Slashdot Mirror
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).
As Slate pointed out this morning (), the way that this study mixes data from individual urban areas with data from whole countries makes it impossible to perform fair comparisons. Note that 4 out of the 7 asian "countries" that the Slashdot summary refers to (Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau) are either city-states or aren't even countries at all!
Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.
Students nowadays cannot be punished for any misbehavior or disruption, its all illegal. Its common sense that standards are in the toilet. Students who succeed in the US now are succeeding despite our system, not because of it.
From the people who yesterday gave us that Gothenburg is the capital of Sweden, now comes the news that Shanghai is a country.
I'm sure the PLA will be thrilled to know this, and can pull out troops in Tibet, or near the Taiwan Straits, and redirect them towards Shanghai!
Can PISA do an assessment test on /. editors & their geography?
In America, you teach that Intelligent Design is valid science.
In America, belief and opinion is weighed equal to facts and evidence.
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.
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.
Here
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/
You can take a sample test yourself. See how basic the questions are and feel appalled to see the % of students in your country that managed to pass each level.
For example, only 11% of students in my country (Argentina) were able to reach level 3 (identify the smallest value in a table). Highest rank for that question was Shanghai-China (89%). USA was 48%.
Well, whole of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan ... Looks like the entire subcontinent is missing. China has a few urban centers represented. Africa is gone. So it falls into the bemoan the ... category.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I was from China, and I am a naturalized citizen of the United States of America.
Regarding education - back when I escaped from China (that was some 40 odd years ago) the schools in East Asia (countries which were/are heavily influenced by the Confucianism school of thought such as China, Korea, Japan, Singapore ) were pretty much based on the top-down rote-learning mode - whereby the students have no say, and they must do EVERYTHING their teachers told them to do.
It operated that way because the basic tenet of the Confucianism teaching is that the young uns are SLAVES to their elders (it's pretty much based on the blind obedience mode).
When I reached the West I was totally astounded when my classmate actually questioned the teachers !
That was a super NO-NO in Asia.
Back then, even if the student asked a totally legitimate question to the teacher in class that student will be summoned to the headmaster and/or discipline master's office for punishment.
That was how the Asian school had operated back then.
Now ... except for Korea, which is still practicing strict Confucianism as what it has been doing for the past 2,000 years ... many schools in the East Asian countries (those populated by yellow-skin folks) have drastically improved their teaching method.
Nowadays students are encouraged to solve problems, rather than to remember the facts laid out by their teachers.
From Singapore to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Taiwan, everywhere I go I see great improvements.
As for the other East Asian countries, those which are being populated by the brown skin folks such as Indonesia or the Philippines or Thailand, their schools are still as sucks as 50 years ago.
I see that there are people here trying to justify their own country's failing by saying that the "comparison is not fair", that the comparison is comparing "cities to countries".
For those folks, what I see is nothing much but sour grapes.
Yes, comparing schools in Hong Kong or Singapore to schools in the United States of America is comparing schools in CITIES to a LARGE COUNTRY --- but so what ?
If the schools in the United States of America sux, it's STILL SUX, no matter if it's in the city of Detroit or if it's in the city of Little Rock.
How many of my fellow Americans have been to the public schools ? How many of you have seen the effect of gangsterism in the public schools in America ?
I have.
I have 2 friends who were teachers in public schools in America who were MURDERED by their students.
On the other hand, I have a lot of friends who teach in schools in Asia, and so far, none of them have been killed by their students yet.
When I asked my teacher friends in Asia about a recent news of a math teacher in Boston who got her throat slit by her student. all of them were horrified by that news.
But when I post that same news to my friends who used to teach (and some are STILL teaching) in American public schools, they just shrug.
This reflects how bad the American school system has become.
You guys may want to deny it as much as you can, but for one who was from afar (I am not a product of the American high school system), the American school system has failed.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !