US Educational Scores Not So Abysmal 412
DavidHumus writes "The much-publicized international rankings of student test scores — PISA — rank the U.S. lower than it ought to be for two reasons: a sampling bias that includes a higher proportion of lower socio-economic classes from the U.S. than are in the general population and a higher proportion of of U.S. students than non-U.S. who are in the lower socio-economic classes. If one were to rank comparable classes between the U.S. and the rest of the world, U.S. scores would rise to 4th from 14th in reading (PDF) and to 10th from 25th in math."
Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, is the study arguing then that these students should be excluded? If so, what is the basis? Are they not really in the country?
Or are they sidestepping the issue of the massive difference in standards of living in the United States?
Granted, the source material may have handled this better than the summary article...
FA says: "As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations"
And the point is???
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It means that if we pretend that we don't have a massive income disparity in this country, and that this disparity is causing our educational system to fail, we can then pretend that everything is just fine, right up until the resulting educational problems start causing our national economy to falter and our democratic institutions to become non-functional.
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Poor people can succeed, rich people can fail academically - money alone doesn't "fix" anything in education, it just makes it look nicer.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people can succeed, rich people can fail academically - money alone doesn't "fix" anything in education, it just makes it look nicer.
And it's clearly no more difficult to study when you have 5 siblings in a 1 bedroom household where you have no computer and eat nothing but dollar menu McDonalds with no hope of ever paying for an education than it is if you live in a McMansion with more bedrooms than occupants, have private tutors, go to private school, and have a trust fund waiting to make sure you don't have to work in college.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people can succeed, rich people can fail academically - money alone doesn't "fix" anything in education, it just makes it look nicer.
You're partially right. Poor people CAN succeed, but rich people are much, much more likely to.
I grew up dirt poor and succeeded, academically and otherwise. But I'm the only one in my family -- and nearly the only one in my high school -- who "succeeded" by any normal definition of the word. Now look at the average SAT scores of folks that the Rockefeller's and Bush's of the world grew up with -- almost nothing but successes.
Surely you're not suggesting that there's not a VERY strong correlation between money and academic success? Money's not the cause of that success, but it's a massive, massive contributor.
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"You're partially right. Poor people CAN succeed, but rich people are much, much more likely to."
Statistically this is true but the lack of money is not the main reason for the correlation. As a teacher in NYC for nearly 20 years I can attest that a large portion of the non immigrant lower income people have severe emotional and/or ability to learn issues due to low IQ, drugs use of the parent during pregnancy, mom had baby with man she did not know etc.. No amount of money is going to change this. Even if
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Interesting)
Only some 6% of the wealthy inherited their money, with another 25% gaining wealth with a combination of work and inheritance.
I'm interested how that statistic is actually calculated. Take Bill Gates. Certainly born to wealth, privilege, influence and opportunity, but went from a mere millionaire to a billionaire. In those statistics, is he a member of the 6%, the 25%, or the remaining 69%? What about rich people who were born rich but lost most of their money, but are still rich? What about people who technically didn't inherit their wealth, but got one form of nepotistic appointment or another?
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Some half of those with an inheritance say money causes more problems than it solves.
Well they can always give it to me if they're that fucking burdened by it.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:4, Informative)
Poor people can succeed, rich people can fail academically - money alone doesn't "fix" anything in education, it just makes it look nicer.
Speaking as a former educator I can tell you there is a HUGE difference. The number one problem is classroom management. Here is a very typical day in an inner city school [youtube.com]?
How would you deal with such a rude and disrespectful student? In a rich school if a lady did that in the middle of class and ruined the day for the other 24 students she would be thrown to the principals office FAST. Well why can't you do that in an inner city school? Because I would throw out 1/4 of the students every single day.
They act like animals and give no respect to authority. Epsecially if you are white. I am not racist at all but just telling you how it is. I have to be a FUCKING ASSHOLE and instill the wrath of God within 5 minutes of class and maybe I can go over some things in an urban school.
Because we do nto want to include poor kids the school districts have quotas on how many students can be sent home each day or be disciplines. So if the quota is 6 kids per day out of 500 students in both the rich kids school and the poor kids school you are screwed!
Teaching is a great profession if the kids want to learn but you couldn't pay me enough to deal with inner city children. Even the 1st and 2nd graders act like crazy savanges and have no issue punching another student or teacher in the face. They are used to violence and watch TV all the time because the parents are drug dealers or single mothers who work 2 minimum wage jobs and are never home just to break even at the end of each month.
There are other issues too like parental involvement but I am not Superman and can't substitute teach effectively when I have 1 or 2 bad kids stealing away classtime. Yes, the poor kids then do worse on tests because the teachers just have to do classroom management instead of teach and of course no help from the parents suck too.
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This gets modded insightful?
Some schools are worse than others. I went to a public vocational/technical high school in Jamaica, Queens, NYC. Part of Jamaica is definitely a low income, mostly black neighborhood and is a bit rough. I am white and I walked 10 minutes from the bus stop to school every day and never encountered any serious problems. I was robbed twice in my freshman year but in both cases it was by a group of two or three older kids who were just trying to act hard and pick on younger kids. You
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:4, Informative)
This, FTA, states it better:
Because social class inequality is greater in the United States than in any of the countries with which we can reasonably be compared, the relative performance of U.S. adolescents is better than it appears when countries’ national average performance is conventionally compared.
So the US is number one in social class inequality! Yeah! We're number one!
This just means that the US has extremely rich kids, who are smart. And extremely poor kids, who are dumb.
And it demonstrates that you can prove anything you want by fiddling with statistical samplings.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:4, Insightful)
This just means that the US has extremely rich kids, who are smart. And extremely poor kids, who are dumb.
No, it means the US has rich kids receiving a good education, and poor kids receiving a poor education.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it means the US has rich kids receiving a good education, and poor kids receiving a poor education.
Hmm, the uncomfortable reality is that rich kids perform better even in same schools with same teachers. It's what happens at home that makes the difference, namely greater expectations from parents and a greater range of activities and experiences outside the school.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Interesting)
Better nutrition. Safer neighborhoods. Likely more stable homes. Being able to afford extra-curricular activities. Educated parents to help with homework.
I'm not disagreeing with you ... all of the benefits of being rich/better off translate into many things. We sure as hell couldn't afford to play team sports when we were kids ... people used to spend thousands of dollars each year, probably more. Not an option in my family.
If you go to school hungry, or have to worry about avoiding gangs, junkies and all of the things that rich kids don't ... there's a lot more distractions and a lot fewer opportunities. Other Shit gets in the way.
Which is why people ignorantly say "they're just wasting their opportunity for an education". They're mostly just trying to get by with many more problems than advantaged kids, but people act like it's an equal playing field to start with.
But people don't want to fix the underlying socio-economic problems, they want higher test scores. They just say that "education in America is fine, it's the poor kids who are dragging down our test scores, the private schools are thriving. Who cares is the public schools might have developing-nation literacy rates?"
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Insightful)
This just means that the US has extremely rich kids, who are smart. And extremely poor kids, who are dumb.
No, it means the US has rich kids receiving a good education, and poor kids receiving a poor education.
It's more complicated than that. You can't just put the poor kids in the same school as the rich kids and expect them to suddenly do a lot better. I went to a really good high school, and while I was taking the AP and honors classes, the poor kids in the same school were, for the most part, not.
There's a whole lot of built-in advantages that come from having educated parents. Before you even go to school, they've generally taken the time to teach you a great deal of things, which gives you a leg up against your classmates. When you first start taking math, and you have problems understanding basic arithmetic, they're going to be able to help you with that homework, whereas other kids go home, and their parents don't have the knowledge to help them. Your parents might take the time to involve you in their electronic hobbies where you get to learn something they don't teach at the schools, while the other kids' parents don't have any hobbies other than watching TV, because buying random electronic parts to build something doesn't really fit in their budget...
Basically, the problem needs to be approached from a socioeconomic perspective, not just a quality of schools perspective.
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:4, Interesting)
One advantage many people either don't realise or don't think about is expectations. I knew from an early age I was going to attend and graduate from college, perhaps even graduate school. My parents did, and that was just what comes next after grade school, middle school, and high school. I remember being suprised at many of my friends my senior year not knowing what they were going to do next. How could someone not know? College is next!
So when troubles came (as they eventually do for everyone), I knew any path forward was going to include me sticking it out and graduating. I had a girlfriend whose mother had dropped out out college. She was having a rough time with a paper she needed to get a good grade on, and just decided that was it. She was quitting college. I remember my utter shock at this, as that had simply never occurred to me as an option.
A person's expectations for themselves are very powerful, and that is strongly affected by their background.
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This just means that the US has extremely rich kids, who are smart, but their smartness doesn't matter since they have no need of it to live comfortably.
And extremely poor kids, who are dumb, so their willingness to overcome the poverty - and, side effect, contribute to society - doesn't matter, them being locked into their dumbness
Extended your statement with their logical consequences. If you are rich... err... smart enough, draw your own conclusion (while your socio-economic class still exists)
Re:Can we speak in clear terms? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it is saying that the survey covered, for instance:
US higher socioeconomic pupils: 30%
US lower socioeconomic pupils: 70%
X higher socioeconomic pupils: 50%
X lower socioeconomic pupils: 50%
Which is not a scientific poll unless that is the same proportion of pupils in each socioeconomic bracket.
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Undoing accidental moderation. Someone else please successfully mod this up without missing and modding down.
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An excellent example of ... (whatever)
Let's try a Reductio ad absurdum: suppose a nation made of the sole "rich child Stephen Hawking" and 299,999,999 uneducated others. By your "scientific" methodology, to reach 50%-50% proportionality with the other countries, the poll would need to take the (sole) genius and a single other person. Because of the presence of the genius in the poll, the ranking of that country will be the highest possible.
Question: does that (highest) ranking offer any value in assessing
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Basically it's arguing that standardized tests are bullshit. Reducing a human being to a piece of paper is inherently ridiculous, and doesn't stop being so just because you've used the same algorithm on everyone.
In some cases tests're necessary, such as college admission. But these school-system ranking ones just don't seem to show much. If you read the article, for example, they also point out our math deficiency is caused partly by the test-writers decision to make fractions count as much as Algebra.
Makes the data useful beyond bragging (Score:2)
And the point is???
The point is to evaluate how successful our education system is; where it is succeeding and where it could do better. And in particular to learn whether the approaches taken by other countries is working better or worse than us, so we can adjust our approach accordingly. The school system can't change the socioeconomic breakdown of the country; they have to find the best approaches to serve the students they have. Blindly comparing schools that have mostly rich kids to ones with mostly poor kids will always
I think you agree with the study (Score:2)
Hmm, is the study arguing then that these students should be excluded? If so, what is the basis? Are they not really in the country?
No, I think they're arguing the problem isn't the educational system, but instead that we have a larger proportion of the population that is a member of disadvantaged social groups than the countries we're being compared to.
FA says: "As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations"
And the point is???
That instead of focusing on improving education purely by looking at schools through programs like No Children Left Behind, we should focus on the economy, how to lower unemployment in the blue-collar section and other strategies to improve the economic status of a large portion of our p
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No...the study is arguing that these results should not necessarily be used to determine education policy.
The Dept. of Education has gotten flak that US students do not perform as well as their international peers, and should introduce school reforms in order to fix this problem. This study indicates that the root cause of this performance gap is socioeconomic factors, which
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From what I gathered in a very brief skimming of the paper, it appears that they're mostly interested in ensuring accurate comparisons, and that they believe that merely comparing national averages is not rigorous enough, is obfuscating the reasons for the differences, and is hiding possible lessons that could be gleaned from those doing well. They also believe that the comparisons being made were misleading, since the OECD report claims that there are a roughly similar number of "disadvantaged" students in
What he fuck is wrong with you? (Score:2)
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Coulda fooled me.
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I don't know of any classless societies where everyone is poor. Can you cite an example?
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We aren't TRYING to be a class-segregated society.
Well, most of us aren't, and rather unsuccessfully to boot.
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We aren't TRYING to be a class-segregated society.
...and by "we", you mean non-(large)corporate America. Large corporations in America obviously believe in class-segregation, as evidenced by their lawyers, lobbyists, and general behavior.
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Really? I mean, sure they may be creating that situation, but a lot of people who are in charge of large corporations didn't start off rich.
I don't think there is a corporate bias towards making people poor, I just think it is the result of the way that corporatism works.
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It would be hard to be more wrong — the US is on par with the UK, and both are well behind most of Western Europe. See, for example, this Wikipedia entry. [wikipedia.org]
Re:What he fuck is wrong with you? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think both theoretically and evidentally, this is not the case. If you are brought up with wealth, you have better nutrition, better education, more lucrative social networks, more useful free time, and a far less severe exposure to risk. If there is no government policy to redress this imbalance, then probability dictates that wealth concentrates and poverty, on the whole, becomes entrenched. And this is what we see in the modern US.
Individuals certainly have opportunities to make for themselves a better life. But if they are coming from a poor background, those opportunities are far fewer, they must work harder to take advantage of them, and the consequences of failure are much more severe. Essentially, the dice are loaded.
Moral considerations aside, a society where 80% of the population have the opportunity to take risks and be innovative and exploit usefully the extant infrastructure is going to be economically more successful than one in which only 20% do.
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I went to the closest thing my state had to an inner-city public school. Very occasional serious fights (I wasn't in the middle of them thank goodness), about a 30% dropout rate, and a wide range of results: Some kids went on to prestigious colleges, a lot of kids went to lower-tier schools, a lot of kids went basically nowhere and ended up working fast food or learning a skilled trade, and some kids got knocked up or hooked on drugs. The number 1 determining factor in how the kid ended up? Their parents' e
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The answer isn't really a mystery:
For about 300 years, rich white people have convinced a significant percentage of poor white people that they had more in common with the rich white people than with the poor brown people. This makes it easier for the rich white people to screw up the lives of both the poor white people and the poor brown people, which makes it easier for the rich white people to hire the poor white people and poor brown people really cheaply. The last thing those rich white people want is
Wait a second!1 (Score:4, Funny)
Uhh . . . wait a second!!1
How could U.S. scores rise to 4th from 14th, when four is less than 14??? They mean "lower"!
(Goes back to reading Texas high school math book)
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The funny part is we got 4th on reading, I assume reading English. So the folks who beat us are probably Great Britain and her possessions, and ... what like Japan and China or ?
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You might want to go back and re-read the parent post:
Re:Wait a second!1 (Score:5, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with math, actually. It’s instead a conceptual and linguistic problem because of two different metaphors we use in English. One is that the increase in value of numbers from zero to infinity is modelled as a vertical scale. Thus zero is at the bottom, one is above zero, two is above one, and so forth. The other is that the *decrease* in value of numbers from infinity to zero is *also* a vertical scale. Thus zero is at the top, one is below zero, two is below one, and so forth. So we have two metaphors:
1. Numbers are vertical. Zero is the top.
2. Numbers are vertical. Zero is the bottom.
Note that neither of these is actually valid in any physical sense. Numbers have no physical relationship with vertical alignment in a space. We use these sorts of metaphors because they map abstract concepts to our perceptions of the physical world, thus making it easier for us to visualize them – to “see” them mentally. Unfortunately for us, metaphors may conflict between people, and then our communication about these abstract concepts becomes confused.
A similar situation arises with time, which is another abstract concept that we can’t perceive (we have no perceptual apparatus for time itself, only for physical changes over time). Suppose I have a party scheduled on Tuesday. A friend can’t make it, so he wants to reschedule it. He says to me “Can we move the party ahead?” Does this mean the party should be moved to Monday, or to Wednesday? It turns out there are two competing metaphors involved.
1. Time moves forward.
2. Events in the future move toward us.
If you apply the metaphor in 1 then the party should be moved to Wednesday. This is because, since time moves forward, “ahead” means a point in the future in the direction of time’s movement. But if you apply the metaphor in 2 then the party should be moved to Monday. This is because, from where we “stand” in this vision of time, if an event moves “ahead” of its position then it will move toward us. In effect the events “face” us. The party then occurs *earlier* in time, hence on the day before Tuesday. Now that you’re aware of this difference, you may discover that it depends on some physical properties of our experience. In fact, people who are moving – say walking or riding a bike – are more likely to use metaphor 2 above. People who are sitting still are more likely to use metaphor number 1. So if you walk into someone’s office, you’re primed for 2 and the seated person is primed for 1. You agree together to move a meeting “ahead” and then later discover the misunderstanding.
These sorts of metaphors are typical across the world’s languages because they handle perceptual limitations common to all humans. The need for these metaphors is universal, but the precise metaphors are not necessarily the same. For example, there is evidence that Aymara – a language indigenous to the northern Andes of South America – has a metaphor for time quite unlike what English speakers are used to. In Aymara, people have a metaphor that amounts to “Time is visible”. Events that occurred in the past are visible, and thus lie ahead of the speaker. Events that occur in the future are not visible, and hence lie behind the speaker. Time then moves backward in conceptual space, exactly the opposite of what we’re accustomed to in English. This isn’t the same as “Events in time move toward us”, but it’s similar.
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I got your joke, but I had to read it all, and your wording did make me do a double take. I think you impersonated a troll a little too well.
Gaming the system (Score:2)
So what you're saying is, if we move the goal posts and massage the data, we won't suck anymore? I love this solution -- solved not with expensive money and training but nice, cheap words. No really, that pretty much is the summary for the article: It's those damn poor people dragging us down.
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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
I think this article very clearly underlines this.
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No, what they're saying is that if you want to make comparisons between any groups, you better make sure the comparison groups are indeed comparable. This paper tries to do that. Take it or leave it.
Imagine if a study of health outcomes compared, say, the obese of one country, say, the United States, to the non-obese of another country and then tried to make claims about the health outcomes of the *general population* of each country. Would you then say, "Oh, so now we're supposed to just claim that Amer
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I think it is a bit more that the headlines. One way to think about it is how on average how educated did going to school in your country make the population. Another way to think about it is how well our schools are serving the average person.
After reading the result of this "reanalysis" the conclusion is that our schools are probably serving the average person better than we thought because apparently our schools (in the US) are really serving the more priviledged people worse than other developed countr
and writing ? (Score:3)
"proportion of of U.S. students" ;)
That's depressing. (Score:3)
That just means the rest of the world isn't as smart as we hoped it was.
Fast talk, no real results (Score:2)
Socio-economics should not be put into grading. It doesn't matter if you are poor or rich, it depends on how much you are taught. I know lots of students from the middle-class who are smart outside the class, but unwilling to do the work. I know plenty of "poor" kids who have come to school, straight As but unable to tell left from right.
Our educational system is based on rote
Not sure this really changes things (Score:2)
Having made the mistake of reading the article, I'm not sure this really changes anything. They are saying that the US has a higher percentage of students in the lower socio-economic categories. These categories always perform lower so that lowers the overall US scores. While I am sure all of this is true, it is a simple fact of the US. We do have more poor people and poor people do perform poorer on the tests, therefore the US as a whole does poorer on the tests. So yes, our top students do as well as
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I think that is what they mean.
I think they were saying that not all children take the test, but when they do take the test, the children taking the test in the US are primarily from the lower classes, and that the upper classes are underrepresented in regard to their actual ratio in the US.
For example:
European Country A has 5 rich kids and 10 poor kids. In Country A, the test is taken by 5 rich kids and 5 poor kids. The other 5 poor kids do not take the test.
The US has 5 rich kids and 10 poor kids. In t
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You are right that as a comparison between countries the usual rankings work tolerably well -- except, of course, for the countries that have totally shitty economies verging on peonage, but whose schools only take the very healthy children of the (small) upper classes. Those countries suck regardless, although we're trying to become one.
However, the major use of these educational comparisons is to belittle the United States' school systems. Which are not really set up to correct for the consequences of o
Shocking! (Score:5, Funny)
So if we factor out the poorer-performing students, America scores better?
That is amazing!
Does it matter? (Score:3)
Even if this was correct, test scores don't mean much to me. Schools seem to be all about teaching to the test and rote memorization, and I couldn't care less about test scores because of that.
10 times (Score:4, Funny)
14th to 4th? That's like 10 times better!
You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Informative)
American's can't even spell colour properly. :P
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However, some of us do know how the difference between the possessive and the plural of our demonym.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Informative)
It's complicated. We're better off than countries where members of lower socioeconomic classes don't go to school. But our overall scores are lower than countries with better economic equality, because so many more of our citizens are in lower socioeconomic classes.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Funny)
It's complicated. We're better off than countries where members of lower socioeconomic classes don't go to school. But our overall scores are lower than countries with better economic equality, because so many more of our citizens are in lower socioeconomic classes.
It's simple. The scoring was done by American high school students. Obviously if it was corrected, things would be different =D
American high schools (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on which American high school you're talking about.
I've been to some high schools that are packed full of high achievers and I've been to some high schools where each and every students have to gone through a metal detector before they are allowed to enter the school compound
There's just no justice to do any comparison between the two because their differences are so great they are much more like school systems from two very different countries
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Can they wrote better then u?
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Short version is we're intentionally turning the USA into a 3rd world country including achievement, but forcing school attendance like a 1st world country.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, exactly. That's even shorter than my short version! :)
Short but wrong, because both versions assume the problem is getting worse. Test scores are going up world-wide, and have been for decades. But they are going up even faster in America.
White kids in America do as well as white kids in Europe. Black kids in America do as well as black kids in Europe. But America has more black kids (and poor hispanic kids too). This explains ALL of the difference in test scores. We need to do better, but we should not be looking to Europe as a model, because, for similar demographics, they do no better than we do.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Informative)
White kids in America do as well as white kids in Europe. Black kids in America do as well as black kids in Europe.
The article doesn't break it down by race, but by class. What they say in the article:
But the highest social class students in United States do worse than their peers in other nations, and this gap widened from 2000 to 2009 on the PISA.
So we've got more lower class, and our upper class is worse. We have relatively uneducated children.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article doesn't break it down by race, but by class.
TFA does not break it down by race, but it is broken down by race in plenty of other places. Blacks do about one standard deviation worse than whites. If you correct for socio-economic status, some, but not all, of the disparity will go away. But blacks do worse even when compared with white classmates of the same family income.
So we've got more lower class, and our upper class is worse. We have relatively uneducated children.
This is because the USA has more racial minorities in all socio-economic groups. When you break it down by demographic group (both race and income), America does just as well as other countries.
Of course, we should not consider any of this as justification for complacency. Race is not destiny, and blacks today do better than whites did a few generations ago. But we need to make sure we learn the right lessons. Looking at other countries as examples of the "right" way to educate children is misguided, because they actually do no better than us.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It saddens me to see such a post get moded 5 "informative," while being so wrong. It shows how ill-informed about education we are on Slashdot.
We white guys tend to think of black and Hispanic cultures as uninterested in education. This is simply not the case, at least not in Chapel Hill, NC, where I live. The truth is that kids who don't get enough to eat and who don't know if their dad will pay the rent this month have much bigger problems to worry about than spelling and math. I visited our local black and Hispanic communities, and found that those where home ownership was high had good test scores. Neighborhoods of shabby rentals where the kids are underfed do poorly. I also found that very poor white families did almost as bad as poor black and Hispanic families. In Chapel Hill, 90% of the achievement gap is explainable by the gap in severe poverty.
A few years ago my neighborhood was redistricted in a way that the school my kids were zoned to could not succeed. Some a-hole in Southern Village "won" the redistricting contest, and while the rest of the district was rezoned mostly wisely, this guy booted most of the blacks and half of the Hispanics out of his daughter's school and concentrated poverty in another one. He threw our upscale neighborhood (not in Southern Village) into the school just to make it look a little better on paper. That's when I decided to check out what was really going on in these schools. By the way, the school is shutting down now, due to poor performance.
Carrboro, where our school is, has some desperately poor areas. The illegal immigrant population is so poor, many of their kids don't get enough to eat. Also, there's old mostly black mill town neighborhoods that are owned by slum lords. I talked to several black families there to get a feel for what they were looking for in a school, and what they felt were the challenges, because at the redistricting meetings, not one parent from any poor neighborhood showed up. I tried and failed to talk to any Hispanic family. When I knocked on their doors, all the Spanish language radio stations were silenced, lights turned off, kids were quieted, and the door was not answered. I assume this is what they have to do to avoid ICE.
On the other hand, in lower-middle class neighborhoods in north Chapel Hill where ownership is high, black and Hispanic kids do very well, almost as well as the white kids, even though they are poorer on average. It seems that once you have a place to live, enough food, and maybe a car, then regardless of cultural and racial background, the next priority is educating your kids.
I keep hearing from liberal friends that we need to spend more on education to give the next generation of black and Hispanic families an equal chance. I hear from conservative friends that spending more money wont help, because the school system is fundamentally screwed up, and because black and Hispanic families fail because they don't try and don't care - it's their fault. Both sides are wrong. The problem isn't that schools are underfunded or teachers aren't good enough, nor is the problem that black and Hispanic parents don't care about educating their kids. The problem is severe poverty. What we need to do is dramatically reduce poverty. We can do this, but as a nation we've decided that it's OK for blacks and Hispanics to be poor. Just like in our days of slavery, we see poor blacks suffering, and do nothing about it. We haven't lifted a finger to help them get ahead, and probably did a lot to hold them down. We're generous with tax dollars when it comes to building jails to lock up them up, and ICE has plenty of funding to deport Hispanics, but we don't do a damned thing to help these people find a way out of poverty. We're OK with blacks commiting crimes in poor black neighborhoods, and we're OK with illegal imigrants picking all our strawberries for us. In short, we do poorly in education because we're still racist. It's not overt racism like before, but whites in the US are OK
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with just about everything you say besides this: "Both sides are wrong." The left isn't as single note as you're putting them here - there's a pretty widespread understanding that poverty is the root cause of inequity, and that education is just one of many places that desperately need work.
If your friends genuinely just think it's an education problem, well, there's something screwy there - but we genuinely DO have deep inequity built into our education system, much of it coming out of the 80s and 90s, much of it in the guise of "measurement" or "achievement-based funding."
But seriously - it's kind of just that sentence, and only in that it implies equal blame, when it's really more of an 80/20(but still benefiting from the results) kind of thing. The left has been a pretty useless ally, but the right is actually working hard every day to make it worse.
Your opinion of the parent poster is spot on, and, as someone who did a lot of subbing in Sarasota, Fl. (the most segregated city in the U.S., btw.) it's really, really true - poverty, much of which is directly the result of the insane racism we as a society still cling to, is the root cause of this shit.
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The unintended racism in your post aside, an easy way to explain rising test scores in America is that standards are constantly lowering in this country. It's much easier to graduate today than when I was in high school. When I was in high school it was much easier to graduate than when my parents were in high school.
My stepfather was an accountant, working for the government, with no college education. Good luck with that today. From his generation I've also known designers, programmers, and even a vice pr
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Funny)
well from my own person experience from 2002-14 yrs ago. What screwed me up was when they did the alternate track for math and i was put with the 'slow' kids.
If you think that 2002 was "14 yrs ago", then maybe they made the right call when they put you in the "slow" math class.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's the key. Our scores ARE abysmal, it's just that much of the blame goes to our failure to address the socio-economic divide rather than to our educational system.
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The socioeconomic divide is largely due to immigration, and solving that would destroy what made America into what it is. That said, poor children can still learn just like everybody else, so focusing on how to educate them efficiently might help improve the scores.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not quite right. Higher economic status is correlated to higher scores. This is true everywhere. The article has two claims related to this:
1. The US was badly sampled. It should be the case that a student in any economic group has the same probability of being included in the sample. However the sample they took has a disproportionately large number of students in lower economic groups. As an example, students attending schools with half of more of their students in poverty represent 23% of the total population of US students but 40% of the population of the test sample. Due to the correlation mentioned above, this lowers the measures scores of US students.
2. A higher proportion of US students are in lower economic groups than in other countries.
The first is clearly a methodology fault, and given the big difference in the example group of 40% vs 23% it could have large effects. The article doesn't discuss the details of the second group. It could be that the socio-economic divide is larger in which case it would be justified to say that still represents the country fairly and doesn't invalidate the comparison. Or it could be that children in lower economic groups are more likely to be students in the US than elsewhere. In that case it would seem perverse to claim the US educational system is worse than others because it attempts to educate poor kids. It could be both of these things or something else.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really, for example in Germany they have a rigidly tiered system where kids are divided by potential between the 4th and 6th year of primary school. Children of lower socioeconomic status are almost always excluded from the college prep track due to a host of issues, but dominated by a lack of free time on the part of the parents in the preschool years (the same is true in the US which is one of the things the headstart program was aimed at remedying).
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Primary school is only an education if you're a pre-industrial farmer, secondary education is the bare minimum to really participate in the international economy and do better than living paycheck to paycheck. In much of Europe the lower class are locked out of effective secondary education at a young age, the US may do so de facto but the European model does it de jure, I think the US model has more chance of eventually fixing the problem than the European model.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:5, Informative)
Not really, socioeconomic mobility in the US is largely a myth we tell people to keep them working hard.
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.[13] Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes. Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. link [wikipedia.org]
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If the poor just got jobs and paid taxes, we'd have a balanced budget. It's all the poor's fault.
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Funny how when a fraudulent contractor talks a bunch of people into unnecessarily expensive work, he gets convicted, but when a rich fraudulent banker talks people into an unnecessarily expensive loan, he gets a bailout.
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Wrong, conforming FHA and CRA loans had similar and lower default rates than conventional prime loans in the same neighborhoods, it was mostly fraudulent loans (so called liar loans) that defaulted leading to implosion of improperly rated mortgage backed securities. In fact even non-conforming loans at most traditional lending institutions had only slightly higher default rates than during previous recessions, it was mostly the fraudsters, enabled by the large brokerage houses, that caused the runup and sub
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No, it was the relaxing of the loan regulations that allowed them to start offering loans that they previously would not have.
So what you're saying is that the evil government forced the bankers to do stupid and unethical things at gunpoint by not absolutely forbidding it (due in no small part to intense lobbying by those same bankers)? Does that mean that if we permit bankers to bash their own skulls with a brick, we;'ll have an epidemic of skull fractures?
As for the time bombs? What time bombs? You mean things like ARMs, balloon mortgages, and the like? Are you trying to say that it's the fault of the salesmen? That the people who were actually applying for the loans, signed, and agreed to the terms of the loan have absolutely no responsibility?
I would say all of the blather about how you'll be able to re-finance when the time comes, no risk! might have had something to do with the problems. If McDonalds advertised th
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It's simple. When you compare likes with likes (as far as socioeconomic class goes) the US is not any worse than other countries.
We look worse on the surface because (from TFA), "a disproportionately greater share of U.S. students comes from disadvantaged social class groups, whose performance is relatively low in every country."
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No, that's too simple. We actually are worse—we don't just look worse. But the reason we are worse is because we have a serious income inequality problem, not because our schools are bad.
Re:Wait, so then what? (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet even with a "massive waste of human talent" the US leads the world in innovation, scientific achievement, per capita GDP (at least compared to countries that matter), military power (even in comparison to pretty much the rest of the world put together) etc etc. Why are there no European Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook. Do you realize that huge majority of the largest and best companies in the world are US based? Do you realize that 70 of the top 100 universities according to Times Education rankings are in the US? Just imagine what we could do if we didn't have that "massive waste of human talent".
Or perhaps the answer is that relative economic liberty that enables economic growth and innovation cannot be separated from inequality. You can choose one or the other.
Europe is rotten economically and politically to the point where a new wave of dictatorships and wars (a regular occurrence in that part of the world) is not unthinkable anymore and the reason for that is not unrelated to sacrificing liberty for the sake of equality i.e. sacrificing some people for the sake of others.
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Europe is rotten economically and politically to the point where a new wave of dictatorships and wars (a regular occurrence in that part of the world) is not unthinkable anymore and the reason for that is not unrelated to sacrificing liberty for the sake of equality i.e. sacrificing some people for the sake of others.
US Economics are in worse shape than Europe. The issue with Europe, the only reason we are hearing about it, is that what's good for one member state isn't good for another. With the US, we are all as bad off as Greece, so there's no economic turmoil about a plan benefiting CA more than AL. Somehow you
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For the same reason there is no US-American SAP, Evonik, Ericsson, BASF, Fraunhofer Society and so on.
Your examples are also quite interesting, it is telling that you consider a tech fashion manufacturer, a webshop and a social network website actually innovative.
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We're worse overall because every a) Public School student are more likely to get tested, and b) since we've got high income inequality that means that we've got more poor kids then rich kids.
If you compare poor Swedish kids to poor Americans, average Swedes to average Americans, etc. we do fine. But due to a) you aren't comparing average Swedes to average Americans, you're comparing average Swedes to lower-middle-classish Americans, and due to b) we have a much larger lower-middle-classish cohort in the fi
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Unfortunately it's easier to come up with scapegoats than address real problems.
For example, see how many people will blame Teacher's Unions or the Federal Department of Education rather than question how much emphasis the local school board puts on Football stadiums.
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It's no secret that the US education system is a joke, regardless of our "place", we need to improve it.
Uh, no. RTFA and all that, but the US Educational system does reasonably well to quite well -- when you control for exogenous factors such as kids who come to school ill-dressed, ill-fed, in poor health, sleep-deprived, etc. Other countries either don't send such kids to school at all (Turkey) or don't have nearly so many of them (Northern Europe.)
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but the US Educational system does reasonably well to quite well
If its purpose is to give people an education, then I would disagree. There is far too much rote memorization and teaching to the test for that to occur.
If, on the other hand, its purpose is to have students memorize material and then spew it all back on a piece of paper, then I'm sure it does a reasonably good job.
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http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-school-board-reverses-discipline-in-standardized-test-cheating-probe-1.1429762
I'm not sure how wide spread this is, but it goes to show that similar things to what you described are occurring in America.
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Here in America teachers simply "correct" the answer forms [yahoo.com] to make sure their failure to educate the students goes unnoticed.
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to make sure their failure to educate the students goes unnoticed.
It actually just proves that the teacher failed to teach to the test properly, not that tests have much to do with education.
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"...who are in the lower socio-economic classes."
The 2nd period in "U.S." is part of the abbreviation, not the end of the sentence. I think it's you. ;)
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It means poor American kids are more likely to be tested then rich American kids. OTOH poor Swedes/Finns/etc. are no more likely to be tested then their rich compatriots. Since poor kids suck at tests this means America is at a major disadvantage in these rankings.
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:4, Informative)
There's two problems with this argument: the facts are wrong, and it's totally misinterpreting the original article.
First the facts. Some foreign countries (ie: Germany) have a system similar to the one you describe. Many others don't. Finland, for example, is the only country besides us actually mentioned in this article. They don't have a two-track education system until the age of 16, which is not that far off from when the US Community College vs. Real University distinction sets in. The tests they're talking about actually happen at age 13, so you are simply wrong.
Second the original article's point is that the students tested are poorer then the student body as a whole. They're saying that while only 23% of American students go to schools where most kids are in poverty (e: qualify for cheap school lunches), 40% of American kids tested go to such schools. Our poorest kids take the damn test at twice the rates of everyone else, which isn't good for scores.