Posted on 12/06/2004 8:28:42 PM PST by FairOpinion
American high school students have a poorer mastery of basic math concepts than their counterparts in most other leading industrialized nations, according to a major international survey released yesterday.
The PISA study, conducted every three years, ranked the United States 24th out of 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. Students from Finland and South Korea scored best in the survey, which measured the ability of 15-year-olds to solve real-life math problems.
The results suggest that, at the secondary-school level, the learning gap between the United States and its competitors in Europe and Asia is widening. U.S. students continue to lag behind students elsewhere in basic math skills, despite recent gains in standardized tests at the national level.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yeah, pretty much just seeing it. I've been busy.
It is not valid statistically to rank countries of such different sizes. It would be a lot more valid to separate out the US states and rank them alongside similar sized countries.
The Christian school thing about spending less and achieving more is kind of a trick comparison, because they get to choose who to take. The public schools pretty much have to take everyone (which is fine) but the blank-eyed kid who is heavily medicated lest he go out and strangle kittens and start fires probably sucks up resources and pulls test scores down.
Actually sex education, lots and lots of sex education (classroom lessons as well as real world activities)... and then sports, and then top it all off with leftist BS. Whats more important than these subjects. If these kids develop half a brain, how will they ever buy leftist propaganda. I don't think there are very many kids around the world who will beat ours on sex and sports.
Read the NY Times article ( link in post 19).
It was a thorough comparison. It included looking at the fraction of students from each country ranking in the top and bottom 10 percentile, etc.
It says NOTHING about the number of high achievers, or the qualities of the highest achievers.
In stories such as this one, the information supporting my point is always obliquely (or usually not-at-all) presented: here it is in buried late in the WashPost story:
A more detailed comparison of U.S. students' performance in math with the achievements of students in 24 other countries over more than a decade will be released early next week.
.....
Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, cautioned that the PISA survey measures application of basic math concepts in real life rather than scholastic achievement or theoretical skills such as calculus and algebra. He also noted that the United States is a much more diverse country than most of its competitors, with a significant proportion of minorities, who traditionally score lower on standardized tests.
So there you have it.
And, if you follow the links to the actual web site of the testing organization, only then can you confirm that, yes, the stats presented are MEAN SCORES for the entire student population.
It was a thorough comparison. It included looking at the fraction of students from each country ranking in the top and bottom 10 percentile, etc.
Don't be fooled. See my prior post. It matters little that the survey/study looks at the top percentile as a separate indicator. If you read carefully (see the excerpt following) you'll see that the analysis is still judging the quality of a "country's" students based on an overall percentage of the pool from that country. So -- in every measure, the top US students are certainly 'there', but the relative precentage is diluted for the reasons I spelled out in the other post.
That's the inescapable truth.
The study looked not only at the average performance of students, but also at how many from each country were top performers. It separated students into seven groups, ranging from Level 6, the best, to Level 1, which the authors viewed as a minimal level of competence. The remaining students were below the first level, a category that included more than half the students in Brazil, Indonesia and Tunisia.
In the United States, 10 percent of the students were in one of the top two groups, less than half as many as in Canada and a third the total of the leader, Hong Kong, which had 30.7 percent of its students in the top two categories.
Some of the authors teach at American universities, but the names tell an interesting tale nonetheless.
Thinkers ultimately rule the world. The nation that fails to teach its children how to think is forfeiting all hope of achieving (or maintaining) world leadership.
Math isn't just about rote memorization: You need to learn how to *think* through math. It's problem solving skills more than anything else - and that's precisely what ISN'T being taught, nor is how math applies to the real world.
I'm a 20 year old sophomore in college, and from my not so distant high school memories, I can see exactly why we're not doing so hot in math these days. Most (not all) math teachers are doing a poor job of stimulating interest in the subject beause they're not teaching the critical thinking skills that go behind it, and they're not showing how any of the math actually applies to real-world experiences. You're basically thrown a set of problems in your face, told to do them, and left wondering to yourself, "... why am I learning this and how is it going to benefit my life?" I know I thought that plenty of times, and so did plenty of others around me. I left the subject alone for years after that, not because I convinced myself I wasn't good at it, but because I just couldn't see anything worthwhile in it.
Finally in college I begin to really see how all this "math stuff" applies, thanks to a few great professors that got me really excited about it.
Still, I sit in my Calculus and Physics classes now, surrounded by all these engineering majors and I'm a little concerned. They can do the mathematics, but they can't seem to think through the problems themselves. They expect every problem to be neatly outlined and detailed, and that there should be a specific answer to each problem they encounter. They can't come at the problem with any kind of ingenuity or creativity. They're skilled robots who have been trained to fit their thinking into certain procedural guidelines and are oblivious to anything else. And I think that's what's going to put this country behind more than anything else.
Ah well, another rant for another day.
Read later
It would certainly help to get good teachers, though my guess is that poor curriculum is more to blame. We've got to get the social engineers' hands out of the math curriculum. There is just no excuse for this.
Oh, I didn't mean YOU....I meant the writer of the article and those who are just now coming to that conclusion. Pleae forgive me if you thought I meant you. No way. :)
The kids should be doing better across the board, IMO. Doesn't matter how much the illegal immigrant and inner city schools drag down the total.
okey-dokey
:) thanks...don't want to offend my freeper friends. :)
Go Liechtenstein !!
with a population of around 30,000!
LOL...I have been there...quality not quantity
Principality? Gimme a break. We have more people on the A train during rush hour.
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