Again........we fall further and further behind.

Discussion in 'Education and Academia' started by the shelts, Dec 18, 2012.

  1. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    without taking the time to watch the video (these things always take 10 minutes to give you info you could read in 30 sec) i checked on how the sampling was done and in a few different articles /documents found that australia tested well over the required sample in order to track results in all the different states and territories and ensure a useful sample of indigeneous students. that austria allowed the different provinces to decide their own sampling and have an internal debate going on about that, and that france handled the problem by giving the job of sample selection to US firm Westat.

    what you can read almost anywhere, but nowhere better than in this 2007 (thus written three PISA's ago) paper is that only 15-year-olds going to school full-time (though not necessarily college-bound) are sampled. which doesn't really skew the results as the aim is to measure the efficiency of teaching. scholarization figures are a completely different (and more important) issue for which statistics have been kept for much longer than PISA has existed.

    just like teachers tell their kids before an exam, the countries that cheat are really cheating themselves. the goal is not to be able to say WE'RE NUMBER ONE! but to see if you need to make extra efforts in teaching your kids, where these efforts need to be applied and how. and perhaps to put into light who the "good students" among nations are whose methods you could study for benchmarking. maybe the finnish model that has been lauded here in europe for two decades isn't all it's washed up to be. on the other hand i doubt anyone is going to be rushing to follow the south korean model where some kids start studying at 6am, finish after midnight, and sleep with english language lessons in their earbuds.

    in fact that need to succeed more psychotic than simply neurotic which characterizes korea ,and to a lesser extent china and japan, makes one suspect they are the most likely to fudge their PISA scores, and section 2.5 of the paper i linked to suggest that very strongly. and some of the poor performers seem to be cheating too, so their case might even be worse than shown.

    though the entire paper is very interesting and gives a much better understanding of PISA than MSNBC can or even should provide, for those who wish to cut to the chase, i refer you to section 5 (sorry, it's unpastable).
     
  2. GiuseppeSignori

    Jun 4, 2007
    Chicago
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Sorry the video isn't working for folks.

    Here's an article written by the guest, Diane Ravitch, where she makes many of the same points.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...2/03/four-lessons-on-new-pisa-scores-ravitch/

    And then there's the specific issue of China, or rather, Shanghai.

    http://www.businessweek.com/article...-education-surveys-only-test-the-top-students
     
  3. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    Doubly awesome. I can't decide which is worse, craven PISA releasing faked-up figures or the paranoid, manipulative Chinese government.
     
  4. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    like i said, it's china's problem if they can't wrap their heads around what PISA is about. i say fckum and the terra cotta pony they rode in on.

    a wild aside about nothing in particular: ever since someone in CA admired and enquired about them i've been trying to find out where my binoculars were made (not marked anywhere on them)... they're such unbelievable value for money (less that fifteen bucks!) that i was resigned to accepting they were from bttfk china, but i finally found out today...

    lithuania! that's a relief!
     
  5. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    Wow, I never heard of Lithuania being able to manufacture anything that could compete for quality/price with the Far East. Good for them. Let's see more of that.
     
  6. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    i think the company dates all the way back to the soviet days. when you think that binocs and field opticals in general have military uses there's some logic in that.
     
  7. msilverstein47

    msilverstein47 Member+

    Jan 11, 1999
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  8. the shelts

    the shelts Member+

    Jun 30, 2005
    Providence RI
    Club:
    Nottingham Forest FC
    #58 the shelts, Mar 21, 2015
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2015
    Well its a PISA year again!!!!!! Every three years the teachers unions will dust off the same stale arguments about the need for "more funding" (translation -more pay, more holidays, more pension credits) for the same mediocre to below average results.

    Little changed in 2012 since the last time the test was given in 2009. The United States ranked 26th in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading.

    So it begins in 2015, the PISA scores will compare US students against foreign competition. The striking thing for me was the US finished behind

    UK
    Canada
    New Zealand
    Australia
    Ireland

    in English. YES ENGLISH. The language we speak. The countries mother tongue.

    So did we come in 6th place in English you ask????????? NO. Of course not. Our teachers unions have dropped the ball so incredibly we came in tied for 13th place!!!!! Seriously!!!!

    Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Luxembourgish students all trounced us using their second language. (a PISA equivalent of one hand tied behind their back) But we managed to tie the Cypriots.

    1. UK
    2. Canada
    3. NZ
    4. Australia
    5. The Netherlands
    6. Finland
    7.(Tie) Sweden and Ireland
    9. Denmark
    10. Norway
    11. Iceland
    12. Luxembourg
    13. (Tie) USA and Cyprus

    Yes friends!!!!! Seven countries beat us in English who are learning English as a 2nd language. We can't even place in the top 10 in our mother tongue.


    All blame. All condemnation. All vitriol should be placed squarely at the feet of our teachers unions. Rather than fire the driftwood that clogs up our classroom they simply dump or punt them to some other unsuspecting school in the district. Rather than pay outstanding teachers outstanding pay, they go on a longevity of service system where bad teachers keep getting pay rises.

    We have excellent teachers. We just need the administrators to reward them.

    We have excellent schools. We just need the best teachers to teach.

    But nothing will change!!!!! So stay tuned friends. This year will be another humbling experience where we fall further and further behind while teachers unions simply say "but, but, but, but, but..........."
     
  9. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Do you have to empty your drool bucket in this thread?
     
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  10. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    shelts, will you clear one thing up for me that's only vaguely hinted at in your posts?

    what's your opinion on teachers' unions?
     
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  11. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    This is an instructive chart. It's on reading scores. The U.S. score for the wealthiest group of schools -- but not fabulously wealthy overall, see the comparison countries -- would have placed 2nd among all countries, behind China/Shanghai (which only gave the test to 75% of eligible students ... presumably the good ones).

    The 527 score for the next wealthiest group would have placed 5th, behind China/Shanghai, South Korea, Finland, and Hong Kong.

    Country Percent of reduced school lunches (US)[31]
    Percent of relative child poverty (Other OECD countries)[52]

    PISA score[53]
    United States
    < 10% 551
    Finland 3.4% 536
    Netherlands 9.0% 508
    Belgium 6.7% 506
    United States 10%–24.9% 527
    Canada 13.6% 524
    New Zealand 16.3% 521
    Japan 14.3% 520
    Australia 11.6% 515
    United States 25–49.9% 502
    Estonia 40.1% 501
    United States 50–74.9% 471
    Russian Federation 58.3% 459
    United States > 75% 446
     
  12. the shelts

    the shelts Member+

    Jun 30, 2005
    Providence RI
    Club:
    Nottingham Forest FC
    Ha Ha, that was pretty funny. Point taken.
     
  13. TheJoeGreene

    TheJoeGreene Member+

    Aug 19, 2012
    The Lubbock Texas
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
    I have a feeling it would break OPs already overtaxed brain if he was even moderately capable of understanding how strong the teacher's unions are in top scoring countries like Finland, South Korea, Singapore and a few others compared to the US.
     
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  14. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Dunning-Kruger will save him.
     
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