth-graders weren't so great at math after all. He claimed they had "fallen to ninth place" in the world, and he bemoaned a high school dropout rate that had "tripled" over three decades.What a difference a year makes...

Whether the education system in the U.S. has improved greatly or needs great improvement may depend on whether a president is nearing the end or just beginning his time in office. In his final State of the Union address, President George W. Bush claimed student test scores had gone up after enactment of his education legislation. As we said at the time, he was mostly correct.

Bush said for example that in 2007, fourth- and eighth-graders "achieved the highest math scores on record." We noted that the "record" of scores dates back only to 1990, and also that Bush failed to note a decline in reading scores for eighth-graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But, in general, test scores have risen since enactment of the No Child Left Behind law. Touting those cheery stats, however, wasn’t exactly on President Barack Obama’s agenda last week when he spoke about education to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.

Just as Bush left out any mention of less-than-rosy assessments of the nation's education system, Obama didn't say too much about how smart our kids are. And some of his gloomy claims were just plain wrong, or misleading...

For Example:

• The claim that "our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past thirty years"? That's not even in the ballpark. [There was] actually a 34 percent decrease in the high school dropout rate.
• U.S. eighth-graders were in 28th place [in math] and in 2003, they had jumped to 15th place. Now, they're even smarter, comparatively speaking.
• The U.S. already has the second highest percentage of college graduates with a four-year degree in the world (30 percent), trailing Norway by a single percentage point.
• Between 1995 and 2007, average math scores of U.S. eighth-graders have gone up 16 points, while those of Singapore's eighth-graders have gone down by that same amount. In science, U.S. eighth-graders have gained 7 points during that period, while Singapore's have lost 13 points.