The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, collects test results from 65 countries for its rankings, which come out every three years. The latest results, from 2012, show that U.S. students ranked below average in math among the world's most-developed countries. They were close to average in science and reading.
"In mathematics, 29 nations and other jurisdictions outperformed the United States by a statistically significant margin, up from 23 three years ago," reports Education Week. "In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009."
In reading, 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students — a jump from nine in 2009, when the last assessment was performed.
The math scores of students in Shanghai showed that they are "the equivalent of over two years of formal schooling ahead of those observed in Massachusetts, itself a strong-performing U.S. state," according to the study."While the U.S. spends more per student than most countries, this does not translate into better performance. For example, the Slovak Republic, which spends around USD 53,000 per student, performs at the same level as the United States, which spends over USD 115,000 per student."
"While our scores in reading are the same as 2009, scores from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Poland and others have improved and now surpass ours," Rivkin says. "Other countries that were behind us, like Italy and Portugal, are now catching up. We are in a race in the global economy. The problem is not that we're slowing down. The problem is that the other runners are getting faster." - Harvard professor Jan Rivkin, who co-chairs a project on U.S. competitiveness.
"One thing that all the countries that have improved have done is they have agreed on a set of higher standards of what kids should know, a more coherent plan for where the kids are headed," she says.
ReplyDeleteAnother factor contributing to Polish success is that they delay the separation of students by ability. Most countries, including the US, divide students into groups: those headed to universities and those headed for vocational school or no post-high school education at all.
"The longer you keep kids together in an academic setting, the better that all kids do, including the kids that are headed to university anyway," Ripley says.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-12-03/where-world-are-they-getting-education-right#