… math stupid that it made in it’s post explaining why the lack of adoption of analytics is NOT complicated. the doctor knows it ruffled a few feathers, but it’s not the doctor claiming that, it’s the OECD data (which is available here).

At least the doctor didn’t point out in that post that the USA is effectively failing across the board as it is below average in literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving (and significantly below average in numeracy, as we pointed out in our last article), that there should be no reason for this when the USA is seventh in the world in nominal GDP per capita (beaten only by Iceland*, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, and Luxembourg*, where the * countries are not in the OECD rankings), and that the USA could afford to have the best educated people in the world if it desired (and it could allocate the budget if it desired, considering the percentage it spends on defence is more than twice the global average, and that’s before all of the foreign military aid).

However, he feels it is now very important that he does point this out because too many Americans are heralding the budget cuts to the Federal Department of Education (on the basis that funding should be tied to performance, which is a justifiable goal, but the best way to do that needs to be carefully considered) without a plan instead of insisting that it be restructured to address the serious educational deficiencies or replaced with more state level agencies (where funding is tied to specific focal points and not allowed to be disbursed on whims).

To nail these points home, here is the relevant data:

Literacy

Country	Rank	Score
Finland	1st	296
Canada	10th	271
Czechia	14th	260
AVERAGE		260
USA	16th	258

(which is a 12 point drop for the USA since the last OECD ranking!)

Numeracy

Country	Rank	Score
Finland	1st	294
Canada	12th	271
AVERAGE		263
Croatia	21st	254
USA	25th	249

(which is a 7 point drop for the USA since the last OECD ranking)

Adaptive Problem Solving

Country	Rank	Score
Finland	1st	276
Canada	10th	259
AVERAGE		250
Slovak Republic	19th	247
USA	19th	247

I’m old enough to remember when the US education system was the envy of the world (even though the US has scored in the lower half, and sometimes the bottom, of the FIMS, FISS, and the IEA — which measured the global performance of the primary and secondary education systems across 12 to 20 countries back in the 1960s through 1980s), because, post Sputnik, the US poured money into public education in an attempt to produce the best students in the world to enter post-secondary STEM programs and become the best engineers in the world … and its Universities took prominence as the Universities you wanted to be admitted to (bypassing centuries old Universities in the UK and Europe in popularity).

Now it’s true that the US should have improved substantially based on this investment (which means that there are fundamental issues that have never been addressed), but just saying “it doesn’t work” and attempting to tear it down without a plan to put something better in place is not only unhelpful but sends a message to the world that the US no longer values having the best education system. I’m afraid this will have ripple effects on the popularity of US institutions, which rely a lot on full tuition foreign students to maintain their top-tier quality programs, and lead to further degradation in adult literacy, numeracy, and problem solving skills (which are now barely on par with countries North Americans grew up believing, partially thanks to propaganda, to be significantly below us).

For those of you who not only want your American-based companies to continue to be the best in the world, but also want America to attract global headquarters (or at least regional headquarters) of more multi-nationals, the sincere hope is that you will fix this. In this increasingly unstable global economy (thanks to natural and man-made disasters), the winners will be those with the best educated people who have the skills to use the best tools at their disposal to make the best decisions fast enough to survive. As a result, companies that want to weather the storms should now be more inclined to choose the Nordics, Japan, or Canada (which top the adaptive problem solving list with high literacy and numeracy scores, and don’t have the energy issues Germany is dealing with or the lack of local population that Estonia is dealing with). Now, while that last option is good for the doctor, let’s face it, for the past eigthy years, the market dynamics worked best when the biggest companies were in America and, through mutual trade agreements (NAFTA or USCMA), Canada supported.^*

^* Although it must be admitted that maybe the time of American dominance with Canadian and Mexican support has, unfortunately, come to an end. Especially since Canada is still “Open” on the Civicus Human Rights Watchlist and not one of the two countries that recently had their score narrowed significantly in the March 2025 update. While research needs to be done on the subject, when you consider that 17 of the top 31 countries are “open” and 11 are “narrowed” in terms of human rights and civic freedoms on the Civicus rating scale, there does seem to be a high correlation between civic freedom and average educational level as only 2 countries are “obstructed” and only 1 country is “repressed”. And while the repressed country of Singapore comes in high at #13 if you take the average across the 3 scores, the two “obstructed” countries come in low at 22 and 26 respectively.)