Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
nytimes.com
Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#2A nice description of the OECD PISA: http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,...
This is a pretty decent summary:
"PISA is a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD member countries and 35 partner countries . It assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential in everyday life. They are tested in the domains of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy and complete a background questionnaire. For each cycle one domain is focused on more than the others. The first data collection took place in 2000, the second in 2003 and the third in 2006. The fourth cycle is in progress for 2009."
Like any statistical analysis, this study isn't perfect, but, it certainly is an eye opener. If China is able to replicate their success in Shanghai in other regions of China, the United States is going to start to fall behind in 5-10 years in terms of academic leadership of the world.
Time will tell - Shanghai might be an outlier. The United States may also get its act together when it comes to education in general.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#3A nice description of the OECD PISA: http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,... This is a pretty decent summary: "PISA is a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD member countries and 35 partner countries . It assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential in everyday life. They are tested in the domains of r…
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap between white and black scores, I wonder how the US would do if you ranked it based only on white scores.
Also, when judging how well a country will do in science you should not look at the average, but rather at the top. Only a small number of people will choose a career in the sciences, so as long as you have those people, the ones at the bottom don't matter for this purpose - they bring down the average, but don't prevent a country from being a leader in research and development.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#4A nice description of the OECD PISA: http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,... This is a pretty decent summary: "PISA is a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD member countries and 35 partner countries . It assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential in everyday life. They are tested in the domains of r…
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap between white and black scores, I wonder how the US would do if you ranked it based only on white scores. Also, when judging how well a country will do in science you should not look at the average, but rather at the top. Only a small number of people will choose a career in the sciences, so as long as you have those people, the ones at the bottom don't matter…
How well would Germany do if it took away Turkish scores, and how well would France do if it took away Arab scores?
Perhaps the U.S would do even better if only Asian-Americans were allowed to participate.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#5A nice description of the OECD PISA: http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,... This is a pretty decent summary: "PISA is a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD member countries and 35 partner countries . It assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential in everyday life. They are tested in the domains of r…
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap between white and black scores, I wonder how the US would do if you ranked it based only on white scores. Also, when judging how well a country will do in science you should not look at the average, but rather at the top. Only a small number of people will choose a career in the sciences, so as long as you have those people, the ones at the bottom don't matter…
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap in revenues between white and black, I wonder how the US would do if they had better redistribution of wealth.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#6A nice description of the OECD PISA: http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,... This is a pretty decent summary: "PISA is a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD member countries and 35 partner countries . It assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential in everyday life. They are tested in the domains of r…
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap between white and black scores, I wonder how the US would do if you ranked it based only on white scores. Also, when judging how well a country will do in science you should not look at the average, but rather at the top. Only a small number of people will choose a career in the sciences, so as long as you have those people, the ones at the bottom don't matter…
Your point about science is roughly correct but cannot be taken too far. A country's average will indirectly influence the R&D activities of the top group as well. Democratic support, educational funding, social perception all influence science career to an extent. For example, it is so much easier to rest on your laurel when everyone around you does much worse. And when the average performance of a group is raised even moderately, the number of people who passes a certain threshold increase substantially (assuming a distribution not too far from Gaussian).
Also, there needs to be a critical mass of good researchers to create a rich ecosystem that in turn produces significant technology. The US lead in R&D is partially caused by its large number of active researchers and the collective amount of funding these scientists receive compared to other countries.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap between white and black scores, I wonder how the US would do if you ranked it based only on white scores. Also, when judging how well a country will do in science you should not look at the average, but rather at the top. Only a small number of people will choose a career in the sciences, so as long as you have those people, the ones at the bottom don't matter…
How well would Germany do if it took away Turkish scores, and how well would France do if it took away Arab scores? Perhaps the U.S would do even better if only Asian-Americans were allowed to participate.
Not to be too much of a pedant, but: Turkish-Germans make up only 2.1% of the German population and while France doesn't have hard numbers because it's illegal to survey on the basis of race/ethnicity, estimates are around 7% of the population.
American blacks make up nearly 13% of the population in the US. That's a pretty significant difference and if you include all minority groups, America's a significantly less homogeneous place than any country in Europe or Asia that I'm aware of.
I agree with your (unstated) premise that this isn't the point, though.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
How well would Germany do if it took away Turkish scores, and how well would France do if it took away Arab scores? Perhaps the U.S would do even better if only Asian-Americans were allowed to participate.
Not to be too much of a pedant, but: Turkish-Germans make up only 2.1% of the German population and while France doesn't have hard numbers because it's illegal to survey on the basis of race/ethnicity, estimates are around 7% of the population. American blacks make up nearly 13% of the population in the US. That's a pretty significant difference and if you include all minority groups, America's a significantly less h…
Actually, to be more precise, the difference in Pisa scores in Germany is not exclusively turkish, it's between people with "Migrations-background" and people without. I.e, ethnic Germans vs non-Ethnic Germans. According to this article, the difference is 56 points now (http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,733188,00.h...). It was 90+ points previously.
Non-ethnic germans make up 20% of the population, far greater than the 2.1%. See here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland#Demografie
Same goes with France, I just used 'arabs' for demonstration, but the actual non-ethnic French percentage is higher than the ethnic blacks in the U.S.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#9A fairer comparison (city to city, with education-obsessed parents), would be between Shanghai and Cupertino.
Re: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
#10A fairer comparison (city to city, with education-obsessed parents), would be between Shanghai and Cupertino.
Really? Shanghai has 19 million people. Cupertino has 50 thousand.