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The National Center for Education Statistics released its assessment of young adults' skills yesterday and found American adults lag behind their international peers in numeracy and problem solving.
The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) exam revealed that the average numeracy score for U.S. adults was lower than average scores for 16 other countries, not statistically different for three countries and higher than three other countries. The assessment also found that when it comes to digital problem-solving skills, the U.S. average score was lower than every other participating country except one.
"In today's global labor market, companies can choose their workers from among dozens of countries. In this highly competitive environment, American workers are at an enormous disadvantage," said Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, in a news release. "First, a smaller portion of our students graduate high school. Second, even those who do graduate perform poorly relative to their competitors in other countries on the OECD PISA survey of high school students. It should not surprise us that the skills of our graduating high school students predict the skills of our adult workers."
