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I suggest we stop "making excuses" for the poor math/science/reading scores.
Reality is..our education system is in sad shape and need an overhaul.
Yup. From the ground up.
We need to get back to basics in elementary school. Kids should know arithematic inside out and upside down before they tackle topics like algebra. They should be able to read and write on a high school level before they take classes like chemistry. We are spending so much time remediating kids who never learned what they should have in elementary school that we can't get to our subject matter.
Umm, I'm no math genius, but if we were 26th in 2006 and now we are 25th, how are we sinking lower and lower? Last time I checked 25th was 1 place better than 26th.
From the same article.
"U.S. math scores rose from 474 in 2006."
Don't just read a simple article, get an actual study on the PISA exam. They are out there on the internet. They are quite detailed and find the main difference is parental income. Nothing else had a greater statistical impact on test scores. This is if you trust the PISA test which is a "fuzzy" math test to begin with.
Well, we are one louder, I mean higher. When your country is here and you want to get louder, I mean better, where can you go?
Anyway, PISA is fuzzy math to the bone. My district has bought the PISA math system and I have taken extensive professional development on improving PISA math skills. It has nothing to do with basics and is definitely not about improving arithmetic skills. It's about developing open-ended, creative thinkers who manage multiple strategies to solve the same simple problems(like simple multiplication). It sounds fine and dandy but the approach is bleh.
I suggest we stop "making excuses" for the poor math/science/reading scores.
Reality is..our education system is in sad shape and need an overhaul.
Well any overall reform is going to peace meal at best. Why? Some states have excellent overall school systems. Some school districts in states have excellent schools. But state and local control limit the amount of overall reform that is possible.
If you notice something about every country that is ahead of us in education. The educational system and curriculum is controlled and determined ON THE NATIONAL LEVEL.
Here in America if that is attempted the first thing that is said: THAT'S SOCIALISM!
What the American education system has been primarily based on very recently is the kids in the best school districts get the best education. That is often determined by living in school district with property values high enough to support the educational resources. Therefore access is education resources and in some cases the quality of education is determined by income. As income inequality has increased in this country so has the variance in the quality of education.
The best way to get high test scores as a teacher is move to a rich district.
Likewise, it's a small wonder that students hailing from higher economic advantages score higher.
Clearly, the ability to pay Sylvan Learning Center (et. al.) $39 (or more) an hour to teach kids what they are missing, is going to affect the outcome of test scores.
Also, I fail to see how Chinese and American culture can even remotely compare, and furthermore, China sets the gold standard for manipulating demographics in order to paint them in the finest light. Their PR machine is very well oiled IMHO.
I hardly hear any scuttlebut about how they deal with learning disabilities (or are those the ones who work to manufacture nearly everything we buy now?).
China built an 8 foot wall to conceal the slums of Beijing during the Olympics. Do I trust them not to pull the best and brightest out of the pool and present their scores to the world in order to keep up appearances?
Well, we are one louder, I mean higher. When your country is here and you want to get louder, I mean better, where can you go?
Anyway, PISA is fuzzy math to the bone. My district has bought the PISA math system and I have taken extensive professional development on improving PISA math skills. It has nothing to do with basics and is definitely not about improving arithmetic skills. It's about developing open-ended, creative thinkers who manage multiple strategies to solve the same simple problems(like simple multiplication). It sounds fine and dandy but the approach is bleh.
Sounds alot like Everyday Math. Texas has dropped that and gone back to Saxon math. We've got kids in HS that struggle with multiplication now thanks to fuzzy math
Examples of exercises we had to do were to show students 35 dinosaurs and ask them to count how many dinosaurs there were. They all agree on 35 and write it down. Then you point to the 5 and ask them to circle what this number represents in dinosaurs. Then you point to the 3, which is really a 30, and circle that number of dinosaurs. You do this all the way from 1-2nd grade up through high school and if they don't circle 30 and 5 they need remediation on how to circle dinosaurs.
The other test was to put 12 monkeys into 2 cages as many different ways you could. If they only put 6 and 6 and not other combinations like 11,1 and 4,8, then they need remediation. If they drew a picture to do it, they were not at the highest level.
I'm not saying these activities don't have value but they shouldn't be the basis of a math program, especially in middle school.
These were activities that are in line with the PISA test and meant to score higher on similar tests.
Examples of exercises we had to do were to show students 35 dinosaurs and ask them to count how many dinosaurs there were. They all agree on 35 and write it down. Then you point to the 5 and ask them to circle what this number represents in dinosaurs. Then you point to the 3, which is really a 30, and circle that number of dinosaurs. You do this all the way from 1-2nd grade up through high school and if they don't circle 30 and 5 they need remediation on how to circle dinosaurs.
The other test was to put 12 monkeys into 2 cages as many different ways you could. If they only put 6 and 6 and not other combinations like 11,1 and 4,8, then they need remediation. If they drew a picture to do it, they were not at the highest level.
I'm not saying these activities don't have value but they shouldn't be the basis of a math program, especially in middle school.
These were activities that are in line with the PISA test and meant to score higher on similar tests.
They have value in that they are helping to teach understanding; however, what good does it do to understand how a nail is driven into a board without the knowledge of how to swing the hammer?
Or, if you swing the hammer a little to far to one side or the other, the nail will bend and not secure the board properly.
That's a pretty good analogy of what EDM does IMO.
"Thinking" about what the "probability that a class is going on a picnic today" doesn't do much if later on, the child is asked to find the "average" number of times that a class took a picnic in a year and has absolutely not clue one how to divide because they have no real tools in which to find the correct answer.
China doesn't operate like that.
They teach to mastery and they expect their students to sit down and practice (not just skip around in the hopes that during the next spiral they will get it then).
In other words, they teach understanding with mastery instead of drowning their kids in a tidalwave of "strategies" and then expect them to be able to pick one (while not giving them any solid instruction as to how to proceed) much like we do today.
BIG difference.
Hence the reason, IMHO, that these so-called "tests" appear to have idiotic questions.
1) While China has a very driven education system, it's pretty clear that they did NOT play fair in the "sampling". This has happened in the US a few times where some public school typically in a big city was having soaring scores and it turned out they were having the REALLY low scoring kids not take the test or were feeding them answers etc.
China has an illustrious track record of state-sanctioned cheating at everything from womens long distance running (Ma's army) to massive copyright and patent violations. Look at corruption in this country and how hard it is to root out even with 2 parties and federal oversight etc.
2) Scores correlate to parental income because.....higher incomes are associated with education and an appreciation for it. There is also a genetic component for higher intelligence. Where I grew up, even dirt poor families because they had 12 kids or the dad was often jobless due to booze would produce pretty dang good students as long as the parents held them accountable for grades\learning.
3) Lastly, the kids aren't playing xbox 5 hours a day and sports! sports! sports! like our own meat-head culture. You will see guys in highschool that have spent thousands of hours playing basketball and maybe 4 hours learning math so far in their life...and they are worshiped for that...given full college scholarships, put on magazine covers, girls want to date them and so on and so forth. Then we have to hear people whining about finding good jobs....
Big area math competition coming up in a few months. 70ish schools...when the awards ceremony starts up it's dominated by the children of visa holders from China, India and Pakistan...with a few token white kids like mine thrown in the mix.
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