The latest ranking of top countries in math, reading, and science (PISA 2016)

[Anonymous]

Even with common core implementation being so recent, I suppose I was hoping there'd be a boost or at least a treading of water. After all, common core is just the latest result of a larger conversation in the US. Hasn't then conversation being going on for a long time? I'm not familiar with the nitty gritty of what is being taught in education departments, but I feel like I heard teacher friends talk about this 10 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This test is only given to 15 year olds? I'm sure in many countries, the top students are the ones taking this test. The rest of the students are probably enrolled in non-academic tracks. Not so in this country where everyone is supposed to be college and career ready but they've gotten rid of so many vocational programs for high schoolers.

Not sure about the countries you are talking about, but in my country the 15 year olds are in what we call elementary school (here middle school or 1st year of high school). There are no tracks yet.
It's the basic free education all get and most of our schools are public schools.
Speaking of my country, the top students were not the only ones taking the test. 50% of the 15-year olds took the test. Not sure how they were selected, have to read more about it, but schools from every corner of the country took part. Girls did better than boys and city schools did better than small schools. Though the difference is small which is a good thing.
It's not all about rankings. The countries want to know whether they are doing better than last time. Are the investments in education and change in curriculum paying off.
China is working towards adding other provinces, but since it's a huge country, it'll take time.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who got primarily and secondary education from outside of US and attended college in US knows these scores are representative. Every college professor knows this. If you never get primary education outside US, you don't even know you what don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone who got primarily and secondary education from outside of US and attended college in US knows these scores are representative. Every college professor knows this. If you never get primary education outside US, you don't even know you what don't know.

They are representative. The US is a big country, though, and talking about state scores as well as the national score is useful. Massachusetts scores very high. Puerto Rico very low. I haven't looked closely enough to know where DC, VA, and MD call compared nationally and internationally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone who got primarily and secondary education from outside of US and attended college in US knows these scores are representative. Every college professor knows this. If you never get primary education outside US, you don't even know you what don't know.

Is there a specific area where the US curriculum is lacking, in your opinion? Or is this an overall impression?

I'm wondering, since it is an interesting question. Also, because it is a useful question for parents who are school shopping or supplementing at home. It's always good to know what big thing you are not seeing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone who got primarily and secondary education from outside of US and attended college in US knows these scores are representative. Every college professor knows this. If you never get primary education outside US, you don't even know you what don't know.

Is there a specific area where the US curriculum is lacking, in your opinion? Or is this an overall impression?

I'm wondering, since it is an interesting question. Also, because it is a useful question for parents who are school shopping or supplementing at home. It's always good to know what big thing you are not seeing.

This article uses 2012 numbers. I think it's still a useful part of the conversation.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2014/09/29/if-massachusetts-were-a-country-its-students-would-rank-9th-in-the-world/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, I guess we are not off the hook. What do you all make about the relative weakness of the US on math reasoning? I'm curious what the curriculum implications might be. Common Core standards emphasize reasoning. Singapore Math has tried to bring one of the curriculum that works elsewhere over. One would expect to see a bit of improvement rather than a slide.

Too early to tell? I don't know. Not all states have implemented CC standards, and some only in the last two years, so maybe it's too early for it to really reflect in the math scores?

I'd like to see the results by state and whether that state uses CC standards, and for how long. I know MA was one of the early adopters (and I believe some if not a lot of the standards came from the MA standards) and they typically do well on the PISA test. I know, there are other factors at play here for MA .

Yes, too early. They are testing 15 year olds, right? None of them had any common core in the early years where math reasoning is established. In this area, the current 4th grade is first class of kids to have CC standards and an emphasis on reasoning all the way through (and at least in our school that class is testing off the charts).

Agreed it is probably too early to tell, plus how many states have fought common core or implement it so poorly that it means nothing anymore? The only thing I can say good about our to be head of Dept. of Ed. is that she supports guidelines for teaching. And even that she waffles on between her support for homeschool, private, and parochial schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This test is only given to 15 year olds? I'm sure in many countries, the top students are the ones taking this test. The rest of the students are probably enrolled in non-academic tracks. Not so in this country where everyone is supposed to be college and career ready but they've gotten rid of so many vocational programs for high schoolers.

Not sure about the countries you are talking about, but in my country the 15 year olds are in what we call elementary school (here middle school or 1st year of high school). There are no tracks yet.
It's the basic free education all get and most of our schools are public schools.
Speaking of my country, the top students were not the only ones taking the test. 50% of the 15-year olds took the test. Not sure how they were selected, have to read more about it, but schools from every corner of the country took part. Girls did better than boys and city schools did better than small schools. Though the difference is small which is a good thing.
It's not all about rankings. The countries want to know whether they are doing better than last time. Are the investments in education and change in curriculum paying off.
China is working towards adding other provinces, but since it's a huge country, it'll take time.

For China, I think that ranking is totally off. They only report four provinces, and those provinces are the most well off. There are 23 provinces in China. This would be akin to having only MA, CT, NJ, NY(?) (the best of the best) report PISA test scores. If it were only those four states, I bet US ranking would be a lot higher.

[Anonymous]

This is not all about what country does the best. It's also about comparing yourself to your previous years and trying to figure out how to help the students who need the most help.
We for example found out that our top students could do so much better. They are not challenged enough. Now the parents of those kids are looking for ways to give them more and so is the ED.
The examples of the test are available online and it's not a hard test. It's even multiple choice.
If you want to take your top state then I want to take mine. And as of now, your top state didn't outscore my entire country even though MA is many times more well off than we are.
Back at home education is valued and seen as the way out of poverty. Education is good, free and available to all regardless of SES. Here, it used to be that mostly education was your way out of poverty, but then it changed to hard work (not that easy anymore) or sports or being in entertainment business. Shortly, there are other things people are counting on than education. Or maybe they are well off enough that they don't care enough to take education seriously.
Just looked up how many teachers are in my former school of 49 students and counted 15. That's a lot of teachers for so few students. Not sure how we can afford it.
Also, we have geography, biology, botany, zoology, chemistry and physics all separately. Kids don't learn how to read or write until 1st grade when they are 7. by that time they are more than ready. They will catch up to their peers here and pass because of very well thought out curriculum that builds on previously learned topics. We also don't skip a subject for a semester or a year and we use real textbooks. You can always go back and look up something you forgot.
Here, I still don't know what my kid is learning at school and neither does he.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This test is only given to 15 year olds? I'm sure in many countries, the top students are the ones taking this test. The rest of the students are probably enrolled in non-academic tracks. Not so in this country where everyone is supposed to be college and career ready but they've gotten rid of so many vocational programs for high schoolers.

Every time someone offers this up as an excuse. This is from the PISA FAQ "A key objective of PISA is to inform and support education policy decision making within countries. A three-year cycle provides countries with timely information that includes data and analyses to consider the impact of policy decisions and related programs. If it were more frequent it would not allow sufficient time for changes and innovations to show improvement or decline, and if it were less frequent it would mean declines in performance could not be promptly addressed.

The average age of 15 was chosen because at this age young people in most OECD countries are nearing the end of compulsory education. The selection of schools and students is as inclusive as possible, so that the sample of students comes from a broad range of backgrounds and abilities."

In many countries around the world, 15 is the last year of middle school, and the last year of compulsory schooling. High school is often only 3 year and may indeed be voluntary. So the samples are quite comparable across countries.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Pisa test scores are on greatschools.
TJ in FcPs outranks any country. And many (most?) FCPS high schools are ranked in the top 5 along with Finland. Even my GS 5 high school is up there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not all about what country does the best. It's also about comparing yourself to your previous years and trying to figure out how to help the students who need the most help.
We for example found out that our top students could do so much better. They are not challenged enough. Now the parents of those kids are looking for ways to give them more and so is the ED.
The examples of the test are available online and it's not a hard test. It's even multiple choice.
If you want to take your top state then I want to take mine. And as of now, your top state didn't outscore my entire country even though MA is many times more well off than we are.
Back at home education is valued and seen as the way out of poverty. Education is good, free and available to all regardless of SES. Here, it used to be that mostly education was your way out of poverty, but then it changed to hard work (not that easy anymore) or sports or being in entertainment business. Shortly, there are other things people are counting on than education. Or maybe they are well off enough that they don't care enough to take education seriously.
Just looked up how many teachers are in my former school of 49 students and counted 15. That's a lot of teachers for so few students. Not sure how we can afford it.
Also, we have geography, biology, botany, zoology, chemistry and physics all separately. Kids don't learn how to read or write until 1st grade when they are 7. by that time they are more than ready. They will catch up to their peers here and pass because of very well thought out curriculum that builds on previously learned topics. We also don't skip a subject for a semester or a year and we use real textbooks. You can always go back and look up something you forgot.
Here, I still don't know what my kid is learning at school and neither does he.

Several of your points ring true to me.

We tend to emphasize starting kids off on formal instruction very early, before many of them are fully developmentally ready for it. Other than compensating for the lack of enrichment in some homes (which is a serious issue), this doesn't necessarily provide a ton of benefit. And then, how do we use this big head-start? The curriculum jumps randomly from topic to topic, often repeating the same materials. It's not very systematic or coordinated.

I went to a good elementary school that did good projects with the students. Everyone had fun. But it was as if the teachers never discussed what would happen each grade. I did insect metamorphosis and volcanoes and weather perhaps 2x-3x at the same school, with different teachers. All had similar fun projects. I'm pretty sure we all got down the concept of insect lifestyles on the first spin, and after that just enjoyed catching bugs and releasing our class butterflies.

[Anonymous]

*lifestyles = lifecycles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pisa test scores are on greatschools.
TJ in FcPs outranks any country. And many (most?) FCPS high schools are ranked in the top 5 along with Finland. Even my GS 5 high school is up there.

Not all HS participated and/or reported the test scores. I don't see it for several HS I just checked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone who got primarily and secondary education from outside of US and attended college in US knows these scores are representative. Every college professor knows this. If you never get primary education outside US, you don't even know you what don't know.

Is there a specific area where the US curriculum is lacking, in your opinion? Or is this an overall impression?

I'm wondering, since it is an interesting question. Also, because it is a useful question for parents who are school shopping or supplementing at home. It's always good to know what big thing you are not seeing.

it's not the curriculum. Mostly it's the teachers. In my home country, teaching is a profession that is highly respected and hard to get in. This holds true in both primarily and secondary schools. Some of the best students go to teaching. It's not the same here and good teachers are particularly lacking in elementary schools.