U.S. can't crack top 10 in student skills

Parents Forum
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<p>They don’t have bigger brains; they spend more time studying/doing schoolwork. Just go to any basketball court in a racially-mixed neighborhood. Usually it’s the black kids playing there. Why don’t Asian kids spend as much time playing balls? My friend taught a SAT school in Los Angeles with 80% Koreans and 20% Chinese students. Some of their parents know very little English; they learn about the school from their friends. There’s not even one Latino/Afrian American kid there. The school is located in a racially mixed neighborhood. Why don’t Latino/African American parents bring their kids to the school? I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.</p>

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When the students all go to the same school with the same teachers, the large disparity among students of different ethnicity means the school isn’t the problem. Blaming the “educational system” won’t get you anywhere.</p>

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<p>Two anecdotes to start my post with:
My son is a math/chemistry major at our local state flagship, and he likes to joke that he will study chinese so that he can follow the discussion at the meetings held in the research lab he works in;</p>

<p>His girlfriend is visiting from UCSD, and mentioned that 60% of the student body is ethinic asian (this number is not confirmed.)</p>

<p>Spanish speaking, immigrant america has an excuse; white america seemingly cannot be bothered to stop the slide from mediocrity to outright Sarah Palin approved stupidity. Not that I care what ‘whites’ do or not, I mention the group because of its size and considerable political power in the US.</p>

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<p>Asians may “corner the market” on education, but lack in other areas</p>

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<p>LaContra,</p>

<p>Your point is well-taken, but to be fair, the article did in fact acknowledge the apples to oranges comparison, mentioning New Zealand as an example. This of course immediately brings up the question of motive. Why make the comparison when you know you are comparing apples and oranges? Is this intended to be a feel-good article, that everything is “swell” in the Union? An attempt at divide and conquer, setting one minority against another? Taking a shot at the government, accusing it of hiding data? A stab at the teachers, for inflating education cost? Putting in a plug for immigration reform, or all of the above? Don’t know.</p>

<p>My feeling is that the Shanghai data cannot be representative of China, but not for the reasons given by most posters. According to released statements, PISA has data for some Chinese provinces and they are not that different from Shanghai. The question for me would be what provinces they have data for? If they are looking at places such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the like, the results would be comparable if not better than Shanghai, but can you honestly say that for places such as Xinjiang and Tibet?</p>

<p>I cannot help but think that the performance of Asian Americans really aggravate both the right and the left. White supremacists must be annoyed because this upsets the perceived natural order of things; folks with left leanings must be irritated because it makes victimhood less believable.</p>

<p>Interesting.</p>

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<p>Well, nothing prohibits it obviously, but various people have posted there thoughts about why education in America is in decline, and before I blame schools I think it’s important to blame individual students. Whatever happened to accountability?</p>

<p>I went to a diverse public magnet high-school. Some of the white kids in the surrounding suburbs dropped out and become druggies, some of them went to Stanford. Some of the black/mexicans who were bussed in didn’t try in any of their classes, and some of the asian kids on the same bus from the same poor neighborhoods ended up at UCSD/LA/Berkley.</p>

<p>But going back to what you said, yes I do feel there is a culture of anti-intellectualism in America. A culture of cell-phones and reality t.v. and I think it’s a bigger problem then any thing that education reform can handle by simply throwing more money at it.</p>

<p>When I’m sitting in a college level Shakespeare class and the girls behind me are raving about the latest Twilight/ Nicholas Sparks novel who’s fault is that? The educational system? Or maybe, just maybe, Americans on average actually are dumb and these results reflect it?</p>

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<p>Canukguy.</p>

<p>The Shanghai sample is obviously not representative of China as a whole, however Shanghai is the only region of China which could be considered close to OECD in the usual metrics of health, education, and income etc. (Since Hong Kong and Macau are assessed separately). I understand why PISA included Shanghai in the results, since they include both Hong Kong and Macau separately, but personally I don’t agree with the inclusion due to the confusion and dissent that it has caused.</p>

<p>Still as I have written here before: Feel free to ignore the Shanghai entry on the PISA rankings… Should the US be happy with ranking 13th, 16th, and 24th…?</p>

<p>The website link was obviously riding that worn out line that the blacks and the Latinos are holding back the white students, and then linking the scores to a case for immigration reform. The point is however that most countries have their own diversity, poverty, or minority issues which adversely impact their scores. The scores reflect national averages not absolutes.</p>

<p>And as I have also noted earlier, these rankings mean little to most countries except in terms of national pride. I propose it is a different case for the US, the UK, and Australia.</p>

<p>These 3 countries in particular actively export their University admissions to a global market. Sure France attracts French speakers in SE Asia and Africa, and Germany attracts EU neighbours…but the US, UK, and Australia have a truly global scope for admissions.</p>

<p>Thus in these 3 countries the domestic students must compete with international students as well as their domestic counterparts for a finite number of placements. If one looks at the countries that ranked above the US and the UK one sees not just Asia, but emerging economies with growing middle classes, increased disposable incomes, and the wherewithal to seek better University opportunities overseas.
Due to the global perspective and the open market in admissions in the US, the UK, and Australia, it will be these 3 who will receive the lions share of this trend and the domestic students will have to be competitive in academic skills or over time will have to accept lower tier university placements as internationals take the prime slots.</p>

<p>But few here seem to sense any threat…‘the tests are flawed’, ‘our students are the best’, ‘our school system is number 1’, any number of excuses to wish away the results.</p>

<p>I believe in the free market in university education and I don’t believe in restricting the international intake (they pay a lot more than domestic students), nor in some kind of affirmative action for domestic students.
Top universities cannot absorb these future increases without enlarging class sizes and lowering student/professor ratios which will negatively impact standards, or employing more professors, but there are a finite amount of ‘top academics’ suitable for 'top universities…thus lowering teaching standards as well.</p>

<p>If these results aren’t reversed then the outcome is either equitable access for a lower standard university education at top universities
or
international students slowly but surely squeezing US students out of the top tier university placements.</p>

<p>The Ivies and the Top Tier (Chicago, MIT, Prince, Stan) universities currently have international enrolments at approx 18% of admissions.
Will people be happy if that figure was inverse in say, 2 generations?
The Universities are global players who want the top candidates and even better at the top price!
If this trend continues you could see these universities with only a 30-40% US student enrolment within a 20 years…would parents, students, educators, and society find this acceptable?</p>

<p>This is the debate currently happening in the UK and Australia…
But apparently not too much in the US.</p>

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<p>OrganicGreenTea.</p>

<p>Firstly let me say it warms my heart that someone is sitting in an English Lit class at college and paying attention…well done.</p>

<p>I agree with you that personal responsibility is a keystone of educational achievement.
I can’t agree with your proposal that perhaps “Americans on average actually are dumb and these results reflect it?”…It would be an easy way to bring this thread to a close but it would be a bit of a cop out.</p>

<p>I’m not claiming to have the answers to this problem but I am willing to debate and discuss what is happening and the implications for University education in the US. What has surprised me, here on CC especially, is the lack of concern or the general willingness to claim the test methodology was flawed, the results don’t matter, or the whole undertaking is merely some foreign anti American exercise.</p>

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<p>This is my believe: US has a very good, if not the best, K-12 education system for those who want to learn. The problem is that we have a relatively higher % of students who have no interest in learning anything. </p>

<p>You see this at any relatively large public high school. There will be a group of students who take every AP and/or advanced classes the school offer. I would like to think these group of students can compete with students from any country and do well. </p>

<p>Whether we should and how to make the rest of the student body care about learning is a whole different story.</p>

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<p>Dad II</p>

<p>Hey, I wholeheartedly agree with your point…until your line about whether we should, or can, make the rest care about learning being ‘a whole different story’</p>

<p>That IS the story.</p>

<p>Sure there will always be a small percentage of home grown achievers who will excel.
In a globalised economy with a free market in University education
Is that enough?</p>

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<p>No. You have some misunderstandings about the dynamics of public education, it would seem, and I don’t even think that’s the common belief among the public at large. It’s the educational establishment that is “holding back” the minority students, due to unenlightened assumptions. Additionally they are holding back white students, but that’s only because the entire set of expectations has been dumbed down.</p>

<p>Several years ago, when I was between jobs, I interviewed at a middle school which was largely minority (mostly ESL or ELL). When I say several years I mean it literally. Maybe it was 4 years. Definitely ‘modern era,’ definitely 21st century. It is very typical of the pubic schools in my wide metro region, in its approach (or lack thereof), its curriculum, and frankly its uninspiring teaching milieu. I knew within a few minutes of the interview that my two interviewers were on different planets from me, maybe even parallel universes, educationally. They presented their unenthusiastic picture of their school, virtually saying, ‘The students won’t be accomplishing much; what’s your plan?’ Their entire framework was that the students were unreachable because they “wouldn’t” be literate enough to respond to my English and humanities expectations, “because they don’t read,” “won’t make the effort,” etc. When I reminded them that that’s our job – to get them to read, see its benefits & even enjoy it – and that I am bound by professional ethics to get them as far along as I can, despite ‘where they are right now,’ they judged my goals to be unrealistic. They kept saying, “It’s not going to happen.” (I could have provided them dozens of classrooms and individuals where I have succeeded, but that wouldn’t have interested them.)</p>

<p>There’s the spirit! :rolleyes: I really wanted to ask, “Then why is your school even open?” </p>

<p>The dominant theme is that educators accept the status quo. There are exceptions, but most of those are out of the mainstream (thus, charters and other deviations from norm.) What most people not in the system do not see, is that public education most everywhere in this country has become heavily politicized. Forget about the unions for a moment. I’m just talking about how a perverted application of multiculturalism has stalemated educational growth. Educators have both consciously and unconsciously translated “respect their culture” to (1) refuse to correct English language deficiencies (it’s not “respectful” :rolleyes:) (2) refuse to challenge cultural assumptions which interfere with success (like “education is a white thing”), (3) accept definitions and labels which artificially stratify, (4) agree to cooperate in student-led expectations of failure. </p>

<p>It marries beautifully with the increasingly slacker mentality of privileged suburban white and suburban Asian-American children of professional parents. It complements the status quo, so that both together drive down the opposing upward energy of challenge.</p>

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<p>I agree. And I think it’s not going to be as slow as many imagine.</p>

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<p>I agree. It’s not just idle speculation. There is some at least anecdotal evidence that already U.S. suburban, white and Asian (domestic) students are not making the grade. Several of my students from better high schools in my region cannot do community college level work. Parents of these students are educated and many are professionals. Most of this can be traced back to a failure to understand what they’re reading. Vocabulary levels are appallingly low among non-minority students, and critical reading/thinking skills, especially logical context, is absent. I’m having to re-teach them. They are clearly completely unprepared to digest dense college textbooks, and least of all to write about what they read. Many of them are bombing SAT practice tests in controlled (timed) environments. We’re talking composite scores of 1200-1300. And my examples match those of others in my profession.</p>

<p>Why is this a sudden surprise when the student reaches Grade 11, 12, or “13”? Because parents are assuming way too much, first of all (about educational outcomes). Second, parents are frankly too busy pursuing their own careers and interests (often). If their student is attending a school with a great reputation, they naturally assume that an excellent product is evolving. Wrong. I see this every day in my work. Parents go about their lives; students go about their lives – lives which for them are often largely electronic, absorbed with solo pursuits online. Many suburban 9th & 10th graders have not read a single book outside of assigned class reading, since maybe 6th-7th grade. Their reading levels are stuck there, or slightly higher (8th). They are not reading whole e-books on Kindle, either, so don’t give me that. They are both too impatient to read, and discouraged from sustained reading on grade level because it’s challenging when your verbal achievement has stagnated for so long. </p>

<p>But what is just as important as the problem of short attention spans, low vocabulary development, and recreational distractions – is the mere fact of diminished parent (and other adult) interaction with students. I don’t care what model of education you want to champion. Almost no one learns in a vacuum. Even brilliant, genius scientists bounce their theories off of others. We learn, or correct our learning, through dialogue with others. The dialogue should start in the classroom – no question; but it should equally continue out of the classroom, with those who have an educational base. The absence of daily or even weekly, sometimes even monthly family time is showing up in student achievement. Your vocabulary, your perspective, your undertanding, changes and expands when you interact with other educated people, even as adults. This is a lifestyle issue, because as I said on the “minority achievement” thread, our typical school day is not long enough to make teacher-student interaction sufficient. Not in the USA. (Except in certain charters.)</p>

<p>One of the local models which is being tried, in a private school, is one which is rather classically European, in that it is heavily tutorial. The premise of this school is that heavy interaction with your teacher, daily and tutorially is essential– which includes sustained oral reading, sustained discussion between teacher-student, and a requirement that the student not only achieves mastery of subject matter but is also to some degree master of his own education.</p>

<p>In my childhood, education drove culture – at least my local culture, I can tell you that. To some extent, the local (intellectually demanding) industry had an impact on driving education as well, so in that sense both dynamics were promising for outcomes, for me and for my peers. But once I became an adult, education began to be heavily and quixotically driven by, and even manipulated by, culture & politics. This is not a pretty picture. The only thing that will turn it around is an educational model which is counter-cultural. </p>

<p>And it would really, really help if parents would get on board with a counter-cultural model, intead of pandering to excuses from whiny teenagers about how “tests aren’t meaningful.”</p>

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<p>K-12 is in really bad shape in US. In some other countries, including underdeveloped, kids learned at much higher level in 10 years vs. 13 in US. Some immigrant communities have thier own schools to teach primarily math and science. The sad part is that when kids go to college with dreams to go to engineering, science, medicine, good number of them realize that they do not have sufficient background for these majors. Some of them fall out, others hire paid tutors, some just have awesome work ethic to be able to catch up on their own. I am talking about very top students from very top HSs.
I do not care to be called a basher, I am honestly answering OP’s question from position of a person who is very familiar with education outside of USA.</p>

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<p>Epiphany</p>

<p>Whooa…Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I’m on your side with this.
If you follow the link that Canukguy provided it purports to show how Asian American and white American kids actually did well in the PISA test and that the average scores for the US were dragged down by Latinos and African Americans.</p>

<p>What I’m saying is that this a tired worn out refrain amongst the usual collection of (bigot? racialist? ignorant?..take your pick) and is now often a part of the ever more caustic anti immigration narrative in America.</p>

<p>I was commenting on origins of the idea disseminated by the site in question.</p>

<p>I agree with you that the educational system has been dumbed down, enlarged beyond manageability, and that a system that seems to strive for the status-quo does not comprehend that standing still while foreign systems steadily improve is akin to going backwards.</p>

<p>The experiences you presented here worry me…It just that I have a hard time understanding those who don’t seem to worry about it at all.</p>

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<p>No. I did read the link, and I’m sorry, you’re wrong in your assumptions and in the artificial connections you are suggesting. Frankly, your politics are getting in the way of your objective understanding. If anything, the educational establishment in this country is supporting immigratiion, accommodating to it, and making excuses for non-achievement based on refusal to encourage full literacy. Now, as a separate factor, when looking at legal immigration as a whole, it’s important to make considered economic decisions about proportions of skilled, unskilled, and highly skilled labor if an affirmative, structured immigration picture is being examined for the near and long term. But that has nothing to do with the discussion here.</p>

<p>It is the educational establishment that is promoting, de facto, illegal immigration by how it is accommodating to that phenomenon and how it is subverting the institutionalized education standards for respective States. It is enabling illiteracy to continue to be an identifying feature of imported unskilled labor, by its response to it. Public educators are also directly influencing textbook content by telling publishers to dumb-down the content and to make it highly visual for the nonverbal population. (Essentially, picture storybooks for middle schoolers.) But textbook adoption is by whole district. So those are the same textbooks which are being used by non-immigrants who expect more out of their schooling.</p>

<p>I read the VDARE link. I think you don’t at all understand that fact. I read it differently from you. I didn’t read it as “an attempt to show that the average scores for the US were dragged down by Latinos and African Americans.” It’s important when reading data, not to let your own personal politics interfere.</p>

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<p>This still is somewhat cold comfort, but it does imply that there’s something positive about U.S. k-12 education. My contention is (obviously) that it is not enough. Education is extremely uneven, by locality and by grade, and comprehensively. And I still say, as I said on the “minority achievement” thread, that tests do not tell the whole story, positively and negatively. (IOW, some of my students do well on tests, but cannot write about what they read, cannot develop an argument, cannot explain orally what they have read – all essential skills for college and beyond.)</p>

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<p>Agreed. I share your worry, and your inability to understanding why others are not terribly worried. I worry because of consistent trends I have been seeing, which are being exacerbated rather than reversed.</p>

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<p>Epiphany…</p>

<p>You read the Vdare site differently from me?</p>

<p>Read these quotes differently for me then…please</p>

<p>“Of course, one obvious factor contributing to Finland’s high national scores: Finland benefits from not having its scores undermined by immigrants from low-scoring cultures.”</p>

<p>"Bottom line: Keeping the U.S. globally competitive turns out to depend less upon our endlessly-discussed need to "fix the schools “and more upon the need to “fix the demographic trends”</p>

<p>“Yet all three subjects are tested each year, and scores for all subjects are released in mind-numbing detail cross-tabbed for every conceivable factor … except race.”</p>

<p>“When broken down by ethnicity, American students did reasonably well compared to the countries from which their ancestors came.”</p>

<p>…And its my POLITICS which cloud my objective reading of the information on the site?</p>

<p>Maybe you should look at the politics of the Steve Sailor who runs the site rather than mine…</p>

<p>But maybe you think like Steve:</p>

<p>"Sailer cites studies that say, on average, blacks and Mexicans in America have lower IQs than whites, and that Ashkenazi Jews and Northeast Asians have higher IQs than whites. He says that prosperity helped blacks close the IQ gap. He suggests that a problem with immigration of non-white Mestizo Mexicans into America is that Hispanic whites in the US will become a master caste, citing the Cuban community in Miami. He also considers that “for at least some purposes – race actually is a highly useful and reasonable classification”</p>

<p>[Steve</a> Sailer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer]Steve”>Steve Sailer - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>If my politics is not to view race and ethnicity as all that is wrong with US education then you are right…then you are right, I’m proudly putting my ‘politics’ first.</p>

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<p>Epiphany:</p>

<p>Before we get all emotional over the graphs and ‘insights’ on Steve Sailor’s VDARE website maybe you could read what FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) has to say about journalist and commentator Steve Sailor:</p>

<p>"As American Prospect Online found (12/7/04), a little research reveals Sailer as a leading promoter of racist pseudoscience. As a principal columnist on the white nationalist website VDare.com, named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the ‘‘New World,’’ Sailer (e.g., 2/23/03; 12/12/01) extols the work of academic racists who say Africans as a group are innately less intelligent than whites or Asians. He is also a staunch defender of the Pioneer Fund, a primary funder for such racist research (as well as of VDare.com).</p>

<p>On the rare occasion Sailer gives race a rest, it’s usually to make some other mock-Darwinian argument, as when he ruled out the possibility of a gay gene, suggesting instead that homosexuality is a disease, possibly caused by a germ (VDare.com, 8/17/03): ‘‘An infectious disease itself could cause homosexuality. It’s probably not a venereal germ, but maybe an intestinal or respiratory germ.’’ </p>

<p>A New York Daily News column (12/13/04) rebuked (NYT Writer David) Brooks for plugging Sailer, suggesting that the Times columnist ‘‘might want to do a background check on the next ‘expert’ he quotes,’’ pointing out that “Sailer also writes for VDare.com, which the KKK-fighting SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER has labelled a ‘HATE GROUP.’‘’ According to the News, the Times failed to respond to inquiries about the matter.</p>

<p>And describes Sailor as:</p>

<p>A lucid writer with an accessible style, Sailer is a smooth propagandist operating in a community of increasingly sophisticated nativists and racists. Neither a researcher nor a scientist, Sailer’s value to the movement is as a popularizer of its ideas and theories. </p>

<p>You were mentioning my lack of objectivity in you post?
ErHmmm ?</p>

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<p>This just gets better and better…and another media watchdog group commenting on the VDare website and Steve Sailor:</p>

<p>[CNN</a> quoted far-right blogger Steve Sailer on Obama, without noting background denigrating minorities | Media Matters for America](<a href=“http://mediamatters.org/research/200807310009]CNN”>http://mediamatters.org/research/200807310009)</p>

<p>Quote:
After the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Sailer wrote in a September 3, 2005, VDARE.com column that the “unofficial state motto” of Louisiana, “Let the good times roll,” is “an especially risky message for African-Americans.” He continued: “The plain fact is that they [African-Americans] tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.” Sailer then declared that “there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan – because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren’t blacks.” Later, he stated: “Poor black people seldom cooperate well with each other because they don’t trust other blacks much, for the perfectly rational reason that they commit large numbers of crimes against each other.”</p>

<p>Yeah Epiphany…
Lets quote THIS guys ‘objective’ perception of the PISA test results.
No politics mind you…Lets just be Objective!
:)</p>

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<p>LaContra, you’re obviously more interested in being combative for ego and/or ideological reasons, than in objectively evaluating the data in the OP, and further, dispassionately reflecting on the additional data provided in the VDARE link, irrespective of personal biases on the part of the link’s author.</p>

<p>Here are the facts I will provide to you, as someone who has been in the field of education, on the ground, as a lifelong career, and continues to be:</p>

<p>Immigration, on its own, neither imperils U.S. public education nor enhances it. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, bring a set of knowledge and skills – and lack thereof – to educational institutions, from pre-K through graduate school. It is public (especially) education’s response to that immigration – combined with essential ongoing parental overisght --that will determine what kind of a product results from that importation.</p>

<p>Like politics and religion, education is an institution that is value laden. Being influenced by civic values, both politics and education should be agents of change. (Lots of people believe that religion, laden with moral values, should also be an agent of positive change where appropriate, legal, etc.) When a public school says by its behavior that it is not interested in being an agent of change (see my earlier posts), then it is not only failing in its essential role, it is also not supporting the very reason for, value of, immigration. It is compromising that immigration. If a school is acquiescing to illiteracy, let alone promoting illiteracy in the dominant language of the country’s economy, it is passively if not actively undermining immigrant success (and value to the nation).</p>

<p>I don’t care what personal viewpoints Steven Sailor has. Obviously you have particular animus for him. The immigration question as a whole is not the subject for this thread. The subject is comparative performance of the U.S. vs. certain countries, regions, localities. I don’t know why you re-quoted portions from the article which I have read in its entirety. (Did you have trouble understanding that the first time?) It appears that you’re the one “getting emotional.” </p>

<p>The link makes some remarks about U.S. diversity and mobility, compared to that of other countries/parts of countries. I don’t care that you want to take his reporting as some negative opinion about how immigrants “bring down” national averages (based additionally on opinions of his extraneous to the data itself). He’s reporting facts, actually. Others on this thread have also done so. Demography does play a part. That’s what he was saying. We’re not discussing the New York Daily News, American Prospect online, and all your references to “racism.” I don’t have an opinion of him as a person, or his supposed politics. We’re talking data here, how to interpret it, what it does say and does not say about U.S. education.</p>

<p>A respected cc’er PM’ed me, having known education on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, and also brought up this very feature of U.S. mobility (combined with an absence of national educational standards) as influencing the results. That cc’er is correct, and is additionally correct in pointing out as well that approaches to middle school overseas tend to be opposite from those in the U.S. (I will add that my own U.S. middle-school experience far more resembled contemporary overseas than contemporary American; mine was not only called Junior High; it was JuniorHigh; outside of the U.S., the middle school years are still, appropriately, the bridge/preparation to high school; here, they are (now) the opposite: they are retroactive accommodations to wide variations in qualities of K-5 or K-6 schooling within a large district, and across nearby districts.) Here, middle-school curriculum tends to repeat, especially in grades 7 and 8, the learning in grades 4, 5, and 6. The result is students unprepared for the rigors of high school, in volume & content.</p>

<p>For most of my high school students, their jr high/middle school experiences have been a shocking waste of time, in that those years underprepared them for high school. Perhaps most importantly, little or no attention is being paid to study habits and study skills in middle school. Without this, and without the bridging curriculum between elementary and high school years, and without parental oversight, and with multiple social and electronic distractions (more pronounced now in h.s. years than in their previous m.s. years), a student is not in the position to navigate independently and successfully this bridge (to college).</p>

<p>If you want to return to the education discussion, I’ll be glad to. If you’re going to go off on additional political rants, I’m done conversing.</p>