In public education, America has stuck with a 100-year-old model originally intended to churn out factory workers — while top competitors abroad have designed sleek new systems that mass-produce tomorrow’s professionals.

That conclusion could be drawn from a provocative new study that suggests American schools have been looking for reform in all the wrong places.

It’s not for a lack of trying. By the thousands, U.S. public schools have undergone overhauls, launched pilot projects and experimented with "best practices." Yet despite countless reforms, overall student achievement has stagnated for about 10 years, according to national and international measurements.

The National Center on Education and the Economy suggests that almost everything embraced by both the establishment and renegades, from smaller class sizes to cash infusions to charter schools, simply has not worked. Instead, the report from the Washington, D.C.-based think tank recommends emulating foreign success stories, primarily by expanding national standards for curriculum, administering smarter and less frequent testing, improving teacher quality, salaries and authority.

"In Singapore, beginning teachers make as much as beginning engineers," study author Marc Tucker said.

And there’s more: Pare down administration, and forget the spiffy new school buildings, textbooks and even intramural sports. Focus money on disadvantaged students and, above all, build a coherent, coordinated education system.

The stakes are high, as the study points out. The United States needs to educate all its children to compete with the best from around the world. "Part of the price paid by the American education system for being built on the mass production model is that we tolerate an exceptionally high rate of wastage. Only in our case, what is being discarded is young people," the study says.

At the request of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the study looks at Finland, Japan, the Canadian province of Ontario, Shanghai and Singapore, all of whose students score near the top on international tests. Over decades, all five designed and improved their education systems. The study looks at strategies of those successful systems, Tucker said, because it makes sense for the U.S. to bench mark the best.

That’s what this country did when it designed its education system a century ago, by borrowing mainly from Germany and Scotland. But in recent decades other countries have surpassed the United States in student achievement, educational quality and equity — even while spending less than American systems, according to the report.

Sherri Taylor, a parent at Hammer Montessori Elementary in San Jose, liked almost everything she read in the report. But, she said, "I’m concerned it’s going to be difficult for any changes to come out of it."

The report suggests expanding on the "common core" standards in math and English that most states adopted last year. In the five exemplary countries, national curricula also cover science, social sciences, arts, music and often religion, morals or philosophy.

Of course, not all those can be measured by multiple-choice tests. The report argues against computer-scored standardized tests — the kind California students take each spring — and instead suggests exams that assess students’ depth of knowledge and whether they can effectively apply what they’ve learned.

And rather than annual testing, the study advocates a system of "gateway" tests at key transition points in middle and high school.

In arguing against small classes, the study takes on one of California’s most popular reforms. "Of all the strategies available to improve student performance," the study says, "decreasing class size is among the most expensive and least effective."

Besides establishing a comprehensive system and curriculum, the U.S. could best improve education by boosting teacher quality, the report said. First off, move credential programs to higher-status universities, and stiffen entrance requirements.

In Finland, for example, only one in 10 applicants is accepted into teacher-training programs, which take five or more years to complete. By contrast, in 2008, U.S. high school graduates intending to major in education scored in the bottom third on their SAT college-entrance exams. "We cannot afford to continue bottom fishing for prospective teachers while the best-performing countries are cream skimming," the report said.

Once in college, teachers need to be trained in their subjects, class management and a host of other skills that new teachers often lack, the report says.

Charles Weis, Santa Clara County superintendent of schools, agreed. "Now would be a great time to increase the requirements for teaching," he said.

And on the job, rather than the adversarial management vs. union mentality of a factory, teachers need to be given the responsibility and autonomy to improve teaching and student performance.

"The focus on great teachers in the classroom is the thing you have to get right," said John Danner, CEO of the charter-school organization Rocketship Schools. Charters, he said, serve as a good model for moving forward.

But the report dismissed charters as well. As a whole, Tucker said, they do not perform any better than do public schools when student background is taken into account. And charters are small in number and influence, compared with Singapore or Ontario’s centrally directed changes.

"While we try to change things on the fringes,” Tucker said, "they’ve changed their systems."