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A lot of countries test the students and put them on academic or vocational tracks.
We don't do that in the US..they are all on academic college ready tracks.
Finland, for example provides a basic education for all until 15 and then it's either vocational or academic.
It's not that they are cheating and picking their smartest kids.
They TRACK and have already separated out the non college kids and put them in vocational tracks.
What you have left on the academic side is basically college prep.
We don't operate that way. We say everyone will be educated and college ready.
So we just keep fooling ourselves and making excuses because the numbers don't back up our education mantra.
Actually I did forget about countries such as Germany which track from an earlier age when I made that post.
And in Finland now you can do both vocational and academic at the same time, its not simple tracking anymore, and you can go onto higher education (college) from vocational school now if I understand it right. But the PISA tests are done before the separation into academic or vocational.
People are happy to speculate why they are so successful or unsuccessful. When Finland was #1, one of the reasons was supposed to be the fact that they dont test the students a lot, and now that they fell to #12, they wonder if the reason is the lack of testing.
People are happy to speculate why they are so successful or unsuccessful. When Finland was #1, one of the reasons was supposed to be the fact that they dont test the students a lot, and now that they fell to #12, they wonder if the reason is the lack of testing.
From what I gather from the news here they think the reason is that they have become too complacent and instead of looking for how to keep improving the system they were just too busy telling other countries how well they were doing.
From what I gather from the news here they think the reason is that they have become too complacent and instead of looking for how to keep improving the system they were just too busy telling other countries how well they were doing.
And Ireland said just that about their improvements..not to get complacent and they still have a ways to go.
They greatly improved this year compared to 2009.
From what I gather from the news here they think the reason is that they have become too complacent and instead of looking for how to keep improving the system they were just too busy telling other countries how well they were doing.
Pride goes before the fall. Well, I hope they learned their lesson.
Pride goes before the fall. Well, I hope they learned their lesson.
I hope so too. At least the fall wasn't far though.
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