We brag about a small change in school test schools as real achievements due to frequent testing. We call this teaching to the test. By this standard, we can never catch up to Asians and the Finland students. Would it not be better to do frequent testing in classes we teach to see if the students are learning? Reading levels went down after we introduced modern ways to teach reading. The same with math. Repetitious drills seems to be what we should go back to. When I visited schools in Japan, I found that teachers had a very prestigious jobs with good pay. We once did. It seems that Michelle Rhee on the cover of the recent Newsweek has the answer. Demand excellence and pay them a good professional salary so they can be true professionals and be proud being teachers.
Teacher unions demand of equal pay for unequal accomplishments must go.
My friend tutors children from the highest income area in New Jersey. He does not find both the children and parents are exceptionally bright or fast learners. He has tutored many children in math and reading who all go to private schools.
The educationally challenged son due to a traffic accident got into Harvard because he was Al Gore’s son. The Republican leader of the Senate before McConnell had a really dumb son who did not do well in prep school, but his transplant surgeon father got him into Princeton where he graduated in spite of his very poor scholarship.
With half of the students at Ivy League colleges enter for a legacy inheritance privilege, some on sport scholarships, and some get in due to a large donation by their parents, the less than half of the openings leads to very good students being rejected. Harvard gets their faculty mostly from other schools.
Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, asked the question whether it is worth your time and money to attend these schools. They conclude that it is not! “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It.” Their criticism of both the cost and poor adjunct teachers replacing most professors at these Universities because so many professors are either on sabbatical or too busy making money consulting or doing research to teach. Many students do not even attend the lectures for that reason. Harvard Law School graduates President Obama and Michelle admit that were still paying their debts shortly before Obama ran for President! His best selling books bailed him out.
The education level at the best high schools in Japan, China, and Korea are so good that they are equivalent to some of the best colleges here. Also Asia students study very hard and long because they do not believe as we seem to here that genius is due to hard work and not inherent intelligence.
Hacker and Dreifus looked at a class from Princeton in I recall 1973 and looked to see if that class achieved success anymore than say a state school in the Middle West. The Princeton student graduates were just average. They also answered the obvious question about the achievements of the students at the Harvard Business School. Again half the students were not legacy students and they had a very successful career not being educated at the undergraduate level in an Ivy League school. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/books/19book.html
In the age of Google, some say that we do not have to know stuff because we can look it up. My question is how can we look it up if we don’t what questions to ask? Something is happening to the way we learn. Creativity has gone down 20 percent in recent decades. Do Republican policies make us dumb? Cut funding to the schools at every level and make them more efficient. Pay teachers a low a salary as we can. Garbage In, Garbage Out. The old way of rote learning has led to ghetto children scoring higher than advantaged suburban children. If we don’t have information already in our brain, we really cannot think well.
Jim Kawakami, Dec 8, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
Shanghai Highest Test Scores Shocked the World Sam Dillon NY Times Dec 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all
… If Shanghai is a showcase of Chinese educational progress, America’s showcase would be Massachusetts, which has routinely scored higher than all other states on America’s main federal math test in recent years.
But in a 2007 study that correlated the results of that test with the results of an international math exam, Massachusetts students scored behind Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Shanghai did not participate in the test. …
“This is the first time that we have internationally comparable data on learning outcomes in China,” Mr. Schleicher said. “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”
“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” he said. …
_____________________________________
… The test, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, was given to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that includes the world’s major industrial powers. …
“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added. “The United States came in 23rd or 24th in most subjects. We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”
In math, the Shanghai students performed in a class by themselves, outperforming second-place Singapore, which has been seen as an educational superstar in recent years. The average math scores of American students put them below 30 other countries.
PISA scores are on a scale, with 500 as the average. Two-thirds of students in participating countries score between 400 and 600. On the math test last year, students in Shanghai scored 600, in Singapore 562, in Germany 513, and in the United States 487.
In reading, Shanghai students scored 556, ahead of second-place Korea with 539. The United States scored 500 and came in 17th, putting it on par with students in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and several other countries.
In science, Shanghai students scored 575. In second place was Finland, where the average score was 554. The United States scored 502 — in 23rd place — with a performance indistinguishable from Poland, Ireland, Norway, France and several other countries.
The testing in Shanghai was carried out by an international contractor, working with Chinese authorities, and overseen by the Australian Council for Educational Research, a nonprofit testing group, said Andreas Schleicher, who directs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s international educational testing program.
Mark Schneider, a commissioner of the Department of Education’s research arm in the George W. Bush administration, who returned from an educational research visit to China on Friday, said he had been skeptical about some PISA results in the past. But Mr. Schneider said he considered the accuracy of these results to be unassailable. …
If Shanghai is a showcase of Chinese educational progress, America’s showcase would be Massachusetts, which has routinely scored higher than all other states on America’s main federal math test in recent years.
But in a 2007 study that correlated the results of that test with the results of an international math exam, Massachusetts students scored behind Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Shanghai did not participate in the test.
A 259-page Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report on the latest Pisa results notes that throughout its history, China has been organized around competitive examinations. “Schools work their students long hours every day, and the work weeks extend into the weekends,” it said.
Chinese students spend less time than American students on athletics, music and other activities not geared toward success on exams in core subjects. Also, in recent years, teaching has rapidly climbed up the ladder of preferred occupations in China, and salaries have risen. In Shanghai, the authorities have undertaken important curricular reforms, and educators have been given more freedom to experiment.
Ever since his organization received the Shanghai test scores last year, Mr. Schleicher said, international testing experts have investigated them to vouch for their accuracy, expecting that they would produce astonishment in many Western countries.
“This is the first time that we have internationally comparable data on learning outcomes in China,” Mr. Schleicher said. “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”
“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” he said. (complete table NYT)
| Science | Reading | Math |
| Shanghai 575 Singapore 542 | Shanghai 556 Singapore 526 | Shanghai 600 Singapore 562 |
| Korea 538 Finland 554 | Korea 539 Finland 536 | Korea 546 Finland 541 |
| Canada 529 Japan 539 | Canada 524 Japan 520 | Canada 527 Japan 529 |
| | | |
| Britain 514 Ireland 508 | Britain 494 Ireland 496 | Britain 492 Ireland 487 |
| Germany 520 France 498 | Germany 497 France 496 | Germany 513 France 497 |
| USA 502 Poland 508 | USA 500 Poland 500 | USA 487 Poland 495 |
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