<p>University of Helsinki … just one Nobel price … the scientist, who got it, worked in Sweden all his life …</p>
<p>
The PISA data explorer allows you to compare subgroups with common characteristics associated with wealth for different countries. For example, looking at just students from families who don’t own a car, the math score order is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Shanghai-China</li>
<li>Hong Kong-China</li>
<li>Singapore</li>
<li>Finland</li>
<li>Macao-China</li>
<li>Chinese Tapai
~36. USA</li>
</ol>
<p>Look at International Math Olympiad
China - 1
Korea - 2
USA - 3
North Korea - 4
Russia - 5</p>
<p>Finland … 67 …</p>
<p>Perhaps every HS in New York and Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Here is a website for a school district in NY under common core doing HS classes in middle school. [Enrichment</a> and Acceleration Opportunities - Shenendehowa CSD, Clifton Park, NY](<a href=“http://www.shenet.org/DL_CurriculumLearning/DL_EnrichmentAccel.cfm]Enrichment”>http://www.shenet.org/DL_CurriculumLearning/DL_EnrichmentAccel.cfm) </p>
<p>Here is a webpage of an 8th grade teacher doing Regents Biology. Regents is NY State HS level. [7th</a> Grade Science and 8th grade Regents Biology](<a href=“http://www.hflcsd.org/webpages/jbuckley/]7th”>http://www.hflcsd.org/webpages/jbuckley/)</p>
<p>There should be at least 3 tracks for math education: accelerated, standard, sheltered. There should be more magnet schools in math. Than results will be better.</p>
<p>Many kids don’t like math, don’t understand math, don’t want math. There is nothing wrong with it. I don’t think that there should be a negative social stigma around it. </p>
<p>I think magnet schools is art or humanities may have easier math curriculum, for example.</p>
<p>Here’s a newspaper article about a school that does HS physics in 8th grade</p>
<p>[Whiz</a> kids in 8th grade get jump on tough high school physics courses - NY Daily News](<a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/stem/whiz-kids-8th-grade-jump-tough-physics-courses-article-1.1472121]Whiz”>Whiz kids in 8th grade get jump on tough high school physics courses )</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Californiaaaaaa…stop posting other people’s opinion. Show us the data. Exactly where is CC math weaker than the current math curriculum in ANY state? You need to be specific because I’m beginning to think you have not compared them.</p>
<p>Data10, you do see the issues with using something like car ownership to equate economic status? Not owning a car in the US is very different from not owning a car in Hong Kong. In fact, even within China this comparison can be problematic, For example, in terms of private car ownership, the number of cars per capita in Hong Kong is half that of Singapore and one-third that of Taiwan.</p>
<p>The PISA results are being very carefully managed by China. I don’t expect them to allow any results to be published that show them in a poor light. If the poor regions start reporting results better than Finland, you really have to question the data.</p>
<p>
Look at the relative populations of these countries, showing how wide a pool they can choose from to form their IMO team. Populations are expressed in millions:</p>
<p>China – 1361
USA – 317
Korea – 50
…
Finland – 5</p>
<p>Any type of international team competition favors countries that have larger populations over small ones.</p>
<p>
It was an arbitrary example of the information this available. One could instead generate a report based on owning a dishwasher, how many computers, how many bathrooms are in the house, or a couple dozen other selections. They all show the same pattern and same top countries. For example, among test takers living in a residence with a single bathroom the order is below. Note that it is nearly identical to the order for no car families.</p>
<ol>
<li>Shanghai-China</li>
<li>Hong Kong-China<br></li>
<li>Chinese Taipei<br></li>
<li>Singapore<br></li>
<li>Finland
…
~36. USA </li>
</ol>
<p>Number of cars was particularly interesting in that unlike almost all variables correlated with wealth, scores did not continually increase as number of cars went up. Instead nearly all countries had peak math score with 2 cars. I believe that Mexico was the only country with a statistically significant score increase for 3+ cars.</p>
<p>
Because rich people who live in NYC take taxis</p>
<p>Data, I can’t get the data explorer to load for me so I can’t check myself, but what do you mean “~36?” Is the US ranked 36th or not? It’s a yes/no. Not an approximately.</p>
<p>Owning a car doesn’t make any sense if you’re going to compare the city of Shanghai to the entirety of the US. Owning a dishwasher would make more sense, but I imagine it will be rather ubiquitous among all but the poor so it won’t tell you much. </p>
<p>Can you give us results based on race? Or based on poverty with a constant definition of poverty in PPP-adjusted income per hour? I would not be surprised to see Shanghai still at the top but I would be extremely surprised to see USA below the top 10 among countries with these controls.</p>
<p>
A few countries did not have a large enough sample size to print an average for some listed categories and would likely be above US, there are issues with handling ties, and there is a greater chance of human error (results not sorted automatically), so it is not an exact value. +/-2 is a safe error margin.</p>
<p>
Results by race are only available for the US. They do not have a direct income/hour variable, likely because many test takers don’t know their parents’ hourly wage. They do publish data based on a general estimation of “economic, social and cultural status”, which is based on a combination of the available individual variables. These results are split into 4 quartiles in each country, so one is comparing the bottom 25% of Korea vs bottom 25% of USA. The order is similar to other measures. One could also estimate the top end by comparing education level instead of material objects. Among students whose father had a MD/JD/PhD (or equivalent for some areas with different university systems), the order was:</p>
<ol>
<li>Shanghai-China<br></li>
<li>Chinese Taipei<br></li>
<li>Singapore<br></li>
<li>Japan<br></li>
<li>Hong Kong-China<br>
…</li>
<li>USA</li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t think US is going to be top 10 on any PISA average score that groups by income. However, it ranks notably better at the high end of variables correlated with wealth than the low end.</p>
<p>Can you post the full list down to the US for that father’s education level? Shanghai, Taipei, and Hong Kong are not countries and Singapore is basically just a city?</p>
<p>All of them are cities.
If you were to compare those students to, let’s say, metro Boston, the difference would hardly be noticeable I would say.
I believe it is Beijing where going to public high school requires a license and outstanding grades in middle school. So testing those kids, apart from any possible wealth gap, will give you about the same average results as testing solely AP math kids in the best public school districts in urban metro areas.
PISA is biased towards educational systems that teach knowledge rather than understanding, and towards school systems where only “pre-approved” kids are getting tested. The one exception is Finland, which is why I believe most European countries are astonished. Germany, France, and most other countries sort out quite early who gets to attend high school. </p>
<p>About the physics in 8th grade article: I am European, and I am just wondering why it is unusual to have physics in 8th grade?</p>
<p>SophieIsabel: Many American HS/Middle schools have 7 periods each day and the kids take that class every day (5 days of the same 6-7 classes). Therefore, they don’t have 2hours/week of “initiation to the physical sciences” like European middle schoolers get. They are thrown into Physics in the 10th or 11th grade. This will be broken down next year due to the new science requirements and there will be an AP Physics 1 and 2 next year, followed by a calculus-based Physics C (3?) class for the really advanced students. There’s also a class called “Physical Science” for kids who can’t handle Physics. </p>
<p>For Americans: in many European Middle Schools, each week kids get 1H30 or 2hours of “initiation to natural sciences”, plus 1H30-2hours of “initiation to technology” (which seems to be robotics, information/computer sciences, depending on the school?/country?), and 1H30-2h “initiation to physical sciences”, this throughout middle school, so that when they start High School, they take “hardcore” Physics, Biology, Earth&Mineral Science, typically 2-3h/week for 2 years, OR 4-5 hours in fewer science subjects, but typically in parrallel, before starting on “precollege majors” (choosing A-Level subjects, for instance, students only have 3 subjects about 8hours a week).</p>
<p>MYOS - Actually, in our NY State school, the middle schoolers get a middle school version of the sciences; 6th grade Earth Science, 7th grade Life Science, 8th grade Physical Science. Granted, the 8th grade physical science class is quite watered down and doesn’t compare to high school physics, but they do see this the basic information (msotly mechanics) before getting thrown into the high school version. I have no idea how this middle school class would compare with what is taught in Germany. I can only speculate that it is less rigorous (read as “not very challenging”) compared to Europe.</p>
<p>Differences between US and other countries in middle schools:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Entire subject is taught in each year (US) vs multiple subjects are taught in 3 or 4 years.
Ex: US students learn algebra 1 in 7th grade, geometry in in 8th grade. Students in other countries learn algebra and geometry every year with increasing difficulty levels.</p></li>
<li><p>US students learn all subjects in equal amount of time every week. Class time in orther countries varies according to each subject. Students may have 5 hours of language arts and math, but only 2 hours of physical sciences and history, 1 hour of life science each week.</p></li>
<li><p>US students stay in school 6-7 hours a day. Students in some other countries only spend half a day in school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think there’s a lot of variation in middle school programs schedules. Ours does general science in 6th grade (a little bit of everything), life sciences in 7th grade and physical sciences in 8th grade. </p>
<p>“US students learn all subjects in equal amount of time every week. Class time in orther countries varies according to each subject. Students may have 5 hours of language arts and math, but only 2 hours of physical sciences and history, 1 hour of life science each week.”</p>
<p>I guess we aren’t in the US then. Our middle school time allocation is like what you describe for other countries. The administrators know the standardized testing is mostly about English and math skills and they schedule accordingly. Science and social studies are half time classes.</p>
<p>In our middle school there is general science with an period per day in general science. (So some baby physics.) About a third of the kids do high school biology in 8th grade which involves two more periods a week for labs.</p>