I think that is the story of the PISA investigation.
In 2000 it started with the intention to find the best school education system in the world.
Now they found that education and culture at home and in the neighbourhood is more important than school education itself to achieve the best results.
For those white American children, I wonder wether you can differentiate between succesfull parents or the ones that lost their jobs.
Do the children of the latter drop to the level of minority students, or maybe even lower, or do they still reach the level of the children from succesfull parents?
Because of the PISA 2000 model, which wrongfully favoured the Finnish model and was promoted by the leftists, the education systems in Belgium and Europe were changed for the worst.
I think the education system definitely matters. They've had to dumb down the SAT test in this country (the test you take at the end of high school which is sent to universities with your application), for more than twenty years. Part of what happened is that the kind of strict, have the basics drummed into you in elementary school which I received was replaced by a different system. The idea, spread by psychologists, whose studies, as we all now know because of the replication crisis, cannot be trusted, was that if you just make it all interesting, they'll want to learn. It's one of the reasons that I didn't pursue a career in education. I instinctively knew that was complete bunk. Most people, except for those with an inborn love of learning for its own sake, will do basically nothing if that is permitted, or at least as little as possible.
There's a bigger factor, however, and it's why, on these dumbed down tests, let's be clear, certain children can do better than others. That factor is genetics. It's been clear since all the identical twin studies were done. Intelligent parents will have intelligent children. It's as simple as that. The same kind of information comes from adoption studies. Adopted children match the education achievement of their birth parents, not their adoptive parents, no matter how much special tutoring or help they're given. It extends to income, as of course you'd expect. A paper came out just a week or so ago which found that eventually the income level of the adopted child reaches the level of the birth parents, not the adoptive parents, unless, of course, the adoptive parents leave money to that child.
It's a harsh and even sad reality, but it's reality nonetheless.
I'm not saying that some role isn't played by immigrants not speaking the language of the adopted country while at home, not being encouraged to seek out higher education etc. I'm just saying it's a minor one. I came to the U.S. speaking not a word of English, and my parents spoke Italian at home for a long time, but I was at the top of my class in English in a year.
One worrisome paper did come out last week or so about a drop in verbal ability and attention span in children. They're not quite sure what is causing it. I have a suggestion they should test. Study scores sorted by amount of time spent watching tv and playing video games. I've got a hunch there will be a difference. Listening skills are different from speaking skills, as anyone who has studied other languages will tell you.
My advice to new parents would be to stop putting repetitive shows on tv screens in front of your children, and stop letting them play video games. They're addictive, especially for boys, and once they're hooked you're going to have a devil of a time getting them off it. Delay letting them have them for as long as possible, and then limit it to an hour or so a day. They need to TALK, have conversation. Oh, and get them all at the table for meals, no electronics allowed, and actually engage them in conversation. A foreign language speaking nanny all their time out of school except for an hour or so is not optimal.
Ed. Let's be clear too that it very much depends on which immigrants you're talking about when you say immigrant scores drag down the totals. Every Indian immigrant I've met has been from families which were high caste, middle class or upper class in India, and educated even there. The Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong and the mainland who come are all from families which were high achievers back home. Add to that their work ethic and family pressure and it's obvious they'd do very well in schools here. The Vietnamese boat people, on the other hand, are on the bottom of the deck. As for all our Mexican and Central American and Korean migrants, do you think middle class people from educated families are swimming the Rio Grande? So, no, Razib, all those high scoring Indian children here are not a testament to how much smarter Indians are than white Americans. Everybody has a blind spot it seems.