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The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 is the programme’s 5th survey. It assessed the competencies of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science (with a focus on mathematics) in 65 countries and economies.
Around 510 000 students between the ages of 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months participated in the assessment, representing about 28 million 15-year-olds globally.
Of 65 participants, which include both countries and smaller geographic units such as provinces and states, the United States ranks 26th in math and 21st in science out of the 34 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which conducts the assessment.
If you click on the table, you will realize that it takes a while to spot where US stands. It is amazing how Poland stands out. I also wonder where North Korea would be if it was included in the assessment. That country is being isolated from the rest of the world.
What an amazing response from the Time mag on this PISA result. It resembles the attitude of some members here: my fail is not my fault but others'.
The author David Stout might think that he made a strong case to save grace for the faltering education outcome at home, but he did not understand that even if China was not included on the PISA list, the US could move up only one spot on the list.
You didn't even need to delve that far. The "China" results ..... aren't China. They are "Shanghai" results etc. No national results, just local - so a bogus comparison already.
You didn't even need to delve that far. The "China" results ..... aren't China. They are "Shanghai" results etc. No national results, just local - so a bogus comparison already.
The point is, does US have to compare with China/Shanghai to know how well its education is doing?
Yes, Shanghai is not a good representation of the entire China, and the list made it clear that the result is based on Shanghai. Yet David Stout wrote this amazing article in Time as if he made some major discoveries and denounced China cheating on the assessment...It just reminds me of how some people tend to pick faults on others but ignoring their bigger problems.
Education..that is memorization...is not Americans' forte. We are the best entrepreneurs, exploiters, imperialists, marketers, and illusionists. And that all simply means we are driven by greed and are the best at it in the world....hence why our economy is far ahead of everyone else, we create and invent so many things, achieve miraculous medical breakthroughs, and brand/market everything American as #1, the best, and "must have"...everything we do/say/are is solely to make $.
Until any other country decides to put $ above all else (health, education, equality, QOL, environment, the future, etc) like we do, we will remain the unmatched revenue machine of the world. So every other country can do exceptionally in engineering, long division, and word association...congrats! At the end of the day the only thing that pays the bills is who/what country can make the most $..and our greed, and ability to sell garbage/image to the rest of the world will keep us on top.
The PISA math test is NOT memorization. That's what makes the poor US performance of it so disturbing. Much of it really is more thinking and logic than memorization. And if U.S. kids do poorly with those things I don't think it makes for a good outcome of anything. But I'll grant the test isn't easy. I'm no dummy and I'm not sure I could have gotten the answers to some of the test problems when when I was 15. I looked up what the test was like and I think it's definitely more rigorous than what a 9th or 10th graders in most NYC or U.S. schools would get. Here's a sample. The questions and answers are from the OECD (PISA) site:
A) A pizzeria serves two round pizzas of the same thickness in different sizes. The smaller one has a diameter of 30 cm and costs 30 zeds. The larger one has a diameter of 40 cm and costs 40 zeds.Which pizza is better value for money? Show your reasoning.
B) A seal has to breathe even if it is asleep in the water. Martin observed a seal for one hour. At the start of his observation, the seal was at the surface and took a breath. It then dove to the bottom of the sea and started to sleep. From the bottom it slowly floated to the surface in 8 minutes and took a breath again. In three minutes it was back at the bottom of the sea again. Martin noticed that this whole process was a very regular one. After on hour the seal was :
At the Bottom?
On its way up ?
Breathing ?
At the Top?
C) You are asked to design a new set of coins. All coins will be circular and coloured silver, but of different diameters.
Researchers have found out that an ideal coin system meets the following requirements:
· diameters of coins should not be smaller than 15 mm and not be larger than 45 mm.
· given a coin, the diameter of the next coin must be at least 30% larger.
· the minting machinery can only produce coins with diameters of a whole number of millimetres (e.g. 17 mm is allowed, 17.3 mm is not).
Design a set of coins that satisfy the above requirements. You should start with a 15 mm coin and your set should contain as many coins as possible.
These are not difficult questions when you are trained to answer them. You do not need to be smart, you just need to know the simple methodology to answer these questions. If you understand how to answer questions, critical thinking skills are unnecessary. It seems rigorous to you, and no doubt that you probably did not know how to answer these questions when you were 15, but that's because the US does not teach the methodology while the other countries do. The test isn't difficult..it is just difficult for our 9th and 10th graders because they are not learning these methodologies at those grades.
Same applies to the SATs....seems hard, and lots of critical thinking, but it's a sampling of several different methodologies of problem solving which are reused/varied over and over again. Know (memorize) the methodology and you too can quickly calculate the answers. Don't be fooled..these are not difficult at all.
A) A pizzeria serves two round pizzas of the same thickness in different sizes. The smaller one has a diameter of 30 cm and costs 30 zeds. The larger one has a diameter of 40 cm and costs 40 zeds.Which pizza is better value for money? Show your reasoning.
I agree that some of these are important questions testing for future survival skills in this digitized age...
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