With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science, according to the results of a respected exam.
.....“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.
US students are performing poorly in science and math -- the two subject areas that will lead to better jobs.
If you were a company that was looking to build a factory/manufacturing facility, where would you locate it? Frankly, offshoring to Asia makes sense because of the far better educated work force.
6 comments:
Let me relate a story not told by the media. These stories come up from time to time, and invariably the reporter/author/columnist likes to speculate on possible causes of WHY the U.S. is lagging, and roll out the usual left/right talking points -- it's the unions, it's the lack of prayer in schools, it's funding, etc.
Within an hour, the feedback area filled with over 500 comments of teachers and former teachers. Usually this trips off a flame war discussing the points the media rattled off like a shopping list, but this time it was different. The feedback was only a few posts short of unanimous -- teachers getting fired by spineless administrators for BS reasons. This is an unusual form of data, but I can't dismiss a 99.9% consensus.
False accusations of rape. False accusations of physical abuse (which can amount to grabbing a student to break up a fight). Helicopter parents freaking over the slightest mention of evolution, atheism, whatever upsets them. Even merely failing a student who failed. In almost all cases, no charges or lawsuits are filed. The teacher is instantly dismissed and blacklisted. In how many other occupations can you have your life ruined just for doing your job?
Basically, the students run the classrooms now -- and they know it. The teachers are explicitly banned from enforcing discipline at any level, but you know parents aren't going to relinquish this political power.
We have a very serious problem. Yet to top it all off, there is a powerful anti-intellectual movement gaining steam in the political world. How does America expect to get competitive by getting stupider?
I teach some exchange students from Shanghai and they are routinely and without exception my best students.
On the other hand, they are the children of professionals, often professors.
The vast bulk of Chinese students get very little education. When the Chinese test their students, they are testing their college prep students.
If you were to compare the testing of American college bound students with international college bound students, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the gap narrows considerably. Still there, but narrower.
My two cents
1. Teachers in this country do not get the respect they deserve by many students. Behavior problems waste classroom time.
2. Students are not being raised to work hard or delay gratification. Long hours of study bring rewards in the future but in a world of instant gratification (video games) it is like saying "eat your vegetables" in a world of pizza and candy.
3. A lot of girls are scared away from engineering and hard sciences because the demands of these classes bring the risk of getting less than an A. Many girls are afraid of getting their GPAs "dirty" and will pick an easier science or math class due to this fear.
4. We need to look at what the top teachers and top countries do in teaching math and science. I tutored elementary school age Korean children in science when their parents were in the US on business. I asked to see their workbooks brought from home. I changed the way I taught my own daughter mathematics.
5. So much money goes to special education in this country. Not as many dollars flow to the gifted. They languish in regular classrooms. Cheap solution that works, borne out by research- move them up a grade or two.
My daughter is finishing up a PhD in electrical engineering. We often discuss why there aren't more US students with her, let alone any girls.
It's not just a classroom issue. It's a cultural one.
"If you were a company that was looking to build a factory/manufacturing facility, where would you locate it? Frankly, offshoring to Asia makes sense because of the far better educated work force."
It does make sense, until the most educated people in the world do not want to work in factories anymore.
An unfair comparison. Try Westchester NY vs Shanghai, and Chicago inner city vs Xinjiang.
Jobs outsourced to China are low skill and there is no restraint to how labor is exploited there.
US average education is not the problem, the lowest quartile is a serious problem. The badly educated and the unemployed are totally correlated.
"China - Shanghai & Hong Kong"? Shanghai and Hong Kong are China's wealthiest and most modern cities, where (surprise) the wealthiest and most modern people live. Accordingly, they are the most educated.
Why do they differentiate? Why doesn't the US pluck out what would be the top decile (or better) of income distribution and compare it with the rest of the planet? It'd be great for a cheap headline in the NYT - which this story looks as though it may be.
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