''Imagine the humiliation if these were the Summer Games standings,'' the ad declared. ''Fortunately, it's only our kids' education standing.''

''The solution,'' according to the group, ''is greater parental choice. Every year we pump more money into our public education system, and every year the system gets worse,'' the ad continues. ''Until parents are in charge of their kids' education and can choose from a variety of schools, the problem is not going to go away.'' The ad is signed by a group of mostly conservative business and political leaders.

Several things are wrong with this story. First, the countries that lead the list are not noted for vouchers or other forms of school choice.

The top countries, according to the ad, are the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, and Canada. These countries did not achieve their standings through voucher systems but by generous spending on excellent public school systems.

Moreover, in these countries, the national or provincial government assumes responsibility rather than leaving school funding at the mercy of local property tax wealth. These countries, by the way, also far surpass the United States in child care and early-childhood enrichment programs, which make young children ready for school.

But there are other fallacies in the ad and the campaign for school choice. It's simply not true that funding for public schools has been steadily rising while schools get steadily worse. It's a slander to say that 90 percent of our kids (those who don't attend private schools) are trapped in a failing system.

The fact is that if you set aside funding for special-needs kids and other special projects, basic school funding adjusted for inflation has been essentially flat for decades. Indeed, the federal share of public education is barely half of what it was in the 1960s.

Moreover, test scores have actually been increasing, though not as rapidly as we might like. Also, they have been increasing during a period when we no longer send the bottom half of the class off to factories at age 16, but expect every child to get at least a high school diploma.

Another irony: There is one country on the list that has run a serious experiment with school vouchers. New Zealand, whose test scores are eighth on the list, did adopt a fairly radical parental choice program in 1989. The program basically allows parents the right to enroll children in any public school and decentralizes school administration.

But according to a recent Brookings Institution study titled ''When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Take,'' by Edward B. Fiske and Helen F. Ladd, the main result of the New Zealand experiment is greater concentration of affluent kids in good schools and poor kids in bottom schools.

Further, the very claim that American test scores rank last is itself exaggerated. Gerald Bracey, an expert in testing who has analyzed the various international test comparison results, reports that the rankings are heavily dependent on what fraction of any group of 12th- or eighth-graders takes the test.

In much of the rest of the world students are heavily sorted and tracked, with only a minority staying on the college-bound academic track through high school. Others are shunted to a vocational track in earlier grades. In the United States, ever-larger fractions of high school students now take the SAT and other tests.

Paradoxically, Bracey observes, countries with high dropout rates actually perform better because the tests measure only those who remain in school on an academic track. This is a concern of opponents of the standardized testing movement, who fear with good reason that more do-or-die testing will just drive more kids to drop out. Bracey also points out that even with this skewing, American kids actually rank near the top internationally in reading, just below average in math and slightly above average in science.

If we want better public schools, choice is a false panacea. There is certainly room for experimentation, and magnet and charter schools can help engender innovation within the public system.

But the real solution is support for good public education, with full funding, adequate compensation of teachers, and universal high quality preschool. Just look at the winners of this bogus Olympics - the Netherlands and Sweden.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company

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