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Here's something that will shock most people here. This isn't because of religion or conservatism like most people here will say. It's because inner city school perform so poorly. Inner cities are usually heavily populated by minorities and Democrats. The best schools are in suburban areas which usually trend conservative. How do you explain that liberals?
Selection bias. The kids here have parents that were not randomly selected from their country to come here. Their parents are educated, value education and so forth.
Additionally, there are test biases in many foreign countries where they weed out the low performers early.
The C and D students in China are sweeping streets and whatnot and are not being counted in the testing pools.
As anyone who reads this forum on a regular basis can readily observe, there's a significant portion of the US adult population that is nearly illiterate, rejects science, and doesn't understand simple figures. It's not that they weren't taught all of these things. They probably sat in classrooms with others who excelled. But since they didn't pay attention in school, they now think that everyone who follows them should.
Its not uncommon for 16 yr old guys in Hong Kong doing math at 2-3 yr university level, I met a whole group. Education has nothing to do with money, never did and never will. The Japanese are very keen and always developing new ideas for learning as well, even adults are attending school for the enjoyment. Education needs a total fix job from the top down and it prob will never happen, like everything else....its time now for the learning curve where common sense was and is, denied. Not a fun way to to it, but in time should get the job done, as usual.
No surprise... the top 13 performing states voted for President Obama this recent election.
Apparently, according to your convoluted and completely nonsensical 'logic', there are only suburbs in blue states...
You do realize that the ACT in many states is the secondary test to the SAT and vice-versa?
Thus, in many states only higher achievers wind up taking the "other" test to bolster thier chances of admission to various universities.
For example, at my highschool out of 100 kids we had maybe 50 take the ACT and only about 5 take the SAT.
Based upon our SAT scores we were one of the brightest schools in the nation.
You also don't have uniform participation rates where at some schools you have more support and encouragement for "borderline" students to take the tests.
This doesn't validate BChris's point, just trying to stem the tide of "bad math" around here.
Besides, they were predicting $700\barrel oil in the US by now so they have a track record of hyperbole.
China only reported thier results to the rankings recently after gaming thier test area to basically the best educated part of China and top students. Shockingly, they beat everyone.
Forgot to add that I do feel that we as a nation do not tout our scientific discoveries like we used to. "News" is now relegated to entertainment and crime reports with some weather thrown in. We have had major technological advances over the past 10 years and many scientific breakthroughs that many don't know about. I think in a way, scientist are becoming like teachers - not thought of very highly. And even though I do feel that the creationist stuff is minimally impacting science and math studies, it has always been a mystery to me why debates like that come up in regards to public schools and I do think that in many local areas it can cause a dumbing down of curriculum.
Also, FWIW, I don't think that we do enough lab/hands on learning in many of our classrooms in regards to science. I also don't think that those kids who can do advanced or above grade level math are pushed to do so by our school districts as I think those districts want teachers to focus more on students who are below grade level. This causes the average to advanced students to not be challenged adequately IMO and I see all these mandated standardized tests as the culprit. I can understand means testing children but I feel it should be used to assess the child - see what their strengths/weaknesses are and then teach the child accordingly instead of only using those tests to grade a teacher, especially when a student who comes to 4th grade may only be on a 1st grade math level. If they leave 4th grade at a 3rd grade math level, the child would flunk the test, but they have made 2 grades worth of progress so I would see that teacher as a successful teacher.
I really do think we need to work on math in our country and remove the grades entirely from K-5 report cards. At my son's school, if they don't score an 85% or better on math exams, they have to repeat the test, if they fail again (under an 85%) then they have to re-do the chapter in order to make sure they acquire that skill. I feel all children should learn math and science in this fashion as it will ensure that the kids are proficient in those subjects instead of moving the child along to more advanced studies without them having grasped previous concepts as that will set them up for failure in future studies.
There are many reasons we are slipping in sciences, I would not attribute the decline to standardized tests. We have standard exams in NY going back decades and teachers used the test as a guideline, test scores were better really across all disciplines. My opinion is that the interest just isn't there, the students at the top excel but it just doesn't appear the motivation is there as you go down the ladder.
It's always interesting when you read what careers HS grads want to enter, engineering, physics, etc are pretty much non-existent.
There are many reasons we are slipping in sciences, I would not attribute the decline to standardized tests. We have standard exams in NY going back decades and teachers used the test as a guideline, test scores were better really across all disciplines. My opinion is that the interest just isn't there, the students at the top excel but it just doesn't appear the motivation is there as you go down the ladder.
It's always interesting when you read what careers HS grads want to enter, engineering, physics, etc are pretty much non-existent.
Not only were the scores better they were fill in the blank tests.
The NY Regents which every HS kid took were fill in the blanks, not multiple choice.
The math test was not only fill in the blank but show your work and no calculator.
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