GF Brandenburg has a great post on the latest TIMSS test.
It puts paid to the customary hand-wringing (did you hear that, Wall Street Journal?) about the international test scores.
No crisis.
The real question, aside from the horse race, is whether the scores mean anything at all. The US came in last when the first such test was offered in 1964 and we competed with 11 nations. Yet we went on to be more successful as an economic power than any of the other 11.
Do we have problems? Yes. The biggest problem is the failure of our political leaders to address the social context in which children live and schools function–or not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
You HAVE to share this one. It’s a perfect metaphor for today’s “charter operators”…hopefully it’s the first of many egregious mistakes we’ll see from the Privatizers. Enjoy! http://www.king5.com/news/cities/tacoma/charter-school-ad-takes-the-L-out-of-public-school-183085561.html
Diane,
You MUST see this. PLEASE put it up on your blog! The irony, symbol, metaphor…walking rebuttal to their own argument is too much to be believed: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200102317739611&set=a.2245995908298.2136303.1200152692&type=1&theater
another great post by Yong – http://zhaolearning.com/2012/12/11/numbers-can-lie-what-timss-and-pisa-truly-tell-us-if-anything/
The PIRLS Reading scores are even better and worth a close examination. We’re sixth overall, but not by much, and in particular once school income in broken into thirds, we’re first in the affluent and average schools and 5th in the most disadvantaged. Florida is 1st/1st/2nd, and on NAEP the whole Northeast is equal to or better than Florida in 4th grade reading. So there’s a good chance that (heavily unionized, etc.) US states would dominate the top of these charts if they were all broken out.
I’ve got a rambling post on the subject here:
http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2012/12/pirls-2011-weve-succeeded-at-what-weve.html
You would never know that it was good news based on Huffington Post:
(1) The blurb posted on yesterday’s page regarding Jindal, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/bobby-jindal-louisiana-school-vouchers_n_2280419.html under “Most Discussed Right Now” which says, “International Test Scores Expose U.S. Education Problem”
and
(2) Clicking that link takes you to this article, “International Tests Show East Asian Students Outperform World As U.S. Holds Steady.”
Surprise, surprise.
Then you read the article and find out the outcome is considerably better than “holds steady.”
What a sensationalist rag.
Accompanying picture is frightening! (at huff)
My state (Massachusetts) is second internationally for 8th grade science scores on TIMSS, yet a report in the Boston Globe yesterday states that fewer Mass. students go into careers in science than students in other states!
I think this shows that there is a disconnect between standardized testing and the real-world application of students’ knowledge (that is, teaching to the test for the sake of the test and not connecting teaching content in relation to skills and real-world application). Fortunately, the high school in my city has several partnerships with biotech companies, but too few students participate.