US Students’ PISA Ratings

George Rebane

The latest (2015) release of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores are out, and the all important ratings for 15-year-olds in now a matter of record.  We have long mourned the performance deficits in our educational system and the resulting standing our students have on the international stage where America must compete more and more in the high tech areas of AI, genomics, and nanotechnology – the main sectors that will determine who will win and lose both economically and strategically in the coming pre-Singularity decade(s).  As the chart below shows, America will not be among the winners.

Our deplorable ratings have been covered here for years.  During that same interval progressivist pundits have been white-washing the bad news to our gullibles as nothing to worry about, that we’re doing OK in our super expensive, union-dominated public schools.  The latest spin comes from a team of researchers from the University of Chicago and University of California, San Diego.  These academic worthies have conducted some psych experiments with students and concluded that US kids are just as smart as anyone, but that they’re simply not trying hard enough (also note the inappropriate use of "about average" with the above data).  They ran a test with American and Chinese (first place) math students to see how performance could be improved with cash money prizes. (more here)

Well, guess what?  It turns out that the Chinese were not much affected since they were already on top, but US kids’ performance improved enough, that according to the pencil pushers, they would have placed 19^th instead of the (fasten seatbelts) dismal 36^th among the 65 nations taking the PISA tests.  So the conclusion is that our kids just don’t give a crap about doing well on such tests, and they would do much better if motivated by some kind of valuable prize.  (Recall, they’ve all grown up in world where everyone gets a trophy for just showing up and fogging a mirror.)  Now, 19^th in the world in math is still horrible for our country’s future, but that claimed improved score is specious on its face.  It assumed that the rest of the world’s scores were static; no other country’s kids were enticed with prizes.  A more rigorous test would have been to offer such rewards to all the test takers, and then see how much our students’ ranking would have improved.

So that no one misunderstands, American students’ gray matter is just as good as that between the ears of the rest of the world’s students – i.e. we are not genetically disadvantaged.  Where we have a huge deficit is in our carefully inculcated culture of learning – three generations of politically correct schooling and parenting – and a school system designed to keep the bottom quartile of college graduates gainfully employed and fully pensioned (with unfunded pension portfolios).

The cited study heralds that if we just motivate our students better, their performance can be improved from putrid to piss poor, and we can all stop worrying about our schools.  Well, that’s not the case in any of the three tested areas – science, reading, math – as the above data plot shows. 

In parting, we should remember two notables.  In Silicon Valley, where STEM jobs/skills dominate, more than half the workers are foreign born and educated.  And to show how good California’s schools and economy are in supplying and attracting born-in-state workers, only 18% of such students qualify for and/or accept jobs in the highly-touted high-tech mecca from which Sacramento draws the lion’s share of its tax revenues. (more here)

The second notable is the absolute bullpucky in PISA’s testing in the ‘science’ category.  They make it out as if science and math are somehow two separate and disjoint areas of learning, and therefore produce two separable skill sets.  This myth is designed to successfully fool those holding education degrees, and the general public which doesn’t have a clue.  The simple truth of the matter is that for at least the last half century there has been no science without math, and today ALL science is done with and within the language of mathematics.  (emphasis mine)

Comments

[Robert Cross]

For once George, in your never ending bashing of an educational system that you despise because it doesn't teach your extreme right wing beliefs, you might want to consider a few things:

1) perhaps if teaching paid more, it might attract more talented people

2) perhaps if people like you wouldn't continually bash teachers, parents might promote education to their children instead of denigrating it. Good students come from families where education is stressed not dissed.

3) what about the effect of a multitude of cultural/corporate distractions like social media and iPhones that take up vast quantities of time that could be spent learning something useful

[Todd Juvinall]

Robert Cross | 22 November 2017 at 01:38 PM

I think GeorgeR wants students to learn math English and the rest of the 3 R's. BoobieC and your ilk already have taught your liberal crap to the kids and they can't find a job. So look in the mirror bub, George and Russ have tried to prepare kids for work in a competitive world while you and your liberals have prepared them for whining and feeling sad.

[fish]

Posted by: Robert Cross | 22 November 2017 at 01:38 PM

It’s funny that George thinks he can conduct reasonable discussions with you slack jawed idiots!

You went full Joe Koyote..... never go full Joe Koyote!

[Gregory]

Cross, there is no left wing or right wing math. It's just math.

The leftist pedagogy du jour, constructivism, does a poor job of getting a year's worth of progress, in the traditional pacing, for a year's seat time, and the first time it came to California in the '90's, it took about seven or eight years to push it back out. It was horrible; my kid did the first two years worth of MathLand at Hennessey and when he went to Mount St. Mary's, he took the test for an entering 2nd grader he was below average.

But the guy who poured whole (or constructivist) math into California in '92, Phil Daro, was hired in 2006 to be the chairman of the Common Core "State Standards" development and they came back. Math education is now melting down across the country.

Daro has a BA in English. No degrees in math, or anything else besides English. He wouldn't be hired to teach math at Nevada Union, but he did design the math standards for the entire country.

In software engineering there's a term... "Garbage in, garbage out"

[George Rebane]

RobertC 138pm - Thank you for your timely comment to help make the expanded point of what progressives understand about US public education.

[Russ]

George, about your last point of no science without math. Some climate scientist has attempted to use statistics without any team members familiar with statistical computations. The famous hockey stick produced by Michael Mann is one such case. There have been other attempts to validate anthropogenic global warming where the math skills of the science team were notably lacking. Climate science, not supported by a mathematical foundation can be quickly dismissed by scientists skilled innumeracy. Today science without math is pseudoscience.

[ThaBill Tozer]

Oh Mr. Cross. There you go again saying if we just be nicer to teachers and slide them some more beads and clamshells to show our deep gratitude for the stellar job they have done on and TO our children, problem solved. Blame dissing on the teachers for the unspeakable destruction you guys have done to public education? Shirley you jest. Respect is earned, not given out for free like handing everyone participation trophys for showing up. You been disrespected and no way is a whole group of people going to get away with dishing on teachers.! Hey, this ain’t Little House on the Prairie. . where one dedicated teacher could teach K-12 and teach it very well.

So, where exactly are we going to get this new brilliant crop of educators? Dredge them up from the colleges and universities the banana heads have run since you mush melons had to drop the name National Socialist Workers Party, go underground, and find a safe place to hide behind the halls of academia? Yep, Adoph Hitler kind of stole your party’s name, that scoundrel. Bet he never even thanked you or gave you the respect you so richly deserve.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=189425564953146&set=p.189425564953146&type=3&theater

[Account Deleted]

Crossed Up Bobby - "Good students come from families where education is stressed not dissed."
Here we have an example of a complete idiot. Does one single person on the face of this earth believe that George and JoAnn didn't stress education while raising a family?
And please point out where in his post did George 'bash' teachers'?
More money? You have got to be kidding. Teachers paid far less in private Christian schools crank out far better educated kids than the govt schools.
Has anyone seen what's going on in the NY school system? Not enough teachers with the correct skin color can pass very basic competency tests, so they decided to throw out the tests and let uneducated folks get paid to 'teach'.
Anyone who talks about how poorly whites treat non-whites should start with how white lefties deliberately condemn generation after generation of non white children to a lifetime of dependency and illiteracy. They treat animals in the zoo with more care and love. Absolutely criminal.

[Mr Robot]

Ok, fine. To what extent can you predict math scores by ethnicity vs. quality of education?

Obviously they both have value, but I wish that someone would be straightforward about all of this.

[Todd Juvinall]

It looks like the Japanese are the ones out in front with math scores. What ethnic group is that?

[George Rebane]

Given the same quality of education, ethnicity is not a factor in math score. Where ethnicity figures in is through the election process. If a certain ethnic group gets bamboozled by sleazebag politicians like those who rule the LA Basin, then their schools suffer and the kids (mostly from the Hispanic and Afro-American demographics) get screwed by sub-par but politically correct teachers.

[Gregory]

Nancy Ichiniga, retired principal at a very low income school elementary and middle school in Inglewood, Bennet-Kew had been there a short time when, after giving it some thought, told her teachers that either they were doing a lousy job or their kids were incapable. And that if they thought it was the latter they wouldn't want to stay.

It was not too long (less than four years) before their kids (most all on free lunches and 40% ELL) were among the top 10% in California. Good textbooks, traditional teaching methods, and they didn't give kids a pass because of their color which was virtually all shades of black and brown. No excuses, all kids can learn.

Yes, they even put Nevada county schools to shame. Not hard to do as we have some of the weakest schools in the state. The Yuba River Charter for one, the Grass Valley Charter for another.

[Gregory]

Ichinaga is the correct spelling.

[Russ]

THE NEXT GENERATION OF VOTERS

"Report: Only 30% of California's ninth-graders will graduate from college," by Sharon Noguchi of Bay Area News: "Although more than 90 percent of the nation's ninth graders expect to graduate from college, a report released Monday estimates that only 30 percent of California's high school freshmen will actually earn a bachelor's degree."

Could progressive CA teacher be indoctrinating rather than teaching? No wonder Silicon Valley has to import engineer, as CA schools are not up to the challenge of creating them.