<p>Yes, Finland has always done better at the low end of scores than the high end of scores, although it has also done well above most countries at the high end. However, this doesn’t explain why their combined PISA score across all subjects is decreasing at the 2nd highest rate among all participating countries. It’s not an issue of just keeping up China’s high rate of score increases in recent years. It’s an issue of consistent declines in scores, in all areas, compared to previous years. Sweden shows the same pattern and is the only country with a faster rate of score decline than Finland.</p>
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<p>It is indeed predictable, but just as predictable is the tsunami of excuses and attempts to redirect the blame of an abysmal and dysfunctional system. The “powers-to-be” will again dissect the data in an attempt to compare the US post-controlled groups to the overall groups and pretend that the groups of students abroad are culled from different “groups” and exclude their poors and tracked students. And when the economic excuses fail, there is always the path of blaming our “exceptionalism” in terms of immigration. After --of course-- ignoring how certain subgroups of immigrants are boosting our scores! </p>
<p>The simple fact is that we spend just as much as the best spendthrifts in the world (Lux, CH, etc) and have results similar to countries that are barely stepping out the third world. </p>
<p>Our inherent self-esteem and demesurate ego does not allow us to accept that our education system is rotten to the core after six decades of neglecting to replace the well-trained and efficient teachers of the past and culling the new ones from the depths of mediocrity at “education” colleges. </p>
<p>But heck, it must be the parents’ fault, the lazy and violent students, the lack of attention! Not the system and service providers! No Sir!</p>
<p>Ditto to mathyone!</p>
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<p>The horror! The horror! </p>
<p>I guess we would not want to be in Finland’s shoes? Better to earn a participation award a la YMCA for effort. </p>
<p>In the meantime, one should realize that there are other countries that ought to be analyzed. For instance, in 2005-2006, the smartest students according to PISA were indeed from Finland and from Flanders (the Flemish part of Belgium.) Both countries have slipped slightly in the past six years, and they are ADDRESSING it by evaluating their “dismal” performance and reevaluating their methods. </p>
<p>The Asian countries have indeed progressed, but is that really a surprise to see a better performance on standardized tests … after they become released over time. Does it surprise anyone that students who barely speak English are acing the SAT Grammar test? </p>
<p>Or does it surprise anyone that those countries are making an EFFORT to excel in those comparative tests? Others, including the USA, prefer to denigrate the tests altogether or call them an unrealistic assessment – yes that other terrible word that annoys educators! Especially when such tests are measuring critical thinking and reasoning aka the the skills that befuddle so many on the SAT!</p>
<p>We test ALL of our kids, both the Harvard-bound and the supermarket stockboy-bound.</p>
<p>Many countries only test those in the university track. Compare US kids against ALL the Chinese kids, and the results will be different.</p>
<p>I think the simple reason is that we widen and widen the curriculum instead of spending enough time on what matters. There is no reason on earth why more time can’t be spent in the classroom on math, reading and writing. Yes, it will come at the expense of something but there is very little science and social studies taught in grades 1-3. When kids get to high school and struggle in higher math, we fail them and have them retake the same class during the summer or following year. Why don’t we just let them spend two periods a day getting through the math? So you don’t get trig in 45 minutes a day; how about an hour and a half with the teacher during the second period helping you through the hard parts and providing support for the homework problems you don’t understand? At our schools, there is an enormous correlation between income and higher math because a lot of the richer parents can afford tutors to help the kids through the math. I think sometimes we look for complicated solutions or excuses instead of the obvious answer: we could improve scores in math if we spent more time on it.</p>
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<p>Many countries only test those in the university track. Compare US kids against ALL the Chinese kids, and the results will be different.<<<</p>
<p>Repeating the same unfounded excuse does not make it become true. Anyone with a modicum of understanding of the representative sampling rules of the OECD test knows that the above is totally inaccurate. </p>
<p>For the record, it should be noted that the US performs equally poorly when comparing the top ten percent of tested students in the various countries. </p>
<p>In simple terms, here it is:</p>
<p>Q Is the U.S. ranking on PISA negatively impacted because unlike other countries the U.S. educates and tests all its students?</p>
<p>A No, this used to be true several decades ago, but is no longer the case. Every industrialized country now educates all their students, including language minority, special needs and low-performing students. Every country that participates in PISA must adhere to strict sampling rules to ensure the countrys results are nationally representative of all 15-year-old students. Indeed, the decision to test secondary students at age 15 was made in part because young people at that age are still subject to compulsory schooling laws in most participating nations, which provides more assurance that PISA will capture the broadest sample.</p>
<p>Xiggi, …lets look at Shanghai and China in general. Many students (of migratory families…low SES) in Shanghai are not allowed to go to High School as they lack “residence”. Instead they have to go to privates (mostly bad) or back to their home province. Mandatory education ends after 9 years, at about age 14…guess what age gets tested? 15 to 16. Many poor in China can’t afford High school, they drop out and enter the work force. High school graduation as a % of population is low in China…</p>
<p>Tell me how the OECD’s magic sampling deals with the above. China is NOT a developed country. Clearly we have issues in the USA, but I hardly think the solutions are to be found in China.</p>
<p>If you are upset about the inequity of including only a small portion of the Chinese population, then discard China from the results. The U.S would then trail merely 25 other countries in math.</p>
<p>Finland may have dropped somewhat in ranking compared to three years ago, but it has no gender gap in math performance.</p>
<p>Again, a newscast yesterday announced that China is now saying that children pay a very high price emotionally for these test results, and the system is cutting back on homework.</p>
<p>Gator, I never wrote that Shangai is representative of a country. It is not, and The Chinese scores are mostly irrelevant to the main issues of Pisa. I answered the post about “many countries” and did not address window-dressing reports as several of the Asian scores truly are.</p>
<p>And, I do not believe there are any solutions that remotely might apply to the US in terms of education.</p>
<p>By all means, lets aspire to be China.
[Be</a> Glad for Our Failure to Catch Up with China in Education | Psychology Today](<a href=“http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201305/be-glad-our-failure-catch-china-in-education]Be”>http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201305/be-glad-our-failure-catch-china-in-education)</p>
<p>Sadly, with more emphasis on STEM at the expense of the arts and social sciences, we seem to be doing just that.
[The</a> homework that never ends - CHINA - Globaltimes.cn](<a href=“The homework that never ends - Global Times”>The homework that never ends - Global Times)</p>
<p>Parents are making their own homework assignments, to " help" their child get ahead.
[The</a> homework that never ends - CHINA - Globaltimes.cn](<a href=“The homework that never ends - Global Times”>The homework that never ends - Global Times)</p>
<p>It’s interesting to read press coverage and online discussions of the results of PISA 2012 in the USA and in China.</p>
<p>Chinese educators and netizens are saying that do not pay much attention to the test results, there are a lot of problems in China’s education system, reform is needed (though few can agree on what kind of reform).</p>
<p>People in the US are saying the same thing: China’s education system is terrible.</p>
<p>They didn’t divide math scores by race, but at least for reading:
[Steve</a> Sailer: iSteve: PISA reading scores by race: America does pretty well](<a href=“http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/pisa-reading-scores-by-race-america.html]Steve”>Steve Sailer: iSteve: PISA reading scores by race: America does pretty well)</p>
<p>Which seems pretty good to me. Definitely not as high as would be preferred, but not so bad.</p>
<p>Edit: Sorry, they did do it for math as well: <a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014024_tables.pdf[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014024_tables.pdf</a> (page 22 denoted by the page num at the bottom of each page)</p>
<p>The scores for each country are on page 18 in the last column but it’s not sorted so I don’t want to go through them all. Admittedly, the scores do not look so great, but not terribly awful. A few selections but if someone wants to go through and sort it that’d be cool.</p>
<p>FRPL is free/reduced price lunch</p>
<p>Shanghai 613
Asian Americans 549
Less than 10% FRPL 540
Canada 518
10-24.9% FRPL 513
White Americans 506
25-49.9% FRPL 506
France 495
UK 494
50-74.9% FRPL
Hispanics 455
More than 75% FRPL 432
Black Americans 421
Mexico 413</p>
<p>This is a perfect example of (ab)using controlled groups to make a point. Comparing subgroups to the AVERAGE of other countries is misleading and intellectually bankrupt. To create valid comparisons, one needs to compare groups of students to similar groups. That is what the OECD country reports tries so hard to do. </p>
<p>In the end, it makes little difference. Perennial apologists will continue to spin the information and little to nothing will be done. In the meantime, in a way, I have to agree that the results of PISA are not that important in the US context, and I understand why people want to dismiss them. </p>
<p>After all, all one needs to do is spend some time talking to high schoolers in our country. Read what they write. Measure how well they do on reasoning and simple logic tasks to understand how … dismal they have been educated by the “system.” And, then spend some time talking to the “top” students (yes, the ones who ask if they should retake a 2300 SAT on CC) to understand how they got on top of their peers. </p>
<p>Actually, I know you know the answer!</p>
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<p>Chicken and egg. </p>
<p>There’s a huge difference in parental attitudes towards education, wider latitude allowed public high schools in dealing with violently disruptive students, and student attitudes between the relatively good, but mainstream NYC public junior high and the public magnet I attended. </p>
<p>Above-average academic achievers and genuine G & T students DO benefit from attending a school where their interest & acumen in academics is highly valued in the school culture, where there is little/no violently disruptive students to distract and create an atmosphere where other students & teachers/staff feel threatened*, and an atmosphere where there is peer pressure to not slack off one’s academics or to “act stupid to be cool” as is common from what I’ve seen at my junior high and heard/glimpsed in more mainstream American high schools. </p>
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<li>Being violently disruptive is one of the few things NYC SHS can use as grounds to involuntarily transfer a student back to his/her zoned neighborhood high school when I attended.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>Most public schools have to keep such students in the classrooms to the detriment of their classmates and teachers/staff. This applies even to well-off suburban systems as one computer client found when his granddaughter’s school system spent time and taxpayer money to keep a violent student in the school even after he was convicted twice of stalked and assaulted and was deemed too dangerous to be kept in the regular school population by two court rulings.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this has been covered up the thread. I read somewhere that the US average is not really the average of all states in the US but the average of MA, CT and FL only because those are the only states that participated in PISA. True? Of course, it’s still a larger area with a much more diversified population than Shanghai. Maybe we shouldn’t focus on where we are relative to others but rather be a little more ambitious about where we should be in absolute terms.</p>
<p>I think MA, CT and FL were sampled individually so they could get their own scores. The US was sampled nation-wide.The MA, CT and FL samples are NOT part of the US scores.
[Program</a> for International Student Assessment (PISA): 2012 Results - Methodology and Technical Notes - Sampling and Data Collection in the United States](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_9b.asp]Program”>Program for International Student Assessment (PISA): 2012 Results -Methodology and Technical Notes - Sampling and Data Collection in the United States)</p>
<p>^Yes. Here were the average math scores for the three states in comparison:</p>
<p>
Massachusetts 514
Connecticut 506
OECD average 494
US average 481
Florida 467
</p>
<p>If Massachusetts were a country, it would rank close to Germany, or roughly 8th in math performance, ignoring China and Chinese territories.</p>
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<p>I’d like to but I can’t. I don’t have the data for it. This is the closest I have. </p>
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<p>Are they really trying? We can see from the US data that clearly race and poverty are factors, but they refuse to break down any other country by race or poverty?</p>
<p>I will fully admit that you can’t compare a single racial group to the UK, Canada, or Mexico in any meaningful way, and I never tried to imply it. But looking solely at the average in each country certainly isn’t very helpful either.</p>