NORTH AMERICA


he United States has, for many years, remained one of the top international relocation destinations. Some studies suggest that this is due to the quality of life that can be found there, especially for families. However, in the 2015 Brookfield Global Mobility Trends Survey, the US featured in the top three countries with the highest rate of international assignment failure. It is clear, then, that understanding the education, schooling and family issues that assignees will face on making a move to the US should be top of the list of priorities for professionals assisting with a family move. In the latest HSBC Expat Explorer survey, the US came out top for lifestyle for newly-relocated employees. A high number of expats even reported enjoying new luxuries and experiencing a good quality of life – in short, they were living the American Dream. The survey indicated that the US’s strong healthcare and education systems played a significant part in its ranking in the top ten of the Raising Children Abroad league table. However, families relocating to the US looking for places for their children in state schools (known there as public schools) are first struck by how significantly the education systems and end-of-school measurements of achievement vary from state to state, and even between districts within the same state. This is because individual states’ departments of education are responsible for the funding and administration of schools.


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“This means that there has always been a huge variation in content and structure across the United States,”


Left: British International School of Chicago Keep Informed | relocateglobal.com | 183


says Elizabeth Sawyer, CEO of Bennett Schoolplacement Worldwide. “While some schools are teaching evolution, for example, others are teaching only Bible-based explanations of our origins. There has been no national exam like the French Baccalaureate or the English A Level with which students earn a secondary diploma, and, overall, no shared standards.


“This is not to say that education has been poor across the public system,” Ms Sawyer is keen to stress. “Rather, it has been enormously varied; while some schools have been woefully sub-par, others have successfully prepared students for the most academically-rigorous universities in the country.” In 2009, the National Governors Association launched the Common Core State Standards, to reduce the current confusion of public-education policies and create some level of shared education benchmarks across states. So far, 43 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories have signed up. The initiative is designed to reduce the disparity in education standards across states, districts and schools, but the jury is still out as to how successful the effort has been. While some states and school districts continue to


embrace the Core Standards programme enthusiastically, others remain sceptical. Given the historical independence of US states and a natural tendency to resist regulation by any one overarching body, it will inevitably take time for education to become more uniform from state to state, and for schools and districts to gain a sense of what the Core Standards have or have not provided.


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