In a newly released summary of PISA test scores, students in Vietnam had higher test scores than their 15-year-old peers in the U.S. and most European Union nations.
For some in the U.S. media, this will set off alarm bells, produce hand-wringing, and provoke fears of “a Sputnik moment,” arrived again.
A Vietnamese newspaper reported:
“Vietnam ranked 12th out of 76 economies in a new global education survey, overtaking the US and many EU countries, international media reported Wednesday.
“The rankings by the economic think tank OECD were based on 15-year-olds’ performance in maths and science tests. The US placed 28th while most of the EU, including Denmark, Sweden and the UK were outside the top 15.
“Asian economies dominated the top positions. Singapore took the top place, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, BBC reported.”
Andreas Schleicher of the OECD said the survey showed that Asian nations excel because they have excellent teachers with high expectations. “There’s a lot of rigor, a lot of focus and coherence,” he told BBC.” And he said that the test scores predicted future economic growth.
However, Vietnam’s deputy education commissioner took issue with Schleicher’s assessment of the PISA results.
“Nguyen Vinh Hien, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, told Tuoi Tre (youth) newspaper on Friday that the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, does not assess students’ overall competence…
“Even though PISA’s 2012 results, announced early this week, ranked Vietnam over many wealthy western countries, including the US, in math and science, “we have to be honest and admit that if fully assessed, Vietnamese students’ capacity is still poor,” Hien said….
“Dr. Giap Van Duong also wrote in the newspaper that compared to “the four pillars of education” prescribed by UNESCO–learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be–PISA targets only a small part of the first pillar.
Duong holds doctorates in physics and used to work with universities in England and Austria.
“He said PISA tests were limited because they use 15-year-olds as their subjects. At that age, students are still immature and their knowledge is far from meeting the demand of practical fields like business, administration, culture, and arts, he said.
“If the test targeted older people such as 20-year-old university students or 30-year-olds who are working, Vietnam’s results would “definitely” be much lower, according to Duong.
“In fact, many Vietnamese students fail to land a job after graduation. When they study overseas, many have difficulties in meeting the requirements of advanced education systems like team-work, problem solving and creativity, he said.”
“Duong went on to quote the Asian Productivity Organization’s 2012 report as saying that Vietnamese people’s productivity is about 20 times lower than that of American people.”
Duong added:
“Vietnamese education’s focus is on learning to pass exams. The whole system operates to serve only one purpose: exams.”
“Students here take exams to enroll in the first grade, the sixth-grade, the tenth-grade, and then universities, and every exam is “tense” and “competitive,” the scholar said.
“The tradition of learning to pass exams” is typical of Confucian education systems and is also found in other Asian countries like China, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, he said.
All these countries ranked high in PISA tests, although their development is on par with or lower than that of the US and western countries.
“This indicated that the tradition probably affected the tests’ results, Duong said.
“He noted that among countries with Confucian traditions, Vietnam ranked the lowest, so there was no reason to be happy about the country’s ranking.”
No doubt in the U.S., groups promoting the Common Core, charters, and vouchers will take this summary as new evidence that American public education is failing to produce global competitors and that we need more rigor, more testing, and more standardization. Secretary Dumcan may make a statement saying these results are a “wake-up call” for Americans. As University of Oregon scholar Yong Zhao said at the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago last month, Duncan gets more wake-up calls than anyone he knows but never wakes up.
The international tests are vastly overrated. It is not clear that the test-taking skills of 15-year-olds predict anything at all about the future of the economy. When the first international test of math was offered in 1964, 12 nations took it. The U.S. came in next to last in eighth grade and dead last in twelfth grade. Yet over the next fifty years, the U.S. economy outperformed the other 11 nations. The test scores predicted nothing at all.
As the Vietnamese deputy commissioner said, PISA measures only one dimension: test-taking skills. Whatever value the standardized tests have is overshadowed by the collateral damage they do to the quality of education and to the standardizing of young minds.
What matters most today is the liberation of minds to be creative, imaginative, compassionate, and collegial. The world is in a mess and we don’t need more fiercely competitive, me-first people. We need thoughtful and knowledgable people who know how to resolve conflicts. Above all, we need the one quality that the international tests can’t measure: Wisdom.
Diane Ravitch is a historian of education who blogs at Dianeravitch.net
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“For some in the U.S. media, this will set off alarm bells, produce hand-wringing, and provoke fears of “a Sputnik moment,” arrived again.”
I just think it’s difficult for them to continue to say “we don’t solely focus on test scores!” while they continue to focus solely on test scores.
There’s a fundamental credibility problem there.
I don’t know how one breaks out of a laser-like focus on test scores to the exclusion of all else, but it probably involves admitting it’s happening. That would be the first step. Changing the tests isn’t going to change the thinking that produced an over-reliance on scores, and saying “now we have better tests!” just means to me that they’ll rely MORE on test scores to the exclusion of everything else.
I fully expect the Common Core tests to result in kids being labeled on a 1 thru 4 or 1 thru 5 scale beginning in 3rd grade because NOTHING else changed in the dominant ed reform narrative.
“What matters most today is the liberation of minds to be creative, imaginative, compassionate, and collegial. The world is in a mess and we don’t need more fiercely competitive, me-first people. We need thoughtful and knowledgable people who know how to resolve conflicts. Above all, we need the one quality that the international tests can’t measure: Wisdom. ”
When we have people whose students are performing well on these tests explaining to us why they have limited meaning, perhaps we should pay attention. Our leaders look really stupid. Either they are or they have another agenda.
This report shows why we must take a critical look at statistics. The first question that comes to my mind is: How big is the net? The bigger the net the lower the scores. Is Vietnam only offering this test only to the wealthy, elite super stars? In America and other countries the sample of students may include a much wider range of socioeconomic levels in their sample. This would account for “lower” scores. This is why lots of statistics can be misleading.
As for educated Vietnamese unable to find work, after Obama and the Republicans ram the TPP through their clandestine negotiations, there will be plenty of
American STEM jobs for them. The problem is this will be a disaster for a young Americans like my son looking for this type of work,
Retired,
Even the Vietnamese know that PISA is meaningless
I don’t think it matters that much. One can accept the test results for what they are, test results, and still object to the over-reliance on test results.
If you had a theory of patient care in medicine that relied too much on test results and ignored all the other diagnostic tools- patient interviews, observation, family history, direct experience of the physician, consultation with other physicians, changes in the patient’s environment, then getting better tests won’t reach the problem at all. The problem isn’t the tests. It’s the thinking behind the approach that led the physician or practice to over-rely on test results to the exclusion of all other factors.
Better tests might even make it worse. If you have a theory that over-relies on test scores and you tell proponents of that theory “we have better tests!” aren’t those same people now MORE likely to over-rely on tests?
“One can accept the [standardized] test results for what they are, [standardized] test results”.
Which leaves on accepting COMPLETELY INVALID results. In other words it’s all a bunch of mental masturbation (except for the children and teacher’s caught up in the nefarious web of standardized test results)
“Better tests might even make it worse.”
Indeed they do as when one is doing the wrong thing-standardized tests-doing them “better” will result in worse results. Don’t take no Arne Duncan to figure that one out, because he can’t.
“What matters most today is the liberation of minds to be creative, imaginative, compassionate, and collegial. The world is in a mess and we don’t need more fiercely competitive, me-first people. We need thoughtful and knowledgeable people who know how to resolve conflicts. Above all, we need the one quality that the international tests can’t measure: Wisdom.”
In CA, the Smarter Balance Test doesn’t test for wisdom or creativity. These test scores are just a snapshot of what a student may or may not know. Common Core and the guidelines it suggests for each grade are fine. How kids are tested and the functionality of the technology used is questionable.
Being taught by a person with a degree in math throughout middle school and high school could change how well kids perform on the PISA, and also how well kids will perform in college and on the job. The push for all students to complete Algebra 1 in eighth grade failed in CA. Too few students had either the maturity or skills to succeed.
Beautiful description
Of course it is to you Raj!-ha ha!
(just funnin ya)
dianeravitch~ Looking at the literature section on the Common Core State Standards website [http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RL/3/], I do not see any specifics on the kinds of literature, or informational reading [http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RI/3/] a student needs to have read in third grade. It appears that the reading selections are to be chosen by the teacher. Is this not the case?
For example: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.9
Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic.
The above does not seem like a difficult task for a third grader if a teacher chooses appropriate reading selections to compare and contrast. Again, it seems as if the selection is left to the teacher to decide what would be appropriate for her/his classroom situation.
Again on the Common Core State Standards Key Design Considerations [http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/introduction/key-design-consideration/], K-3 is not discussed regarding how much time should be devoted to literature and informational reading. According to this website, a fourth grade student should spend 50% of their reading time on literature and 50% of their reading time on informational texts. Is this a bad mix of reading for a fourth grader?
If the Common Core is a poor solution for American education, than what would work better? Perhaps the problems with the Common Core is not the Core itself but its implementation by states and local school boards pushed by textbook publishing. It is easy to find the flaws and fuel a debate over education, but it is far more difficult to propose a solution to a this complex issue that encompasses both K-12 and higher education. Ms. Ravitch, I invite you to draft a better solution for our kids and our schools.
Latitudes, my first exposure to common core was the provided reading list of titles. As the expert in literature in the building, one who regularly created a list of suggested titles for various grade levels (including ones based on lexiles), I was appalled at the choices for the corresponding age groups, many which were inappropriate for the given grade. Most of the books were “dated” and even out of print. Some were unavailable articles in old magazines. I was informed that this was to be a sample list, but the CC committee adopted it as is with no revisions.
And the concept of tossing themes at children without an explanation of the background necessary to understand the given topic, stymied the teachers at this Gifted and Talented School. I could only wonder how the faculty in the inner city schools reacted to the situation.
When you are outside looking in, as I am today after retiring, it is easy to make judgements, but I rely more on anecdotal experiences of those in the trenches, especially from my former highly respected colleagues who are fighting the battle on a daily basis.
Ellen #MoreListeningLessTalking
“Common Core and the guidelines it suggests for each grade are fine”
Porcine excrement.
“Common Core and the guidelines” (and the accompanying tests) contain all the inherent epistemological and ontological falsehoods and errors that Noel Wilson has shown which renders the process COMPLETELY INVALID. To understand why read and comprehend his never refuted nor rebutted treatise “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.”
The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Latitudes of a day–You Say: Common Core and the guidelines it suggests for each grade are fine.
I think not.
Have you looked at all 1, 620 standards including parts a-e?
Can you explain the rationale for their distribution across grade levels?
Why are sixth graders expected to master more standards in ELA and math than any other grade–160 total for only two subjects, not counting new standards in science, the arts, or the fact that social studies/history cannot be reduced to ELA without a significant loss of coherence.
Why there are more standards for geometry at each and every grade, K-8, than any other topic in mathematics, with more than half of the 88 geometry standards landing in grade 8? Can you find answers to those questions in the guidelines?
Can you explain how a community college English assignment that requires knowledge of art history and greek mythology happened to migrate into an ELA “essay” standard for grades 9/10?
The framers of the CCSS had the notion that you could set standards by beginning with content and skills required for the successful completion of a credit bearing freshman course, effectively making you ready for sophomore courses by that accomplishment. So frehman level end-of-course assignments became the starting point for back-mapping (reverse engineering) the prerequisites for that level of accomlishment.This is the way corporate and military training programs for ADULTS are planned. Determine the ending and what is required to get there, construct the training modules, master them in the optimum order and you are good to go.
But training is not the same as education and kindergarteners are not miniature adults. The writters of the CCSS were pre-occupied with standardization, and that is the problem. Children and teens are individuals, they learn at different rates. “Grade levels” are an administrative and statistical convenience for identifying cohorts of students. They are not a premise for making wise and prudent decisions about what to teach, or when.
Note that the Common Core standards are written with the expectation of MASTERY, grade-by-grade. In fact, instructional materials are now being rated for their compliance with the Common Core grade levels. If the texts and resources include exercises that review content and skills from prior grades they are downgraded. If they introduce topics from a higher grade level they are downgraded. You can see how these one-size-must-fit all rating criteria echo the verbatim rule in the Common Core standards. See the rating criteria at edreports.org
If the Common Core is a poor choice for testing, then should we return to NCLB? Is no testing better? Maybe the UK system could work here in the US. Then kids would self-select academics and take exams or forego testing and pursue a trade.
Personally, I think the addition of a written responses rather than filling in bubbles is a testing improvement. I also think testing is a fact of life if a kid wants to go to college-SAT, ACT, and AP (8-15 exams). Many public schools focus on at risk learners at the expense of advanced learners. Not enough high schools offer a full range of AP classes. I don’t think AP classes are a way to get college credit, but it is a way to challenge an highly academic student.
Leafing through my Common Core Writing Companion Grade 7 by Perfection learning, I do not see anything abhorrent. In fact, it’s basic without many photos. It’s well structured so that leads student through the assignments and covers a bit of grammar and mechanics.
There is time enough later in life for testing. Elementary children should be focusing on soaking up all the knowledge and enrichment a teacher can cram into a day. The stress and endurance required for a meaningless exam is not only unnecessary but harmful. You don’t need to toughen up an eight or nine year old to get them ready for the SATs and AP exams they’ll take eight or nine years later.
Ellen #EverythingInItsProperTimeAndPlace
Latitudes, there are good and bad things about Common Core. The K-3 standards are developmentally inappropriate and should be rewritten by classroom teachers of those grades. “Close reading” without context is fine for standardized tests but awful for learning in depth; how could anyone understand Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without knowledge of the Civil War and of Lincoln? Why should the CCSS determine how much time teachers devote to fiction and informational text? I know of no nation that does that. That should be the teachers’ decision.
Your argument that tests are a fact of life is the nonsensical reasoning “we can’t stop doing the wrong thing just because what we have been doing is wrong”. The Bar exam has never prevented bad lawyers, but it most certainly has denied good lawyers. Yet we keep mindlessly testing.
But what you describe for CCSS, leading students through assignments, is a curriculum. But CCSS supporters insist the standards are not a curriculum. They are. They tell teachers what, when, and how to teach. Innovation, judgment, differentiation are not allowed.
I do not mind guidance in course direction and content. Tests are great diagnostic tools. I can develop prompts and exercises for my students far superior to any PARCC question and provide feedback better than any Craigslist grader.
Laura –
Here’s what else is wrong with the Common Core – from the right side of the spectrum – the Pioneer Institute (who hold up Bobby Jindal as an exemplar).
.
http://pioneerinstitute.org/common-core/
Thanks Christine – this was definitely worth a listen.
“Is no testing better?”
Let’s put it this way YES, “no [standardized] testing better!!”
“Personally, I think the addition of a written responses rather than filling in bubbles is a testing improvement. I also think testing is a fact of life if a kid wants to go to college-SAT, ACT, and AP (8-15 exams). Many public schools focus on at risk learners at the expense of advanced learners. Not enough high schools offer a full range of AP classes. I don’t think AP classes are a way to get college credit, but it is a way to challenge an highly academic student.”
There’s too much “thinking” and not enough cogitating in that paragraph. “I think” = opinion = noses = everyone has one.
That paragraph reads like a GAGAer’s opinion.
Do you realize “cogitate” and “thinking” are synonyms?
I guess my sarcasm didn’t come through in the writing.
Duane, take a moment to read this Atlantic Article: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/confusing-math-homework-don-t-blame-the-common-core/360064/
I don’t know where you get the idea that Everyday Math is the go-to curriculum for Common Core. It was confusing people well before CCSS were developed. As a former special education teacher who taught remedial math at the middle school level, we didn’t use Everyday Math. The students, however, had fallen victim to calculator worship. Their teachers had sent them to the calculator years ago to try to compensate for their slower acquisition of basic skills. When they came to me, they relied on calculators for the most basic operations and were resistant to actually understanding what they were doing and why they were doing it. It was a battle to convince them that they could actually understand and use math. Now we have tests that are supposedly designed to see whether students are proficient on the standards mandated by Common Core. All you have to do is watch a few videos of kids trying to figure the problems out to know that fuzzy math is not limited to a troublesome math curriculum out of UIC. It is disingenuous of the author of The Atlantic article to point out that the standards don’t drive curriculum when they are attached to high stakes tests that purport to test proficiency on those standards.
Actually, my two younger kids were taught using Everyday Math and they didn’t seem to have a problem when they got to High School. It’s the Transitions Math that I detest.
The current math curriculum aligned to the Common Core is scripted and uses concepts to teach basic math skills which are unfamiliar (often indecipherable) to parents. Whether it works or not won’t be determined for several years. Let’s see how the current students do when they get to Algebra and then we can either scream our protests or sing their praises.
I am very skeptical of the magic bullet curriculum. Since special ed teachers were (are?) frequently not provided with curriculum tailored to their students needs, I used to go searching through anything and everything I could find to teach a concept until I could craft some lessons that seemed to yield some progress. I am immediately leery of any program that claims to have all the answers. If they did, everyone would be using them in whatever manner the publisher prescribed, all producing positive results. Yet administrators continue to buy the hype and mandate the latest miracle regularly. Balderdash! I guess I feel fortunate to have taught during a time when most administrators admitted they were flummoxed by special ed populations and didn’t mess with us much. Now with testing mandates requiring that these kids take the same tests (that everyone else is failing), administrators are beginning to demand impossible results. The children no longer are seen as unique individuals with unique strengths and weakness. They, too, are being reduced to data points.
Will do and get back to you.
Thanks for the link, LoaD!
Not impressed by the article though, Some quotes from the article and my thoughts.
“The Common Core is a set of “standards,” lists of competencies or skills that kids will need to know by the end of a given school year. Standards require what skills will be taught, while curriculum dictates other details such as how a given skill is conveyed to a second grader.”
“competencies or skills” which one is it or is it a combination of both. A competency is knowing what and how to do something specific thing (as if learning can be broken down into discreet little bits of “competencies” which is what the CCSS attempts to do. It’s the old “programmed learning” instruction from the 60’s/70’s. “Skills” are actually the doing of the competencies. So the CCSS isn’t curriculum?? No, it’s just a part of a curriculum, those “competencies and skill” (C&S). Add to those C&S scope and sequence, topics, goals and activities to reach them and one has a curriculum.
But the most egregious part being that those “standards” aren’t standards but are either topics, goals, and/or C&S. By definition a standard is measurable and nothing, yes, nothing in the teaching and learning process is “measurable” as there is no “standard” to use to measure anything. Is the love one has for one’s spouse, parents or children measurable? What’s the “standard” in that very human activity?
“Until media outlets stop conflating issues of Common Core and curriculum, the public will continue to blame Common Core for the harm that flawed, but locally selected, curriculums are doing to math education.”
The public confuses the two because of the twisted word usage (see above) used by the proponents of CCSS. And there are more falsehoods in that article, too many to mention now.
“Common Core and the guidelines it suggests for each grade are fine”
For a detailed look at a handful of CCSS-ELA standards and how un-fine they are, check out comment thread to yesterday’s blog post “Bizarre-NY Tests Harder than NAEP”, starting at NYTeacher 8:19am & its responses.
This is the (former) Obama Administration employee and Gates site for public schools.
Read it. As far as public (not charter) schools, it is nearly 100% testing. People “lying” about testing, people opting out of testing, how we all must test, how great the new tests are….
They can’t continue to tell the general public they’re not all about testing when they’re (obviously) all about testing. If they want to focus less on tests they probably have to start focusing less on tests. Until they do, it’s all political pandering.
https://twitter.com/edu_post
Who cares? Hurray for the Vietnamese, but my focus is on my grand kids. I want them to have a well rounded education full of learning all sorts of information including the arts. I want them to appreciate the beauty of the world and be grateful for their opportunities. I want to to grow up being loving and compassionate towards each other and their fellow man. I want them to choose a career that matches their talents. Ultimately, I want them to be happy.
My vision for their future can not be determined by any test other than life itself.
So, who cares about the test results. They tell me nothing about the value of the person who took that exam.
Ellen #TimeToSetNewPriorities
Fast forward 20 years and the unfortunate Common Core Generation will have no memories of the fiasco they were subjected to. Their formative school years will be just and empty blur. No field trips. No recess. No excitement. No inspiration. Just testing.
Who cares? Not even the reformers really care because the USDOE Common Core NCLB Waiver Agenda (Arne’s Folly) has had absolutely nothing to do with improving public schools, teaching, or learning.
Imagine that, brutal and refreshing total honesty coming from Vietnam while the cherry-picked lies are flowing fast and heavy from his counterpart, Arne Duncan, in the United States, who has the financial support of Bill Gates, the Walton family and other evil demons who should have wooden stakes pounded through their cold, bloodthirsty, greedy, power hunger, shriveled hearts that I’m sure stopped beating long ago.
Be kind even if it hurts you
Raj, please don’t be a fool. I am Vietnamese, and I am shameful to say that I am VNamese.
There is no civility, no freedom, no compassion, BUT, there is only greed, lust, and cruelty.
If American government can cheat and turn any election in to their favorite result, then communist Viet Nam can do 1000 times better than democratic America.
Can anyone answer me that WHY people from all over the world want to emigrate to USA, except a few of countries like, Switzerland, Sweden, Greenland, and Germany?
Most of all, In USA, and Canada, we have seen many immigrants from India, China, Philippine, Viet Nam, Japan, Korea…
That is a reality about CHEAT to get their way out! Back2basic
Telling the truth is not despicable, even though it is painful.
I’m all for being kind the same way Atticus Finch was kind.
Eventually, maybe someone will have to do the same thing to the mad dogs of the corporate education reform movement that Atticus Finch did to the mad dog in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Atticus was being kind even if it hurt him to do what he had to do to protect everyone else.
This blog posting also appears on HuffPostEd, 5-15-15, with 46 comments. Worth a look.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/vietnam-wallops-us-on-tes_b_7290682.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education
😎
Confucius:
By three methods we may learn wisdom. First, by reflection which is noblest; second by imitation is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Looks very much like Dr. Van Duong is better educated than our politicians.
The Vietnamese are incredibly wise people. Having fended off numerous attacks by neighboring Asian countries will do this to you. This humble statement by Dr. Van Duong does not surprise me at all. Our leaders could certainly borrow from their wisdom and humility.
“Secretary Dumcan” ?
Typo, misinterpreted dictation or Freudian slip? Enquiring minds want to know. : )
I noticed that spelling, too! The truth has a funny way of making itself known sometimes. Haha!
Tomorrow they will compare the US to Micronesia….the next day Timor, the day after Vanuatu….and then Kiribati…
What they will never admit is that the American ecucation system “was” the best in the world and that everything else was nonsense.
I had the interesting experience of being in Vietnam last fall–not as an educational professional, but as a tourist. However, I had the opportunity to discuss the education system with a couple and their teenage daughter. In Vietnam, the free public school runs for a half day. Then, in the afternoon, the teachers offer supplementary lessons for a fee (tuition). Students must pass tests to progress from grade to grade–but much of what is on those tests is what is taught in the afternoon sessions! The father in this family is an ex-pat from Australia. He said that he works with many Vietnamese teens, and one of the most shocking thing he realized was that no geography is taught in the schools! He asked a few dozen students to point out where Vietnam is on a globe, and not one had any idea! They don’t know which countries border Vietnam, either! This was not in a big city, but not totally rural, either. So if Vietnamese students are doing so well on the PISA, they must not be representative of he average student–they must be students whose families can afford the tuition for a full education.
” He asked a few dozen students to point out where Vietnam is on a globe, and not one had any idea! They don’t know which countries border Vietnam, either!”
Man, and I thought many Americans were ignorant in regards to geography. Some districts don’t even have a geography course per se, leaving geographical concepts to be “incorporated” into social studies classes.
Geography is definitely a haphazard or incidental subject. While they might study the fifty states in fifth grade, not many of us know anything about South America or Africa. There are fifty countries in Europe, but don’t ask anyone to identify more than ten on a map. And forget the Middle East – all those countries seem to same. While China, Japan, and Korea are easy to find, don’t ask where Laos is to be found. Then there are all those Islands . . . .
I suppose the best way to discover the world is to travel there – like in the commercial where the parents use one more day of vacation so they can take their kids to Paris where they can learn French. That’s doable – right?
Anyway, I used to pull out the globe when I did my library lessons to show the students where the story took place. I even recently showed a map of Haiti to my Sunday School class who are collecting Legos to send to a school there.
Maps and Globes – an underutilized item in most Public Schools, and that was before Common Core. Geography has now gone the way of penmanship and cursive – a lost art.
According to the United Nations Statistics, only 77% of Vietnamese students are enrolled in secondary school, which means that the bottom 23% of test scores are eliminated for the Vietnamese case because those students are not in school to take the tests. (http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SE.SEC.ENRR)
I taught in China in the late 1990’s and have since taught hundreds of Chinese nationals in the US. My Chinese students who come here to study have explained to me multiple times that a large percentage of Chinese students don’t make it into an academic high school and therefore never study for these tests. By the way, the students come here to escape their test-driven system.
When I started teaching high school in the US in the late 1990’s I was struck by how willing my American students were to take risks, experiment, and involve themselves in class discussions. They were intellectual risk-takers compared to the college students I had in China, who I could barely get to speak because of their fear of being wrong and their lack of experience with class discussion. (this is not a cultural observation – it is an institutional one)
My college students in the US now, all products of the NCLB era, are more similar to my students in China. They are completely grade-focused, fail to see the bigger picture in the issues we are studying, and lack creativity or initiative. Every time I think we have just had a meaningful discussion about something important, one will pipe up and say, “how are you going to grade this?”
I am tired of data and people’s unfailing belief that it there is a number attached to something, that means it is true. I have a master’s degree in Economics and was basically taught how to “massage the data,” which basically means make it say whatever your grant needs it say.
I just watched a teacher spend 5 minutes yelling at a third grader about how to the word orange. Her face was red with anger and she was shouting, “is that the sound it makes?” No doubt this teacher was thinking of the student’s ability to make the grade on her upcoming exam and how the teacher might lose her job if she was rated ineffective.
We have gone mad and our children are paying the price.