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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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