America’s miseducation system: IQ, teacher quality, and egalitarian ideology

The United States spends over five percent of its gross domestic product on education, a larger share than most developed nations. Yet, this immense investment yields disappointing results. According to national assessments, roughly 66 percent of American students are not reading at a proficient level. The paradox of high spending and poor outcomes reveals a fundamental flaw in how the country designs and delivers education. America does not suffer from a shortage of funds; it suffers from inefficiency, misplaced priorities, and an unwillingness to confront the biological and cognitive realities that underpin learning.

The prevailing assumption in American education is that more money automatically produces better schools. Policymakers have poured investments into reducing class sizes, building new facilities, and introducing technology. However, the evidence suggests that increasing resources have produced minimal gains in achievement. International comparisons show that public expenditure on education is not a primary predictor of student performance. Countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan spend  even smaller shares of their GDP on schooling yet consistently outperform the United States. The reason is not that they spend more, but that they spend intelligently. These nations invest in recruiting and retaining competent, high-ability teachers, structuring systems that match instruction to ability, and fostering cultures that prize discipline and merit.

American education policy operates under a mistaken egalitarianism that assumes all children can learn the same content at the same pace if only the environment is sufficiently supportive. This notion ignores a mountain of scientific evidence showing that intelligence is heritable and that genetic endowments play a powerful role in shaping educational outcomes. Heritability studies have found that around 40 percent of the variation in years of education is explained by genetic differences among individuals, with the proportion increasing as people age. These findings imply that while schooling matters, the baseline potential for academic success is not equally distributed. Selective schools achieve strong results largely because they attract students with above-average ability, not because of uniquely transformative pedagogy.

Historical research supports this view. In the United Kingdom, studies have revealed that individuals with surnames associated with high social status in past centuries continue to achieve better scores on national examinations such as the GCSEs. This persistence of educational advantage across generations points toward a genetic component underlying social mobility. In other words, success is not solely a product of circumstance or schooling—it reflects enduring cognitive traits passed down through families. Ignoring this reality leads policymakers to waste resources on reforms that cannot overcome biological limits.

Although genetic endowment establishes the baseline for learning potential, it does not render schools or teachers irrelevant. Teacher quality still plays a role in determining how much of that potential is realized. High-IQ teachers not only foster excellence among gifted pupils but also compensate for the cognitive and motivational deficits of genetically disadvantaged students, who have a higher probability of completing college when taught by intellectually capable instructors. Teachers matter only when they are above average in intelligence and competence; those of average or below-average ability exert little meaningful influence on learning outcomes. Despite the benefits of smarter teachers, the reality is that teachers and schools together account for only about 10 percent of the variation in student achievement, while the remaining 90 percent is associated with student characteristics

Comparative studies reveal that American teachers score significantly lower on literacy and numeracy assessments than their counterparts in countries such as Finland, Japan, and Australia. In Finland and Japan, teachers rank among the most cognitively skilled professionals in the labor force. Their average ability exceeds that of adults with master’s or doctoral degrees in Canada. By contrast, the cognitive skills of American teachers barely surpass those of average college graduates. This disparity matters because teacher cognitive skill strongly predicts student performance. A one standard deviation increase in teacher cognitive ability is associated with a 0.10 to 0.15 standard deviation rise in student achievement, enough to close about one quarter of the gap between the United States and Finland.

The roots of America’s teacher-quality problem lie in recruitment and incentives. High-performing nations recruit their teachers from the top third of the academic distribution, ensuring that those who instruct children are among the most intelligent graduates. In Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, teaching is a prestigious career reserved for the intellectually capable and socially respected. These countries recruit 100 percent of their teachers from the top third of the ability cohort. However, in the United States, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third of the ability distribution. The remainder are drawn from the academic middle and lower tiers. Predictably, the results mirror the inputs: an average teaching corps produces average students.

Incentives further compound the problem. Teacher salaries in the United States are uncompetitive relative to other professions requiring comparable levels of education and skill. International data show that countries offering higher relative wages attract more capable teachers and, as a result, achieve better educational outcomes . The United States and Sweden, where teachers are paid below market rates, exhibit both low teacher cognitive skills and poor student performance. Meanwhile, nations such as Ireland, which reward teachers generously, boast superior results. The decline in teacher quality over time also reflects changes in the broader labor market. In the mid-twentieth century, limited career opportunities for women meant that many of the brightest female graduates became teachers. As opportunities expanded in law, medicine, and business, teaching lost its monopoly on female talent. The best candidates now pursue higher-paying, higher-status professions, leaving the schools staffed with mediocrity.

Teacher quality not only influences achievement directly but also interacts with students’ genetic endowments. Research using genetic data from American adolescents demonstrates that high-quality teachers can mitigate the effects of low genetic endowment. In schools with better teachers, the association between genetic predisposition and educational attainment weakens. Specifically, a one standard deviation improvement in teacher quality reduces the positive association between a student’s genetic propensity for education and years of schooling by roughly 20 percent.. This means that while intelligence is heritable, good teachers help disadvantaged students reach their potential. However, quantity does not substitute for quality: smaller class sizes and higher teacher-to-student ratios show little correlation with achievement once teacher ability is considered. The implication is clear. America’s problem is not that it has too few teachers but that too many of them are average. Increasing the number of classrooms or hiring more staff will not fix the fundamental issue. What is required is a deliberate strategy to raise the cognitive caliber of the teaching profession.

Beyond improving teacher recruitment, the United States must also confront the inefficiency of its uniform, one-size-fits-all approach to instruction. The system assumes that all students can be taught the same material in the same way, ignoring vast differences in ability and motivation. High-performing countries such as Singapore have long abandoned this egalitarian fiction. At the secondary level, Singaporean students are offered courses at foundational, standard, or higher levels depending on aptitude. Those who perform well advance to more rigorous tracks, while others receive instruction appropriate to their capacity. The system is flexible, allowing movement between levels as students develop. This model recognizes that equality of opportunity does not mean equality of outcome and that treating unequal abilities as identical wastes resources and stifles excellence.

By contrast, the American model confuses fairness with sameness. In trying to make everyone equal, it diminishes both the gifted and the struggling. Advanced students grow bored and disengaged, while weaker ones are pushed through content they cannot master. A more rational policy would acknowledge cognitive diversity and tailor education accordingly. Stratification by ability, guided by rigorous assessment, would enable each student to progress at an optimal pace.

Reforming the American education system therefore requires a new philosophy built on three principles. First, the country must recruit smarter teachers by raising entry standards and offering competitive pay. Teaching should be a selective, prestigious profession that attracts the top third of graduates rather than a fallback for those with limited options. Second, schools should adopt differentiated curricula that align with students’ cognitive levels, similar to the Singaporean model. Third, education policy must integrate insights from behavioral genetics and cognitive science, acknowledging that ability is not equally distributed and designing interventions that respect that reality.

America’s education system is trapped in a cycle of good intentions and poor design. It spends lavishly, yet it fails to cultivate excellence. Decades of reform have neglected the simple truth that learning depends on both innate ability and the competence of those who teach. The path forward is not to spend more but to think more intelligently about how education works. Recruiting brighter teachers, structuring instruction around ability, and restoring intellectual merit to the center of policy would yield far greater returns than any budget increase. Only by aligning its educational practices with the realities of human ability can America transform its schools from bureaucratic failures into engines of genuine learning.