The PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test is administered to 15 year olds in industrialized countries every three years. The 2006 results were just released and show that US students are ranked 17th out of 30 in science and 24th in math. About 1.3% of students reached the highest level on the test overall with New Zealand and Finland having the most star pupils at 3.9%. [source (Note: may require free registration)]
So what’s the deal here? Can we trust these results? It’s interesting first of all that they report in these press releases comparisons of the average scores. All such studies carry with them a margin of error. The average reported is the sample mean, which is a good approximation for the real mean of the population, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the difference between US scores and other countries is signficant. For example, in the 2000 assessment, US students were ranked 15 out of 27 in reading, but only four countries scores were higher and statistically significant. About 19 countries scored about the same as the US. That is, given another random sample of students, we could expect the US to do better than some of those that beat it and worse than some of those it beat. So those 19 countries are generally the same without larger sample sizes.
There are other possible problems with PISA. Whether countries choose representative samples or exclude certain people from the exams is another concern. Joachim Wuttke, a physicist and statistician, claims that Finland excluded students with dyslexia and immigrants from their sample, while Germany included schools with special needs students. The PISA standards allow for schools to exclude children if they have special needs or if they have been speaking the language of the test for less than a year (in a school setting).
These things are always controversial because as soon as someone’s country doesn’t do as well as they’d like, everyone is all over it. The good thing about assessment tests is they make it harder for you to grow complacent. We should always be challenging the way we are running our school system. As generations change, so do learning styles and the ways that teachers can reach students. Other countries have great ideas about how to run schools and we can learn from that. Teachers need to learn new and better ways of doing things just as much as their students.
I think the most important thing here is that no student should feel that because they come from a certain nation, that they are any less capable of doing well in math and science. That sort of attitude will lead to nothing but failure. There is nothing intrinsic about being from Finland that suddenly makes you smarter. I mean, come on. Staying indoors 8 months of the year because it’s dark or freezing cold will do that. (Just kidding!)
There is no better way to become stupid than to think you already are.
Posted by Donna Adams on 6 December 2007 at 09:48:53
“There is no better way to become stupid than to think you already are.” Well said! I agree. Interesting story, babe.
I think I mentioned this to you, but China has a neat way of handling their epidemic with childhood obesity. Rather than tryin to get their children involved in sports or the typical phys. ed. class, they sing and dance to popular songs. We can certainly learn from other countries and they can learn from us as well.