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New Education Performance Data Published: Asia Dominates
jones_supa writes "The latest PISA (Programme for International Assessment) results are out today. Since 2000, the OECD has attempted to evaluate the knowledge and skills of 15-year olds across the world through its PISA test. More than 510,000 students in 65 economies took part in the latest test, which covered math, reading and science, with the main focus on math — which the OECD state is a 'strong predictor of participation in post-secondary education and future success.' Asian countries outperform the rest of the world, according to the OECD, with Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macau and Japan amongst the top performing countries and economies. Students in Shanghai performed so well in math that the OECD report compares their scoring to the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling above most OECD countries. The study shows also a slight gender cap: in all countries, boys generally perform a bit better than girls, but this applies only to math."
Here's a spreadsheet listing each country's results. The U.S. ranked 26th in math (below average), 17th in reading (slightly above average), and 21st in science (slightly below average).
Results among the states varies a lot. For example Massachusetts is fully competitive with the Asian countries. On the TIMSS exam (generally thought to be more difficult than the PISA test) Massachusetts finished sixth in the world in mathematics, and second in the sciences for it's 8th grade students.
High levels of achievement ARE attainable in the US. It isn't a matter of cultural problems, or the society we live in. It's a matter of politicians and parents adopting the attitude that it can be done, and sticking to that idea. Effective reform though is not something that can be done overnight. Massachusetts has been at it for 20 years.
http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2012/12/massachusetts_aces_internation.html
Massachusetts has shown how to do it. Now all it takes is realization of what can be done and applying it elsewhere.
You cannot pick-and-choose cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore the put them against an entire country like USA. That is categorically absurd and looks the the results are being rigged to make a point instead of statistical validity. Instead compare Shanghai to say Boston.
In some ways, and in some places, America is little better than the Taliban ever was.
Yep, because the Supreme Court will stone you to death if you try to teach the truth rather than creationism.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Maybe the conclusion is flawed (if not all regions are included in the comparison, such as mainland china, maybe asia isn't doing so well) but of course you can compare a city with a rural area, why shouldn't you? If the average american child are worse at math than the average singaporian, of course Singapore deserves a higher ranking, why shouldn't it?
Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.
And this is bad exactly why?
If it's true that in the U.S., the rural areas lack education and are less wealthy, when compared with urban areas, then it's a fact studies like this are pointing out. It's not that the results are biased. They just reflect reality. Obviously the U.S. misses a strategy to bring enough education to rural areas and less wealthy people.
(identify the smallest value in a table). Highest rank for that question was Shanghai-China (89%). USA was 48%.
Thanks, before I was just disappointed with America, now I'm disappointed in the world!
In America, you teach that Intelligent Design is valid science.
In America, belief and opinion is weighed equal to facts and evidence.
No. Only in a few small isolated areas, and Texas, and on Fox news. Not in the vast majority of the country.
That, in a nutshell, is what it wrong with the US educational system -- it has become a tool of drooling idiots who pass rules about things they don't even remotely understand, and act like their religion actually defines reality.
In some ways, and in some places, America is little better than the Taliban ever was. You just change the specifics of the religion, but the results are the same.
Yes, because in America we typically leave school board meetings over science policy, and go to the homes of our opponents and murder them. I really don't think you understand anything about the Taliban. Your level of ignorance is actually physically painful. Yes there are problems with people misunderstanding science and religion and trying to combine them. Overall you don't seem to understand the problem any better than they do, and are just as far from helping to solve it.
I agree - unions have nothing to do with it.
Finland, for example has an excellent education system. Their teachers are fully unionized. Likewise Massachusetts.
The US states that don't have unionized teachers are also the states that do the worst on measures of education.
PISA does show how much U.S. schools suck, on average. I think that was the point of the test: to prove how rotten the inner cities are -- and how cold and heartless the average American is, that they can allow such rot to continue in the richest country in the world.
You should put a warning on a comment like that. A sufficiently high level of cognitive dissonance has been known to make heads explode.
I'm going to quote the reply from ShanghaiBill to a similar comment in the thread above this one:
Baloney. Have you even looked at the test? Here are some example questions http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/03/are-you-smarter-than-a-15-year-old-oecd-pisa-questions [the guardian]. The questions involve a lot more than "rote memorization".
Unless you think solving logical puzzles and doing calculations is just "rote memorization". Because that would mean that all of science is based on that, which would also indicate that they're on to something there if they go for that as well.
As an aside: rote memorization is an important part of learning anyway, since if you don't *know* when stuff happened, or what the base formulas are for something that took us 2000 years to develop, you're not going to just deduce them from the basics when you need them. You're not even going to know what you don't know. So the basis of learning is knowing what there is - then applying that with skill, intelligence and creativity.
My in-laws are Chinese. And while their educational system is still geared towards suppressing deviating opinions, right up into university, their students are quite able to keep up with Western students when they come over here to study (we met quite a few over the last years). Here, they find the hard part is not the knowledge - they can learn - but the "intelligent application of learned skills". Once they learn that as well (it's a thing you can learn), they still have the advantage of a huge pool of knowledge they can draw from, as well as the creative bits. And since these students are slowly replacing the teachers in China as well, you can bet the Chinese system will change as well. The Dragon is still just gearing up...
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)