nice - this is just wonderful...
Of course - with 0bama in office - we don’t need to worry - because the socialist elite will take care of everything for us...
“Idiocracy”
The explanation is that as usual, the scores are being used for demagoguery rather than anything useful. If we stopped comparing apples and oranges the picture would be a lot different. Compare the results for Chinese students in China to students of Chinese extraction in the U.S. and there won't be much to talk about. In fact, Chinese-Americans might even have higher scores than students in China.
Do the same for the other ethnic groups. If there were scores for African countries, I guarantee you that blacks in the U.S would have an impresively higher average.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised the US students didn’t score in the low 100s.
US schools are unionized and lousy. We need Vouchers.
Biggest reason
Average IQ
Asians = 108
Jewish = 105
Caucasians 100
Hispanics = 97
Blacks = 90
Reference “The Bell Curve”
Another element is work ethic - dying in the US due to Nanny state.
Poland beat us in all categories too....
I guess those jokes were all wrong about the polish....
Note that these are 15 year-olds. They are not doing much real science yet - e.g. physics and chemistry - which requires a solid math background. The math scores tell you exactly where our expensively institutionalized government school students would score if a test like this were given to 18 year-olds. Oh....wait...that was done under the TIMSS a few years ago and guess what? The scores tracked the math scores.
Another tidbit for our conservative government school welfare queens - our best 8th graders are performing at the level of the lowest performing 6th graders in Singapore. This tracks testimony before the National Board of Governors for the NAEP a few years ago in which an analyst informed the board that the “advanced” questions on the math section of the NAEP would be consdered questions of average difficulty in 5th grade in Singapore.
Government schools are child abuse.
I didn’t see Kenya on that test score list. I’m sure it’s just an oversight.