U.S. Falls in Latest Ranking in Math, Reading, and Science: What This Means
I could have told you that the content of the chart below wasn’t good, but I couldn’t have told you why, until I read this, from Glenn Doty:
A nation is only as competitive as its average worker. The higher the level of the average worker, the higher the wages and benefits can be for a company that employs that worker to be on the global stage. As the average American student is further and further out-paced – especially in math and science based skills – the average worker wage and condition will have to contract in order for us to remain competitive. We soared to global dominance by being at the top of the charts in learning… now we’ve seen that star diminish for decades. As the boomers retire, and the less competitive generations take over, we’ll see our ranking slide ever-faster. We MUST actually DO something about this. That means accepting the fact that multiple parties are to blame and actually working to FIX the problem.
I don’t dispute that multiple parties are to blame, though it seems something has changed recently, i.e., we’ve stopped trying. It’s one thing to lack ability at a certain task, in this case educating our kids, but it’s another one entirely to give up. Then it’s another one on top of that in actively working to undermine our public schools.
We have public schools many of whose teachers work two jobs and feed their families with food stamps.
We have classrooms with missing desks and no supplies.
We have an administration whose education secretary Betsy DeVos spent two decades pulling funding away from public schools in Michigan, plunging it far lower in the rankings among the 50 states, and, of course, now proposes to spread this disease to every square inch of America. She proposes to chop funding for after-school and summer programs, child nutrition programs, class-size reduction, community schools and the supports kids need and parents rely on.
We have a White House budget director claiming that there’s no evidence that feeding hungry children helps them do better in school.
I will grant that this is a complex subject and that lots of parties are to blame, but only one of them is taking a torch to our schools.
Craig,
I expect this sort of interpretation from an abashed anti-administration advocate like yourself, but when you try to pass such nonsense off as authenticated by adding the name of your coy “senior analyst”, it changes from mere political fudging to disingenuous propaganda.
The Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA, is a global study conducted for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD).
PISA, is not without serious critics! It would be fair to say, PISA is little more than a badly conducted opinion poll! The validity of the poll is undermined by it’s basic methodology, conduct and authentication procedures.
One of the most distinguished critics of PISA is Queen’s University Belfast mathematician Professor Hugh Morrison who found the statistical model underlying PISA to contain a fundamental, insoluble mathematical error that renders Pisa rankings “valueless”.
Goldstein remarked that Dr. Morrison’s objection highlights “an important technical issue” if not a “profound conceptual error”.
University of BristolProfessor Harvey Goldstein observes “PISA has been used inappropriately”, contending the blame “lies with PISA, since it tends to say too much for what it can do and tends not to publicise negative, weaker or inaccurate aspects.”
Both Professors expressed dismay at the OECD’s antagonistic response to criticism.
I don’t know a single analyst of repute prepared to endorse PISA’s bizarre methodology.
Even at a single glance, issues of accuracy begin to emerge. In Math and Reading categories, “Taiwan” is listed as a participant, but in science the listing is for “Chinese Taipei”.
US schools and education is a big subject and reflects the problems of US society. Education in the US is largely a responsibility of State and local governments. The Federal government plays only a limited role.
A major factor in poor student achievements among many black American students, is lack of stable family life, low expectations, a heavy emphasis among poorer black males to follow sporting or crime role models, while a high proportion of poor females seek early employment in order to support families as single mothers.
The Federal government can’t solve these problems, although the Trump administration policies have created a significant rise black male blue collar employment. the rise in employment is beginning to be felt among children as family life becomes more stable with less single-parent, welfare dependent families.
The problems are far to deep, complex and varied to be interpreted through anything as ludicrous as PISA.
This is unfortunately very true. There was this one girl on youtube from America who thought that the only languages were “American, Canadian, and British”. There have been so many mistakes in the past which lead to this though. We should have never let anyone cut funding for education, we should’ve restricted firearms instead of arming teachers when all of the shootings happened. The issue is that most Americans are too concerned with their pride and freedom, that our utopia is now turning into a dystopia. We need to change now or else we might never get the chance.