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We point out simply that not only do U.S. students on average perform better internationally than reported in a myriad of policy papers, but as Boe and Shin demonstrate, the majority of U.S. students (white students) actually rank near the very top on international tests.Right.
Into the Eye of the Storm
October 2007
B. Lindsay Lowell Georgetown University
Hal Salzman The Urban Institute
That's why my high-IQ, culturally-advantaged, non-hyperactive, W-H-I-T-E, rising-5th grade son placed into the second-semester 3rd grade textbook in Singapore Math back when he was age 9. (placement test here).
In the real world, a gap that big by age 9 does not get smaller.
It gets bigger.
non-poor students doing fine in Princeton
19 comments:
deathless: short for "deathless meme"
This meme is a companion to "The reason students in Asian countries excell at math is because those countries implement the U.S. math reform ideas."
Yet another meme, however, sings a different tune: "Sure, the TIMSS scores in math from Asian countries are high. The TIMSS exams do not require critical or higher order thinking; they are repetition of exercises that students have learned to do in school."
Which one is true? You decide. Then hold a conference on it. You'll be pulling down six figures in no time.
arrghh
I didn't know ye knew how to speak pirate!
Absolute or relative?
STEM career goal or informed citizen goal?
Learning at school or at home?
So, statistically, white US kids look pretty good on a relative basis given that they get plenty of mastery help at home or with tutors. Of course, if you are talking about PISA, this just means that they can interpret a bar chart in the newspaper.
This is a top-down guess and check idea of critical thinking carried to a non-critical thinking conclusion. They think that this result tells them much more than it does.
Few want to look at the questions on real tests and the raw percent correct results. Few want to look at those results and wonder what goes on in schools all day. Are these kids really incapable of learning the material? As soon as you start looking at statistics, you are mixing up variables and coming to conclusions that support your philosophy or pedagogy.
This always reminds me of debugging computer programs. Students love to use guess and check, but this will never fix the problems. You have to carefully work backwards from a number that's bad and figure out exactly what's going wrong. You could say that anecdotes (carefully-defined individual problems) are the only path to a solution. You have to work from the bottom-up and not the top-down. You have to analyze the code line-by-line. Few can deal with this level of detail, but many educators trumpet vague concepts of critical thinking.
Then again, some don't want to know the answers. How difficult is it to survey parents of 8th graders taking algebra about exactly what went on at home over the years? How difficult is it to give urban parents a choice of schools?
"The TIMSS exams do not require critical or higher order thinking; they are repetition of exercises that students have learned to do in school."
I have yet to find any educator willing to defend the position that mastery only means speed and not understanding. Unfortnately, their students also do horribly on their fuzzy critical thinking and understanding tests. How do the top TIMSS students compare with other students when it comes to their beloved tests? This is usually where the converstation switches to how tests are imperfect by definition.
Barry said (on the other thread):
"The link talks about what PISA measures as opposed to TIMSS. In 1999, Finland participated in TIMSS. The Finnish 8th graders did better than the US, but were 14th at 520 (top score was Singapore's 604; US' score was 502)."
Finland also did less well than Singapore on PISA math? Why do educators point out Finnland education? Because it supports their beliefs.
This paper, available here, is consistent with what I have written before. There is little evidence that American schools overall underperform those of other countries, when one adjusts for racial composition. Here is a quote:
"An important difference between the United States and most of the other nations tested is the
comparative race/ethnic diversity of the U.S. student body and social conditions. In fact, the
United States stands quite alone in terms of its diversity as, for example, “Germany and Italy
were nearly 100% white, and Japan’s [population] nearly 100% Asian [and] Canada’s [minority
population is predominantly] Asian” (Boe and Shin 2005, 693). Boe and Shin analyze the test
scores of U.S. students and find that white students handily outscore students in the Western G5
nations in math and science, albeit they do not do as well as Japanese students. On the other
hand, U.S. white students (with a percentile rank of 92) handily outscore Japanese students on
reading (with a percentile rank of 69)."
I didn't know ye knew how to speak pirate!
Avast ye Matey!
I know lots of things.
Of course, if you are talking about PISA, this just means that they can interpret a bar chart in the newspaper.
Woo hoo!
There is little evidence that American schools overall underperform those of other countries, when one adjusts for racial composition.
Take a look at the Global Report Card. Compare Scarsdale - all white - to Canada: all of Canada. Or to Singapore, which is not all white.
Singapore has something like 5 different ethnic groups in its schools.
Compare white, affluent districts here to white countries.
"...when one adjusts for racial composition."
You are mixing variables and see only what you want to see.
from Barry's article on traditional math:
Among the possible explanations offered for the decline [in SAT scores] are increased drug use in the mid-60′s, permissiveness, increase in divorces and single family homes, as well as the progressivist trends in education resulting in student-centered and needs-based courses. (See http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/156298.html for a more extensive discussion of this last item.) Another explanation offered is that the population of test takers starting around that time began to include more minority students, resulting in a dilution effect. That argument fails to explain, however, why the same pattern of declining test scores for the SATs exists for the ITBS and ITED test scores which were not limited only to college bound students. Also significant is the fact that the population of test takers in Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana remained primarily white which has been noted by Bishop (1989) and Murray (1992). Specifically, the U.S. Census of 1950 shows that the population in Iowa was 99.2 percent white, declining by 0.7 percentage points to 98.5 percent white by 1980. Similarly, the populations of Minnesota and Indiana were 99 and 95.5 percent white in 1950, dropping respectively to 98.2 and 92.8 by 1970. (Hobbes, 2002).
Iowa was white, and it stayed white.
But the scores went down.
Correction - sorry- those are ITBS scores, not SAT scores.
The other factoid that is meaningful here is the relative standing of high-performing, mostly-white suburbs on math vs. reading at The Global Report Card.
So far, in nearly all of the districts I've looked at, there is a large gap between Reading and Math scores.
Years ago, I remember reading that in high-SES districts you have to look at math scores to see what "value" the schools are "adding" to kids. Highly educated, affluent parents can apparently do a great deal at home to make up for deficiencies in a school's reading-based programs.
Most parents can't effectively remediate math at home no matter how smart or committed they are.
My family's experience is an example of that principle: Chris's highest verbal score (800) is almost 200 points above his highest math score (620).
I retaught math for 3 years of middle school, and that wasn't enough to put Chris on par with a kid of his ability and interests who attended a school with a good math curriculum & uniformly good math teaching
This is a repeat, obviously, but I feel STRONGLY that the entire country needs to reform our math curriculum and teaching (and when I say "entire country" I include private & parochial schools).
I **think** that the essential problem with math is that it is soooo cumulative. Gaps Kill.
Parents generally can't identify gaps - and as a group we don't know how to remediate gaps (and I tried).
Catherine: My article focused on ITBS scores in Iowa, MN and IN which followed the same pattern as SAT scores. But, FYI, the SAT scores in Iowa also declined along with the national average, per the article by Murray (1992).
I have to do some googling. Mathy kids have definite areas of superior cognitive ability in memory and visual spatial as I recall from the last paper I read on the topic. That is nature plus nurture, so I'd ask if you have examined whetherour assumption regarding 'culturally advantaged' is correct for math? Were you as effective w/using puzzles, games, and legos or blocks to develop those thinking skills as compared to parents whose children excel in math? It seems it is more usual to transfer the cultural and educational advantage in literacy.
How culturally advantaged does a child have to be to stay in the top h matgroup, in these times when the complete curriculum is not taught in each grade level? I'd say they need to be gamers from age 2 up, then have parents willing to spend either time or money to fill in curriculum gaps.
>>Parents generally can't identify gaps - and as a group we don't know how to remediate gaps (and I tried).
Those that have a math background do know how. It takes time - no royal road. I suspect that is why the Asians stay working and commit to sending the child to Kumon and violin lessons.
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