... international study of maths ability in the US shows how individual states would have performed if they were ranked against other countries, using the OECD's Pisa results as a benchmark.
The study also shows that privileged youngsters in the US, with highly-educated parents, are lagging behind similar youngsters in other developed countries...
"There is a denial phenomenon," says (Harvard) Prof Peterson.
He said the tendency to make internal comparisons between different groups within the US had shielded the country from recognising how much they are being overtaken by international rivals.
"The American public has been trained to think about white versus minority, urban versus suburban, rich versus poor," he said.
The outcome was a misleading sense of complacency about middle-class education, which always appeared to be ahead, he said.
Report authors, Prof Peterson, Eric Hanushek at Stanford University and Ludger Woessmann at the University of Munich, wrote in Education Next magazine: "Lacking good information, it has been easy even for sophisticated Americans to be seduced by apologists who would have the public believe the problems are simply those of poor kids in central city schools. "
"Our results point in quite the opposite direction," .
Denial?
US Social Justice Warriors in Denial?
Unpossible!
Uno