Last January, Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy released a report on international test scores, arguing that American students perform better than is generally believes. Since many people are deeply invested in the conventional claim that American students lag the world on international tests, their report led to a flurry of controversy. This post by Rothstein and Carnoy responds to Tucker’s criticism of their report.
On the other hand, Marc Tucker wrote an excellent article on his blog in which he made some important points.
First, he reviewed Eric Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessman’s book Endangering Prosperity. He agrees with them that American performance on international tests is terrible, even among our best students. But he disagrees with their solutions: reliance on market forces via charters and vouchers, smashing teachers’ unions, test-based evaluation of teachers. He sees no evidence that these strategies have worked anywhere in the world.
Tucker writes:
My objection to these strategies has nothing to do with ideology. It is pragmatic. First, after years of implementation, as I have written elsewhere, there is still no evidence that market solutions will produce results superior to the results that we have been getting, certainly not the kind of results we would have to have to overcome the gigantic deficiencies that Hanushek, Peterson and Woessmann document in this book. The authors are correct in saying that teacher quality is the most important factor in improving the performance of our schools, but, as far as I know, they can point to no country in the world that has used the strategies they advocate to get decisive improvements in teacher quality. There is, in short, no evidence that the strategies they want the United States to bet on will work.
He points to Shanghai, visited recently by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, as a high-performing nation that uses none of these strategies. What works in Shanghai?
Shanghai did not get to where it is by creating charter schools or issuing vouchers. It did not get there by sorting out teachers by the scores their students get on standardized tests and then weeding out the worst. They have been more successful than any other country in the world at developing the teachers they already have, focusing relentlessly on teacher training, embracing the system and its teachers, rather than driving the best away with punitive accountability systems.
I find this an admirable statement.
My only disagreement with the debate about our international performance is that I am not persuaded that test scores on TIMSS or PISA predict what will happen to our economy 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. I recall that in 1983 “A Nation at Risk” said we were doomed because of our international test scores. Didn’t happen. The international tests show which nations have students who get the most right answers on multiple-choice tests. I fail to understand why that is a leading economic indicator. The Chinese-American scholar Yong Zhao has argued that the test-based education systems are least likely to promote creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. I am inclined to agree with him.
I agree with Yong Zhao’s theory on global competitiveness and impact of NCLB. The idea of comparing nations based on test results is flawed. If you google him and do a video search, the 11 minute video is very enlightening, coming from a different perspective.
ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!
Why does Shanghai do so “well”? Because it is an economically segregated society!
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/05/bill-gatess-ridiculous-ted-talk-part.html
It makes me CRAZY that Shanghai is held up as an exemplar over and over again with no acknowledgement of this! As Kam Wing Chan from the University of Washington says:
“In other words, the city has 3 to 4 million working poor, but its high-school system conveniently does not need to provide for the kids of that segment. In essence, the poor kids are purged from Shanghai’s sample of 5,100 students taking the tests. The Shanghai sample is the extract of China’s extract. A fairer play would be to ask kids at Seattle’s private Lakeside School to race against Shanghai’s kids.”
When will we ever have an informed debate about this stuff?!
Thanks, Jersey. I can’t believe anyone would use the test scores from schools in Shanghai or Beijing which educate China’s elites as a fair international comparison. These schools, as you accurately describe, purposefully segregate out the poor, the transient workers, foreign workers, children with disabilities, and do not include the vast peasantry living outside Shanghai or Beijing in small villages or industrial cities. This would be like taking the scores from the districts serving the North Shore of Chicago-a very wealthy area-and comparing them internationally (which by the way, makes the US system look phenomenal). Plus, many youth in China don’t even make it to secondary school as they are working in factories or helping to support their families in other ways at a very early age. Why has China never released full national test scores? Why only Shanghai and Beijing? There is a reason, and it’s all about competition and international reputations, not about an accurate look at their education system.
I taught in Asia for many years (Japan, not China, but also often used to compare to the US) and while they provide quality special education services for children with severe and profound disabilities-albeit in completely separate schools which do not, I believe, ever take the standardized tests-they do not provide special education at all for students with mild to moderate disabilities. Students take a sorting test after junior high school (our 9th grade) to decide whether they enter an academic/college prep high school or go into one of the vocational schools (i.e. technical, agricultural, or commercial). Some of the students who did poorly on the tests very likely due to undiagnosed learning or emotional disabilities, never receive individualized services, but are thrown away into factory or farm work, with little or no chance for higher education. There were no special education teachers in any of the high schools I worked at (both academic and technical). (I would be curious to know if the students in the vocational schools are even included in the international test data. Anyone know?)
I am actually proud that the US includes diverse learners and at least on paper attempts to integrate all students into the least restrictive environment possible. Of course, “school choice” is weakening the hard-won rights from IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) by once again segregating out certain learners based on ability level. In a competitive marketplace of education, students with disabilities become liabilities to a school’s reputation. I see the repercussions of this twisted model of education everyday at the psych hospital where I teach. Choice is truly damaging children.
While there are important things we can learn from various Asian education systems, we must be very very careful in how we use these test scores. Unfortunately, I think the people pushing international comparisons don’t care about the truth, they are simply using international test scores to push their “US education is failing so we must privatize” agenda.
Oh, and I didn’t even get into how much rote memorization and test prep often happens in schools in Asia. I’m sorry, but when students sleep through classes because they know they will learn the material later at their cram school and fell asleep because they were up all night the night before at that same cram school, I do not know how we can have a real debate about their education system. They call it “cram school” for a reason, they are not engaging in deep learning, they are cramming for a single test for years and years. Families who cannot pay for these private cram schools are at a severe disadvantage-although with less income inequality there are fewer low-income families in Japan. Japan has recognized that this is not an effective system and are slowly trying to move away from this hyper-focus on testing. Ironically, many Japanese education experts cite progressive education theories from the United States, theories only practiced in elite independent schools serving our wealthiest students. Basically the opposite of the types of corporate reforms being pushed in the US.
Brava, Katie. Would that our press was as informed about this as you are.
And you didn’t mention the high suicide rate in Asian countries. Do we want our kids literally killing themselves over test scores? Continued pressure from high stakes testing could easily led to unanticipated results.
Katie Osgood: your comments are most welcome.
Thank you.
😎
The edubullies and their accountabully underlings respect no ethical prohibition against torturing numbers & stats to come up with any result that suits their purposes. The way that results from TIMSS and PISA are used are good examples. Leaving aside the intractable problems involved in determining the trustworthiness and usefulness of inherently imprecise and very limited high-stakes tests—
There are additional difficulties to consider. For example, the many different national (and regions of same) school cultures with varied curricular emphases and the profoundly dissimilar languages into which the tests must be translated. Add into the mix the prestige and pr advantages/disadvantages that countries experience when participating in such international races to the top & bottom, and you must discount any such comparisons that fail to accurately describe the critical parameters of the participants in those competitions.
I am reminded of #4 of Gerald Bracey’s “Principles of Data Interpretation”:
“When comparing groups, make sure the groups are comparable.” [READING EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: HOW TO AVOID GETTING STATISTICALLY SNOOKERED, 2009, p. 31).
And on a day of thanks giving, thank you too for all you do.
😎
Took the words right out off my keyboard JersyJazz.
Jersey
When will people understand that what you say is true.
Some countries only test the cream of the crop.
The rest are left to fend for themselves.
Can you imagine the misuse of this data?..Yes you understand..
This is like the NFL competing with a group of Tot Ballerinas in a football game..
This Rating of Humans by Over Testing makes my blood boil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A human needs air…water…and food….and they need to learn to utilize their talents to become productive citizens ..
In America…..We educate- all……a good thing…but with the new grading system we fail to recognize the individuality of each child….”One Size DOES NOT Fit all.”..
We no longer Pull from the Human Spirit but FILL the Greedy Pockets of those who will Profit..
In a nutshell…..Over Testing in America accomplishes..nothing but a For Sure…..
**** “STARVES the SPIRIT”..but..”FEEDS the GREED”..
****:STARVE the SPIRIT……FEED the GREED”
****STARVING the SPIRITS….FEEDING the GREEDY”
****.cc….meanderthal100
What a shame..
When the effects of poverty so completely overwhelm any effort by teachers, it is absurd to say that teachers are the most important factor in improving schools. Patently absurd. It is akin to saying that the clerk at my grocery store is the most important factor in store quality. Surely these business model geniuses understand inputs as a factor in outcomes. Healthy, secure kids are the most important factor in school improvement.
America has shortchanged all of the children’
The academically gifted are put in classes and expected to teach the future skilled workers(whose jobs are of utmost importance to the world) to become Rocket Scientists or Bio-whatever Engineers.
Left to fend for themselves are
The academically gifted being tossed into a swarm of chaos.
The skilled whose talents are shoved under the rug and told they must be able to derive the Quadratic Formula.
Also upsetting is the mindset of the Educating Dictators that have succeeded in convincing our precious skilled workers that their jobs mean nothing…
A child’s individuality…a child’s gifts that are an innate characteristic mean nothing .be they
Musical
Physical
Art
Child Care
Plumbing
Mechanics
Communication
Dance
Sports
Financial
………..
You get the picture…..
A One-Track-Academia-Curriculum where one must explain how the Gravitational Pull from the center of the Earth keeps us from Racing To the Top of Nowhere….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth
Remember the song
It’s Love that makes the World go Round”
…Love of Spirit..Love of your respected place in Society.that you choose….Freedom to choose your career based on your innate abilities….!!!!!
DIVERSITY……is what keeps the world going Around…
Not A FLAT TESTING ACADEMIC CURRICULUM!!
Of course they understand. They are banking that most Americans do NOT understand. They are misleading and frightening the public in order to sell their story. This has been an effective strategy for them. Let’s just keep exposing the truth as much as possible. Surely there facade will eventually crash.
Their not there! Hate it when that happens! 🙂
So, if I get this right, the commenters on this thread think that PISA is not a legitimate way to compare educational performance among countries and learn from each other what might be effective. Is there a way to do that?
Secondly, I take it that people would agree that teachers cannot be a significant factor in overcoming poverty. Is that right? Or have I overstated it?
Bill, if I may speak for Katie: what we are saying is that there needs to be some knowledge and sophistication when interpreting the PISA results, or any data when dealing with standardized testing.
Teachers do make a difference. But perhaps the important things they do are not reflected in test scores.
re: interpreting PISA results – it would be hard to come up with a more knowledgable or sophisticated or balanced or credible interpreter of PISA results than the OECD reports that Marc Tucker is relying on (plus his own analysis, for sure). They conclude that, not only in Shanghai, but in Finland and other high performers educationally, teachers are a key factor. (Another is standards.)
I certainly agree that teachers have lots of impacts that are not reflected in test scores, but saying that tests are an incomplete reflection of good teaching is different from saying that good teaching is not reflected in test results. I think good teaching is reflected in the tests. (But that using tests to evaluate and pay and bash teachers is lousy education policy.)
Yes, testing is a perennial debate, but I would assert that the right kind of testing tells you something and that PISA is a good version of a test and it tells us something useful.
Bill Duncan:
Marc Tucker has also written that our students take more tests than any other country. No other country tests every child every year from grades 3-8.. No other country among the high-performing countries judges teachers by student scores, nor do they have vouchers or charters.
DR: I totally agree with him (and you) on all those points and work every day to oppose those policies.
And what you have to sell depends on that. So much cannot be measured by tests as the real teachers, who work directly with children every day, already know.
Sorry, Bill, but no.
If you want to make the case that good teaching is the difference between Shanghai’s “success” on the PISA and the USA’s “poor” showing, you have to deal with my point: the sample of Shanghai students who took the PISA, according to Kam, is NOT equivalent to the sample in the US.
That doesn’t mean teachers don’t matter. It means that the interpretation that better teaching in Shanghai led to their test superiority has not been proven.
This is precisely what I mean by inter[reting these results with knowledge and sophistication.
JJ: The first point I would make is that Shanghai is by no means the whole story. The PISA analysis is most useful as a prism for reviewing the education policies of the wide range of countries who’s fifteen year olds do well on this test (no, the test isn’t everything but, as tests go, this is a very thoughtful and useful one). Yes, South Korea scores well with policies that we would not want to emulate – they don’t even like their own policies but can’t seem to shake them – and many other countries do things we would not want to do, but it’s hard to deny that there is a lot to learn from the OECD analysis.
Which is where Marc Tucker roots his analysis.
Now, on Shanghai. Here, on page 91, the OECD’s report, “Lessons from PISA for the United States,” says that “Shanghai was among the first cities to achieve universal primary and junior secondary education and was also among the first to achieve almost universal senior secondary education.” It goes on to say that Shanghai gets almost 100% participation from school age kids.
More generally, the theme that other countries do better on PISA than the U.S. because they educate only their elite just doesn’t hold up. In fact, U.S. education can be seen as more oriented to our elite than in countries that do well in education (high dropout rates, low investment in schools with lots of low income kids).
If you want to engage in an informed debate on education, the OECD reports would be a good place to start.
Bill Duncan. I like randomized standardized tests like NAEP, PISA, and TIMSS. I hate state standardized tests. Teachers teach to the test, prepare their kids specifically for the content on those tests, and do even worse in some situations (they actually cheat) – they do this to the point that state standardized test lack validity. Analysis of state level data is meaningless to me.
Having said all of this, when controlling for poverty, U.S. kids perform very well on international tests. Schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch ranked first in the world on the 2009 PISA.. We see this quite regularly on any international test – our middle and upper class kids are very competitive, but because of the near 25% of kids living in poverty in the U.S., our aggregate results are mediocre at best.
And compared to the effects of poverty, the effects of teachers are like a drop in the bucket. We’ve known this to be true for decades since the Coleman report and other evidence.
There are no miracle schools. The ones that are supposed to be so, under further investigation, are known to game the system.
We could do exponentially more to improve education in this country by bolstering our middle class than anything we could do within the walls of our classrooms.
“. . . the commenters on this thread think that PISA is not a legitimate way to compare educational performance among countries and learn from each other what might be effective.”
Exactly, Bill. They are not legitimate. That has been proven by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Legitimacy implies validity and vice versa. Wilson has elucidated 13 sources of error (and there are more) in the making of, the giving of and the dissemination of the results of standardized tests that render any results invalid. All of the invalidities involved by definition prove the ILLEGITIMACY of PISA and any other standardized test.
“Is there a way to do that? ”
Yes, but the amount of work and effort involved in a long term longitudinal study involving the factors involved in the teaching and learning process and of the assessment of that process would require something on the order of a Manhattan Project expanded over a decade or two throughout the world. Ain’t gonna happen.
And who the hell cares anyway about what is happening halfway around the world in various schools?? Why the need for sorting, separating and ranking? So that one may claim to have the biggest set of breasts or the largest penis???? Absurdity thy name is sorting, separating and ranking of the teaching and learning process.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Finnish miracle: fata morgana?
Finnish students’ achievement (15 y) declined significantly: study of University Helsinki
University of Helsinki – Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, Department of Teacher of Education Research Report No 347Authors: Jarkko Hautamäki e.a. Learning to learn at the end of basic education: Results in 2012 and changes from 2001
S.: The change between the year 2001 and year 2012 is significant. The level of students’ attainment has declined considerably: under the mean of the scale used in the questions. The difference can be compared to a decline of Finnish students’ attainment in PISA reading literacy from the 539 points of PISA 2009 to 490 points, to below the OECD average. The mean level of students’ learning-supporting attitudes still falls above the mean of the scale used in the questions but also that mean has declined from 2001.
Since 1996, educational effectiveness has been understood in Finland to include not only subject specific knowledge and skills but also the more general competences which are not the exclusive domain of any single subject but develop through good teaching along a student’s educational career. Many of these, including the object of the present assessment, learning to learn, have been named in the education policy documents of the European Union as key competences which each member state should provide their citizens as part of general education (EU 2006).
In spring 2012, the Helsinki University Centre for Educational Assessment implemented a nationally representative assessment of ninth grade students’ learning to learn competence. The assessment was inspired by signs of declining results in the past few years’ assessments. This decline had been observed both in the subject specific assessments of the Finnish National Board of Education, in the OECD PISA 2009 study, and in the learning to learn assessment implemented by the Centre for Educational Assessment in all comprehensive schools in Vantaa in 2010.
The results of the Vantaa study could be compared against the results of a similar assessment implemented in 2004. As the decline in students’ cognitive competence and in their learning related attitudes was especially strong in the two Vantaa studies, with only 6 years apart, a decision was made to direct the national assessment of spring 2012 to the same schools which had participated in a respective study in 2001.
The goal of the assessment was to find out whether the decline in results, observed in the Helsinki region, were the same for the whole country. The assessment also offered a possibility to look at the readiness of schools to implement a computer-based assessment, and how this has changed during the 11 years between the two assessments. After all, the 2001 assessment was the first in Finland where large scale student assessment data was collected in schools using the Internet.
The main focus of the assessment was on students’ competence and their learning-related attitudes at the end of the comprehensive school education, but the assessment also relates to educational equity: to regional, between-school, and between- class differences and to the relation of students’ gender and home background to their competence and attitudes.
The assessment reached about 7 800 ninth grade students in 82 schools in 65 municipalities. Of the students, 49% were girls and 51% boys. The share of students in Swedish speaking schools was 3.4%. As in 2001, the assessment was implemented in about half of the schools using a printed test booklet and in the other half via the Internet. The results of the 2001 and 2012 assessments were uniformed through IRT modelling to secure the comparability of the results. Hence, the results can be interpreted to represent the full Finnish ninth grade population.
Girls performed better than boys in all three fields of competence measured in the assessment: reasoning, mathematical thinking, and reading comprehension. The difference was especially noticeable in reading comprehension even if in this task girls’ attainment had declined more than boys’ attainment. Differences between the AVI-districts were small. The impact of students’ home-background was, instead, obvious: the higher the education of the parents, the better the student performed in the assessment tasks. There was no difference in the impact of mother’s education on boys’ and girls’ attainment. The between-school-differences were very small (explaining under 2% of the variance) while the between-class differences were relatively large (9 % – 20 %).
The change between the year 2001 and year 2012 is significant. The level of students’ attainment has declined considerably. The difference can be compared to a decline of Finnish students’ attainment in PISA reading literacy from the 539 points of PISA 2009 to 490 points, to below the OECD average. The mean level of students’ learning-supporting attitudes still falls above the mean of the scale used in the questions but also that mean has declined from 2001.
The mean level of attitudes detrimental to learning has risen but the rise is more modest. Girls’ attainment has declined more than boys’ in three of the five tasks. There was no gender difference in the change of students’ attitudes, however. Between-school differences were un-changed but differences between classes and between individual students had grown. The change in attitudes—unlike the change in attainment—was related to students’ home background: The decline in learning-supporting attitudes and the growth in attitudes detrimental to school work were weaker the better educated the mother. Home background was not related to the change in students’ attainment, however. A decline could be discerned both among the best and the weakest students.
The results of the assessment point to a deeper, on-going cultural change which seems to affect the young generation especially hard. Formal education seems to be losing its former power and the accepting of the societal expectations which the school represents seems to be related more strongly than before to students’ home background. The school has to compete with students’ self-elected pastime activities, the social media, and the boundless world of information and entertainment open to all through the Internet. The school is to a growing number of youngpeople just one, often critically reviewed, developmental environment among many.
The change is not a surprise, however. A similar decline in student attainment has been registered in the other Nordic countries already earlier. It is time to concede that the signals of change have been discernible already for a while and to open up a national discussion regarding the state and future of the Finnish comprehensive school that rose to international acclaim due to our students’success in the PISA studies.
“fata morgana”
Do you mean this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW2UsUZ40tU
So Finland’s education isn’t really so hot. Shanghai just educates the elites. Tests are no good. Is the theme here that the only change needed in U.S. education is anti-poverty measures?
NO, I don’t believe I’ve ever read here that “the theme here that the ONLY change needed in U.S. education is anti-poverty measures”.
I know you can read better than that Bill. Take off the idiological blinders, read with an open mind.
Yes, that’s misspelled on purpose.
Set me straight, Duane. What is needed?
Don’t “set folks straight.” “Never go straight, go forward!”
But to attempt to begin to answer your question:
I argue for more enlightened (by which I mean having a logical epistemological and ontological basis) thought/discourse of educational issues not clouded with ideological sentiments while at the same time undertaking a more equitable, just and fair distribution of educational resources. This country has more than enough wealth to provide all that is needed to do so. But first we have to break the death and destruction sectors grip on government and resources and utilized the savings to realize a just education for all.
Not only that but we have to break the ideological stranglehold that encompasses the “measuring, sorting, separating and ranking” meme of educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students. Until those involved in education can (and choose to) comprehend the inanities/insanities that are those practices we will continue to throw the valuable resources of time, energy and money down the hellhole that is the focus on “measuring” the inmeasurable, the teaching and learning process.
I could buy that!
So much mental masturbation over completely invalid international test scores.
Serves to keep the riffraff away from the gated communities and those who live within who take it upon themselves to attempt to tell us riffraff how to do what they have no clue about TEACHING.
What I don’t understand is how anyone — ANYONE — has the gall to speak about improving American schools without first discussing this country’s insane spending disparities. The community of Bronxville, New York spends $27,950 a year on its students; the community of Barbourville, Kentucky doesn’t even spend $9,000.
No how different the cost of living is between those two places, the vast majority of children from Barbourville will never receive an education equal to those in Bronxville. In what dystopic nightmare state is it considered just to spend three times more on one child than another?!!
And — this question directed to the Masters of Education Reform — what in all your wild schemes will rectify this injustice? Breaking teacher unions? Giving more standardized tests? Grading teachers? Firing principals?
Educational reformers: I say to you. Not one word out of your mouths unless you begin with inequality. Not one reform without mentioning funding, taxes, money, and poverty, first. And, it would help, if you would first hang your heads in shame.
Geographic location has a very important impact on a child’s future.
I am curios if anyone else heard the recent This American Life episode “House Rules”. I think it has much to say to many of us that post here, especially those nostalgic for “the good old days”.
Here is a link:http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules
In the Buffalo Public Schools where test scores are low, the cost per student is about twenty five thousand a year, while suburban schools spend between eleven and fifteen thousand dollars per pupil.
The BPS has so much less than those suburban schools. So where is all that money going. Some of it goes “downtown” to support high paid administrative personnel who have little to no contact with the students (or with the teachers, for that matter). However, most of the money goes for services because Buffalo has a large population of special education students who are in small classes, some with six children and an aide, some with twelve. Some students are so disabled they need their own aide. There is also a large number of refugees and immigrants (over 56 languages) who need ESL. There’s PT and OT and Speech services. Some need counseling (not enough is provided). The costs add up. The regular class sizes balloon to thirty kids in a class – even in kindergarten. (Pre-K is limited to 18).
And you wonder why test scores are low? It’s survival. Remember, Buffalo has one of the highest poverty levels in the country.
We have a billion dollar budget which doesn’t trickle down to the average student. The state comes up with most of the funding. (There are no dedicated school taxes in the city, only the suburbs).
So Neal. There is more than one way to look at those spending disparities.
According to this person, Clinton School District Administrator Randy Refsland, who returned from a year in China, with the Ameson Foreign Language Institute and Education Foundation evaluating language teachers, “as well a working closely with Chinese educators on teacher evaluation and methodology. China does not yet aspire to universal education:
http://www.beloitdailynews.com/news/up-close-personal-with-how-china-educates-students/article_598bf3e6-05bf-11e3-82d7-0019bb2963f4.html
Refsland said that “not all Chinese students go to high school. Education is only compulsory from grades 1-9. Students who score well on a ninth grade test are admitted into high school while the rest of the students, 10-15 percent, either return to work for family businesses, farms or in manual labor. And some of the students don’t even make it to the ninth grade, as many drop out earlier. There also are no special education students and typically no students who do not speak Chinese.” According to Refsland:
“The reality is that not every Chinese kid gets to high school,” he said. “They lose a lot of kids along the way because the kids don’t get the one-on-one assistance they need if they are struggling. There’s no real attempt in China to educate everybody equally to the best of their ability.”
Sure we could improve our test scores if we culled our low performing students as they do. They can always do forced labor in prisons. But is this compatible with a democratic society? Do we want a permanent class of untermenschen?
Yes, that’s why the shanghai example of universal education is interesting.
“Sure we could improve our test scores. . .”
Don’t give a crap about improving “test scores”. That is one of the most nefarious, egregious, stupid and insane concepts that there are in education today.
I care about improving the teaching and learning process of which test scores are a minor part of the assessment process which is a minor part of the teaching and learning process. Why do we focus so much time, effort and monetary resources on what should perhaps be at most 5% of the teaching and learning process?????
Absurdity and insanity your twins are tests and scores.
Bill Duncan, when you state: “Yes, that’s why the shanghai example of universal education is interesting”, are you engaging in some kind of Kabuki theater?
The point is that Shanghai is NOT an example of universal education.
We can also increase efficiency if we stop paying wages. Kill all our sick people. So what.
It was even tried in Nazi Germany.
I guess we just have different authorities as our references, Harold. My larger point is that no one reference city/country is a critical comparison anyway. It’s the broader survey….unless, one commenter says, there is nothing to learn from the others.
So your authority calls Shanghai an example of universal education even though it is not according to the accepted definition of same, and you choose to believe your “authority”?
Yes. I have found the OECD an objective, reliable and detailed source of information and the report I cited gives the detail.
Mr. Duncan, is high school attendance in Shanghai compulsory? Can you answer that question?
I can’t answer for China, but in my state a child may stop attending school at 16 with parental permission. That would probably put a student half way through high school.
Also, Mr. Duncan, how do your authorities define a “comprehensive” school?
The OECD is referring to the country’s famous Nine Year Compulsory Education law requires 6 years of primary and 3 years of secondary school.
I have looked at the report you reference, and the strategies Shanghai has adopted to increase enrollment are interesting and do appear to be quite humane and also successful.
The report says that China, like Finland, has rather recently began to mandate nine years of compulsory education. In Finland students attend the same school from ages seven through fifteen. (It goes unmentioned in this report that in Finland first grade starts at age seven, rather than at age six as in the US, so that a Finnish ninth grader is the equivalent of a US tenth grader. At what ages does primary school begin in Shanghai and Hong Kong, one wonders?) Unlike Finland, where everyone attends the same school for nine years, in China, students attend “Primary School” for six years and then move on to “Junior Secondary School” for seventh through ninth grade.
Entrance to Junior Secondary Schools used to be decided by an entrance exam. But the report states that Shanghai has recently abolished these exams and has begun to require Junior Secondary pupils to attend their neighborhood schools.
However, it also says that wealthy parents can get out of this by paying a fee, calling this an example of US- style “school choice.”
According to the report:
“Neighbourhood attendance … caused concern among teachers who were not used to teaching classes of mixed abilities. Now, however, teachers seem to be proud of being able to handle children of diverse backgrounds and different abilities, realising that diversity and disparity within schools are common features in contemporary
societies.” http://advancingnheducation.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/oecd-comparing-reform-in-many-countries-46623978.pdf#page=92
As in Finland, “upper secondary school” in China must begin in10th, rather than 9th grade (as here in the US). Is Chinese upper secondary school the same as our high schools? Or is it more like our community college, as in Finland, whose 10th graders are already the equivalent of our 11th graders. How many years long is it, and are entrance exams required? And what exactly happens to Shanghai’s dropouts and expelled students?
And how are they doing with their migrant workers, Would urban schools in this country consent to forming consortiums and partnering with rural school in say, Appalachia, as Shanghai is said to be doing? Shanghai is one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Would our taxpayers consent to pay for something like this?
Yes, the thoughtful approach taken in this report (and many others from the same source) brings many creative ideas to mind.
Having worked for years with Appalachian schools, I do think the relationship with a “sister school” elsewhere would be interesting. It’s not just the money that is missing, of course. Some of them also that they needed (years ago when I was there) to decide to put their educational missions ahead of the political patronage opportunity they offer. Kentucky has worked hard to address this and has made some progress.
Glad you liked the report. It’s long, but very readable and will give you lots more good ideas.
I would not go so far as to say that I liked the report. The Shanghai section in particular had a lot of “spin” in discussing the abolition of competitive entrance exams (tracking) for “junior secondary school” and the spurious “choice” available for the wealthy. How many take advantage of “choice” for pay is not addressed.
As I said, the fact that the grades and ages of the Chinese or Finnish students do not match up with those of US students is obscured by virtually all advocates of so-called “reform,” just one more fact that calls into question their motives and integrity.
I am suspect of the grading system in other countries, but the fact is, I don’t care. Good for them if they are successful. My focus is on the US. As far of the assessments in NYS, how can we compare the results when the tests and scoring systems change from year to year. Once the majority of students seemed to master the tests, they made the grading system harder. Now it is almost impossible to pass.
What happened to the Bell Curve? What happened to the research of Piaget and Maslow? What about the five intelligences and learning styles? We seemed to have thrown all we knew about educating children out the window.
I suppose a more accurate assessment would to be to compare SAT scores. Those appear to be a more constant measure.
My mom says when she went to high school only the elite took the Regents Exams and went to college. My generation had more kids excelling, but there were still many who opted out of the college experience. And we all know friends that dropped out of college – and high grades in high school and on tests was not always a factor.
College ready is more than a test score. It is more about handling strategies such as time management, library research skills, test taking strategies, and the ability to select the correct material to study. Attending classes and doing the assigned work in a timely fashion also helps.
Passing a bogus assessment means nothing. Ask the teacher whose student bubbled in all answer E for every question when the choices were A to D. And that measured . . .?
To clarify one point, I knew many students who were bright and had good grades and high scores on tests who could not handle going to a college or university or even a junior college. Assessments are not always a good prediction of success.
What we should aim for is an education for everyone, not one that will force everyone to go to college, necessarily, but one that will give them sufficient preparation so as not rule college out for them should they choose to go there.
Although I have reservations about C. S. Lewis I do like his insight (in The Forgotten Image) that education (and curriculum) should be like a door that leads you in.
It should not be a pons asinorum designed to pick off (and stigmatize) the supposedly less talented.
This is the main thing that is wrong with our educational system: it makes most people feel like losers. There must be a recognition that people learn and develop interests and talents throughout their entire lives, and some of these may not be those that are focussed on in school. Nadia Boulanger, the great composition teacher, never refused to teach anyone. She maintained that that you can be a prodigy at any age.
What works in Shanghai is an average IQ of 110. In comparison Detroit probably has an average IQ of less than 85.
Very few people can be a prodigy at any age.