Why don’t American students score better on international tests? Yikes! Some do.

[Karmadillo]

Give the Howler credit for pointing out on a regular basis just how hard the media works to make us stupid. Just imagine if we took the trillions we waste on criminal wars and tax cuts/tribute for the rich and spent it on our schools.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh122410.shtml#MINION

<edit>

Why don’t Americans students score at the top? Here are the scores from that same reading test, broken down into demographics. Warning: When these test scores are rendered this way, we’re forced to look at the painful backwash of our brutal history:

Average score, reading literacy, PISA, 2009:
(United States, Asian students 541)
Korea 539
Finland 536
(United States, white students 525)
Canada 524
New Zealand 521
Japan 520
Australia 515
Netherlands 508
Belgium 506
Norway 503
Estonia 501
Switzerland 501
Poland 500
Iceland 500
United States (overall) 500
Sweden 497
Germany 497
Ireland 496
France 496
Denmark 495
United Kingdom 494
Hungary 494
OECD average 493
Portugal 489
Italy 486
Slovenia 483
Greece 483
Spain 481
Czech Republic 478
Slovak Republic 477
Israel 474
Luxembourg 472
Austria 470
(United States, Hispanic students 466)
Turkey 464
Chile 449
(United States, black students 441)
Mexico 425

Good God! Those test scores, broken down that way, depict a vast American tragedy. They also reflect some effects of recent immigration policy, however one may judge that policy overall.

Let’s summarize: If Asian-Americans students were viewed as a separate nation, they would outscore every OECD nation. (Somehow, those infernal unions haven’t screwed them up—yet!) White students trail only two nations—Korea and Finland, whose educational output suddenly doesn’t seem quite so miraculous. For the record, Korea and Finland didn’t spend centuries aggressively trying to stamp out literacy within one part of their populations. Neither nation has a significant immigrant population—a population of delightful, deserving kids who don’t even speak the language.

Those test scores represent a national tragedy. But so does the inane conversation between Matthews and Rhee last Wednesday. When you see those test scores rendered that way, it may perhaps get harder to think that America’s international standing is caused by a bunch of sleeping teachers, with their infernal unions. It becomes easier to see where the educational disaster is actually occurring—even after several decades during which test scores by black and Hispanic kids have risen, to a substantial degree.

more...

[Warren Stupidity]

1. hush we are all busy waiting for stuporman.

[frazzled]

2. This isn't the first time I've heard this argument

And I find it unacceptable on a supposedly progressive board. Why? It's essentially racist. It defends the educational status quo in America by stating "the (white and asian) kids are all right"--so why all the hubbub about "fixing" education?

If the data provided is correct (and I did enough tutoring in public schools to tell you that a good number of white and, yes, Asian kids (Hmong, Tibetan in my school district, especially) are not, in fact, all right), it is all the more reason to pursue policies that will try anything possible to to assist what is clearly the vast majority of students in our country who are performing very poorly. Poorly enough, in fact, to drag our scores down to near the bottom.

America is not made up either solely nor even mainly of upper-income white and Asian kids. They're okay. The rest of the nation is not--and THEY COUNT, too. And the future of the nation depends on our doing better for the most needy amongst us. We ignore them at our own peril, not just for economics but for ethical and moral reasons as well.

Please stop these arguments. They are not worthy of us. The economically advantaged will always be okay. It's the rest of the country--a vast majority--to whom we need to address our educational policy. And the status quo is not working.

[AngryAmish]

4. Why are we failing these non-asian minority children?

Are they as intelligent as other kids? What is holding them back? Segregation? I suppose if we held constant parental income and education and integration we could compare those kids to similar kids. Culture?

Why do black and hispanic kids fail? Racism?

[frazzled]

8. Whatever it is ...

The time is long past to rely on poverty alone to explain or seek the solution to it. If we wait for income equality to cure all our ills, we'll be waiting till the second coming of the Messiah.

Yes, I believe racism--a century of institutional racism in our country, and continued personal racism--has much to do with it. It's not all about economics (many poor immigrant groups overcame poverty and excelled educationally by the second generation). The enduring cycle of insecurity and hopelessness explains much. I will never forget a girl who was assigned to me for tutoring because she'd failed the state standards exam in reading twice and was not going to graduate high school. I worked with her for an hour or so and thought, what the f...? She reads perfectly well and has complete comprehension. You're smart, I told her, so why are you failing this? It's boring was her diffident response. I spoke with the teacher afterward, who told me : "oh yeah, L. ... ; she comes from a family where she would be the first to graduate high school, and she doesn't want to; you can't really do anything about it" I was so furious with this teacher: accept this situation and pass off the difficult cases to a volunteer tutor. The only thing that was going to help that girl was not tutoring (she didn't need it), but long and daily mentoring. Maybe she needed to be in one of these all African-American female academies, where the main emphasis is on waking up every day and saying "I can succeed and I will go to college and it's good." So yeah, maybe different solutions are necessary for different kids or groups of kids.

I always felt that for the kids I worked with, each had a unique reason for failing: sometimes it was a language barrier, sometimes it was a behavior issue, sometimes it was cultural. But there was nothing really in this otherwise excellent school to help them: other than herding them into a special classroom in which they were pawned off on volunteer tutors. We need to focus all our educational effort on the "L"'s of the world. I knew these kids. I loved these kids. I tried to help these kids. But they needed more than a twice-a-week mentor coming to them in their sea of hopelessness.

I will not accept writing them off, or placing the blame on outside circumstances. Our schools are filled with these bright children who are failing en masse. Like it or not, we all have to find a way to help them. And in so doing help our country. We can't wait for social and economic utopia to come.

[Karmadillo]

5. You might want to reread the OP and the complete article at the Daily Howler.

Neither say what you're claiming they say.

[frazzled]

10. It's the posting of these statistics here I'm concerned about

Separately from any arguments (which were none, by the way) at the Daily Howler. The DH provided no solutions, just blasts at various attempts to try to address the issue.

There is one thing we can agree on: in general, our educational system is failing huge swaths of students, most especially minority and lower-economic students--and that current schools, working at the status quo, are not succeeding in turning this situation around. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, or what combination of factors explains it. The only thing that matters is finding new solutions, not just repeating the old. I don't know what that answer is. I doubt there's even a single answer. But to even give the hint of a suggestion that teachers are not part of that solution because poverty or racism explains it is to opt out of the issue entirely. That, to me, is what the Daily Howler is doing.

[Igel]

19. US education has a problem.

Before you can fix the problem, you have to quantify the problem, characterize the problem.

And you have to characterize it bravely and boldly, ignoring what blindness is caused by ideology or politics. Saying we can't analyze the problem, that we can't name the causes, that we can't even name potential causes is a self-imposed foolishness for which there's no cure.

A lot of people assume that "blaming the kids" or "blaming the parents" is there to humiliate them, make them feel bad, pass off responsibility. For some it may be. But don't insult the rest of us with that stereotype. If you figure out *what* family, ethno-cultural, SES traits produce the bad results then you can do one of two things: Try to solve the causes instead of wasting money always fighting the symptoms; or you can target the sub-sub-subgroups in ways that are plausibly effective, you can tailor your attempts to rectify the problem to the group rather than assuming that the black kid with a PhD father and professional mother living in a ritzy neighborhood and the white kid who's high-school drop-out mother isn't sure which of her boyfriends 15 years ago was the father and who lives on welfare *must* have the same problem and *must* be treated the same. They don't. It's as foolish to assume people are different because of their skin color as to assume that everybody must be the same because they're H. sapiens.

[lostnfound]

20. "The only thing that matters is finding new solutions.."

Seems to me if such a sizeable group of our population is already very near the top, then we already have part of a solution that is working for one group and maybe the problem is that we just aren't applying it to the other group. Maybe the solution is to beef up resources available to the home for boys and girls that come from poorer neighborhoods, if that's the problem. When you've got a problem, analyzing the data is perfectly sensible. Slapping new solutions haphazardly is not at all sensible.

[surrealAmerican]

14. I don't think anyone here was arguing that ...

... the students are doing better or worse BECAUSE of their race. It's more a matter of which groups are more likely to attend poorly-funded schools and live in poverty.

If schools in poor neighborhoods were as well funded as those in wealthy areas, that would make some difference, but we would still need to address the problems of children living in poverty.

[dkf]

3. I wonder what the ratio of Asian kids in private vs public schools is.

In my experience middle class Asian parents are more likely to sacrifice for their kids education than other things.

Also how many kids began their education in Asia? Maybe we are taking credit for another country's better systems and discipline.

[wilt the stilt]

6. I believe most Asian are in public

They save their money for private colleges. I think the same for Jewish kids.

[dkf]

12. Public schools are 4% Asians, private schools are 6% Asian.

There is an over representation of Asians in private school.

This exists for white kids too...58% in public school vs 74% in private school.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009321/appendixc.asp

[Starry Messenger]

7. Interesting that Chile is down at the bottom.

They got the "free market" school reform treatment under Pinochet, which is heavily lauded on American Ed Reform websites. Guess it doesn't really work, but we knew that...

[xchrom]

9. i'm having this warm feeling of schadenfreude in the cockles of my heart right now.

yes, there is some awful news in there -- but look at the success -- and why aren't teacher unions given credit for success -- they certainly take a beating for perceived 'failure'?

anyone? obama?

[dkf]

13. The two demographics that exceed the norm, Asian and White kids are over represented in private

Schools.

For public schools, whites represent 58% and Asians 4%. For private schools, 74% are white and 6% are Asians.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55

There are 87191 public schools and 28220 private schools. I did not find stats on how many kids are in public vs private yet.

[xchrom]

15. private schools don't outperfom public schools --

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090226093423.htm

In another “Freakonomics”-style study that turns conventional wisdom about public- versus private-school education on its head, a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.
See Also:
Mind & Brain

* Educational Psychology
* Intelligence
* Child Psychology


Sarah Lubienski, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says teacher certification and reform-oriented teaching practices correlated positively with higher achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam for public-school students.

“According to our results, schools that hired more certified teachers and had a curriculum that de-emphasized learning by rote tended to do better on standardized math tests,” Lubienski said. “And public schools had more of both.”

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/3/31/13544/0640

Findings reveal that demographic differences between students in public and private schools account for the relatively high raw scores of private schools on the NAEP. Indeed, after controlling for these differences, public school students generally score better than their private school peers.....Conservative Christian schools, the fastest growing private school sector, are the lowest performing private schools.


so lots of the good scores must be coming from kids in public schools.
and immigrant asian children don't seem subject to Teh Evil Teachers union.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. K&R

[BlueCheese]

16. The Daily Howler is indispensable...

[Prometheus Bound]

17. I'm not sure this is very meaningful.

You could do something similar in every country, separating groups by income, area, cultural group, or whatever, and get similar results, with one group above the world's top country and another below the world's bottom.

[LWolf]

18. That's why it IS meaningful.

The bottom line? Socio-economic factors OVERRIDE what school systems do. Everywhere. Blaming school systems for failure instead of addressing those socio-economic factors is hypocritical and corrupt.

Yet too much of America, and most politicians, are determined to do exactly that.