PISA Test Scores and the Mathematics of Inequality (another side of the finland story)

[Hannah Bell]

Policy makers are responding to reports that students in the United States on average scored lower than their peers in 16 out of 30 other wealthy industrialized nations on an international science exam, predictably arguing that the U.S. performance on the test (PISA) indicates that U.S. students cannot compete in the international workforce. But a recent analysis from the Urban Institute previously discussed on Science Progress suggests otherwise....

In the Urban report, Into the Eye of the Storm, Harold Salzman and B. Lindsay Lowell acknowledge that policy makers often cite the results from PISA and TIMSS, another international exam, “supposedly showing U.S. students lagging the performance of most other countries.” But using the results to make such sweeping comparisons “stretches the PISA far beyond its appropriate or even intended use.” They go on to make several critical points about the test...

Achievement varies significantly by socioeconomic class and race: The majority of U.S. students, who are white, “actually rank near the very top on international tests...”

The rankings are not a comparison of education systems: They quote the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: “If a country’s scale scores...are significantly higher than those in another country, it cannot automatically be inferred that the schools or particular parts of the education system in the first country are more effective than those in the second.”

The rankings do not indicate the magnitude of difference between average scores in each each country: “Without knowing the magnitude of the actual raw score differences on the PISA, we can use the test results to rank countries and populations but not know the importance of differences in rankings.”

http://www.scienceprogress.org/2007/12/pisa-test-scores-and-the-mathematics-of-inequality/


seems every country but finland is bemoaning the poor quality of their students/schools:

OCED report paints bleak picture of Israeli education: PISA tests show students' performance declining

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3594220,00.html

"La France, élève moyen de la classe OCDE" (France, average student of the OECD class) Le Monde, December 5, 2001

"Miserable Noten für deutsche Schüler" (Abysmal marks for German students) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 4, 2001

"Are we not such dunces after all?" The Times, United Kingdom, December 6, 2001

"Economic Time Bomb: U.S. Teens Are Among Worst at Math" Wall Street Journal December 7, 2004

"Preocupe-se. Seu filho é mal educado." (Be worried. Your child is badly educated.) Veja November 7, 2007

"La educación española retrocede" (Spanish education moving backwards) El País December 5, 2007


*****


OECD = trade organization.
PISA = the new global testing regime.
Rationale for PISA = "increased competitiveness".

Number of students tested: 400,000 total, drawn from 57 countries (2006)

MORE BULLSHIT FROM THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CLASS CURRENTLY BRINGING YOU "EDUCATION REFORM," i.e. privatization.

[truedelphi]

1. Some of this makes a great deal of sense.

I have often lived in neighborhoods where there are many Latino children attending school. And no matter how much money or attention is poured into the programs for kids from south of the border, they cannot maintain a higher grade point than white kids or even child immigrants from the Far East, in large part because of their situation. Often the family lives here only two or three years, then moves back to Mexico or Central America.

So the kids are continually attempting to straddle two very different cultures, and this must be an impossible task for a child.

But I do think it is fair to say that many things are conspiring to fail all our children. Certain aspects of curricula involving the process of how their brains develop are now absent from schools. When I went to grammar school, some fifty years ago, we were required to memorize poetry, Presidential speeches, and the mathematics tables. This was not only done for the sake of knowing various speeches and pieces of history, but also because such memorization is key to helping the brain develop and wire itself in certain ways.

Now kids are no longer asked to do any of that. Memorization is considered akin to torture. Consequently, I have sometimes made a nice chunk of change by tutoring HS kids, who have no ability to do addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, let alone try to solve an algebraic equation.

Why is this happening? I really truly believe that the Powers that Be want our populace as dumb as possible. And it is paying off in spades.

[Hannah Bell]

2. I'd tend to agree that curriculum & methods often come from above & the rationales

for same often make no sense.

Here's an article on the history of math education in Finland: it notes also that Finland scores lower on TIMMS, which tests specific subject content (i.e. "algebra") whereas PISA tests "mathematical literacy" r/t everyday life.

The authors credit their recent high scores to, among other things, the "equity principles" in finnish society: "26% of all 40 countries participated students were at level one or lower, only 6.8% of finnish students were of such low achievement..."

the "equity principle" in finnish society manifests itself, e.g. in a much more egalitarian distribution of income than the US has (gini 27 v. 40 in US, bottom 10% have about 5% of income v. 1.9% in US)

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/18147114/Mathematics-and-Mathematics-Education-Development-in-Finland-The-impact-of-curriculum-changes-on-IEA-(including-TIMSS)-IMO-and-PISA-results--ISBN-83-919465-9-2/

[JDPriestly]

3. The advertising industry has taught us that everything should

be bubbles, fun, giggle all the time. Life just isn't like that.

When I was a child, we did household chores on Saturday morning. Everything from polishing shoes to cleaning the toilet depending on our ages. Today, in many homes, kids just watch cartoons and silly TV on Saturday mornings. It's all mind-numbing aimed to make children feel a little giddy, a little high. Of course, not all children are raised to think that cartoons are standard Saturday morning fare, but an awful lot of them are. There are better things for a kid to do on Saturdays than watch cartoons.

That's just one of the many examples of the dumbing-down that advertising and TV over and many families choose.

[Hannah Bell]

4. Japanese watch as much or more tv than americans, & from personal experience i can tell you their tv

is, if anything, dumber & more celebrity-obsessed.

i don't think there are such easy answers as people keep trying to present.

[tonysam]

5. Frankly, anybody who spews "achievement" is probably in bed with right-wing think tanks

It's a total bunch of bullshit, especially when one is talking about the "superiority" of other countries' school systems.

These "superior" systems will ALL be privatized in due time. What happened in Senegal, with 30,000 people applying for 1,000 teaching jobs, will happen everywhere once teaching is deskilled to the point where ANYBODY can and will be allowed to do it.

Thanks for the OP.