RE: They compare their best against our worst, so natch when you do that, the Chinese come out on top.
If you’re referring to this study here :
http://www.care2.com/causes/education/blog/shanghai-scores-at-the-top-u-s-scores-at-number-26/
Where Shanghai, Korean, Hongking and Singaporean kids rank on top, while the USA ranks in the mid twenties, a lot of people have commented that it isn’t comparing their best with our worse, but their best with our AVERAGE.
A lot of people doubt that the kids in Asia who took the tests given were a representative sample of their kids. They complain that those who took the test were “picked”.
Not sure though, how accurate that claim is.
While the accuracy may be in doubt what we do know is that the average is dragged down by the antics of the welfare class kids who make it damn near impossible to educate anyone. This also is why the home schooled seem to be superior to public schooled since there is not 1/10 the BS the former have to deal with.
It is also evident that very few of the Asia children are from the welfare class or born out of wedlock.
The claim about selction bias is almost certainly true with respect to Shanghai, but not the others. As for our best...they actually did worse compared to their best than our average did compared to their average.
The people who allege some psychometric or statistical error in the tests that somehow is responsible for our terrible performance are usually people who have a government school habit and don’t want to give up their middle-class welfare entitlement.
Well, why else would they take them from Shanghai?
Chinese people aren’t stupid. There’s no incentive for them to be accurate or fair.
I don’t buy their nonsense at all. Try having a Korean Christian girlfriend, and you’ll really get to see the verneer stripped away. ;)