As we continue to gush billions of dollars for Afghanistan and Iraq as well as giving $100 million buildings to Israel, our school system continues to decline and our student school continue to rank below a long list of other countries. The most recent reports of fourth and eighth graders shows the United States lagging behind Asian and European countries in math and science. Nevertheless, we will continue to give billions to wealthy countries like Israel with better schools and increasingly hostile countries like Pakistan and Egypt. The real threat to this country is the collapsing educational system and erosion of our competitive labor force.
The two new reports, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, show South Korea and Singapore leading in science in the fourth grade and Singapore and Taiwan leading in the eighth grade. The U.S. ranked 11th in fourth-grade math and 9th in eighth grade math. We ranked 7th in fourth grade science and 10th in eighth-grade science.
I am less worried about the ranking as I am with the fact that only 7 percent of students reached the advanced level in eighth-grade math compared to 48 percent of eighth graders in Singapore and 47 percent of eighth graders in South Korea.
I have been admittedly harping on this issue for years. I fail to understand how our leaders can get away with the lack of priority shown toward education which plays directly into our competitiveness in the world market.
Source: New York Times
Once again our priorities are screed. Sanity consists of the ability to evaluate a relative importances in present time.
The U.S. performed above average on international standardized tests in elementary and middle school math, science and reading, according to reports released Tuesday. But experts said the rankings, along with similar exams that test students at later ages, show a fundamental problem in America’s education system: students tend to perform worse as they age.
“When we start looking at our older students, we see less improvement over time,” said Jack Buckley, who leads the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. That trend holds true across several exams.
The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s PIRLS and TIMSS 2011 exams, released Tuesday, measure reading in fourth grade, and math and reading at fourth grade and eighth grade respectively. Across the board, East Asian countries occupied the upper ranks in the comparison of more than 60 world education systems, far outperforming the U.S.. Because the tests measure different groups of students from year to year, the results are best used as snapshots of performance relative to other countries at one point in time. Overall, the U.S. ranked sixth in fourth-grade reading, ninth in fourth-grade math, 12th in eighth-grade math, seventh in fourth-grade science and 13th in eighth-grade science.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the U.S. scores encouraging, but described older students’ performance as “unacceptable.” ” Huffington Post
Excerpt from the New York Times article:
The test designers included questionnaires for parents about preparation before formal schooling. Ina V. S. Mullis, an executive director of the International Study Center, said that students whose parents reported singing or playing number games as well as reading aloud with their children early in life scored higher on their fourth-grade tests than those whose parents who did not report such activities. Similarly, students who had attended preschool performed better.
“What’s remarkable is that in all the countries, this concept of an early start is there over and over again,” said Michael O. Martin, the other executive director of the center. “You can get the early childhood experience in a variety of ways, but it’s important you get it.”
*****
From my neck of the woods–Massachusetts:
Mass. pupils near the top in math and science
State 8th graders lead peers in most nations; a boost for prospects in world marketplace
By James Vaznis | Globe Staff
December 11, 2012
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/12/11/mass-garners-high-marks-key-international-exam/oR1K54pAj9GbMNK6MT0LzM/story.html
Excerpt;
Massachusetts eighth-graders outperformed most countries on a highly regarded international math and science exam, according to results being released Tuesday, offering fresh evidence that the state’s educational system rivals academically powerful nations around the globe.
In the science part of the test, only Singapore outscored Massachusetts eighth-graders. In math, Massachusetts trailed only South Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, and Japan; 63 countries took the test.
*****
Eighth Grade Math Scores
United States: 509
Massachusetts: 561
Eighth Grade Science Scores
United States: 525
Massachusetts: 567
We need to raise teacher’s wages
Raft,
I think you’re right, love to hear the teaches response…..
I wonder how well the decline in public education correlates with the rise in the prison population. Our justice system has become too punitive and as a result of this, more money has to be allocated to putting people in prison, even as crime rates have fallen for each of the last 18 years.
I agree that teacher:student rations have a lot to do with quality of performance. So does parent involvement. With so many parents having to work more than one job it’s hard to spend much time with the kids and attend parent-teacher conferences. And how would a teacher manage in one evening or half day dealing with all parents should they all decide to show up. 30-35 students for the elementary grades but possibly hundreds in middle and high school.
Teaching to tests dumbs down critical thinking abilities in students.
Whether or not are education system is in trouble depends on what you want out of it. If you’re looking for profits b/c your in the “education” business or if you need cheap workers, then it’s in good shape. If you’re looking for qualified, thinking workers, then it’s in poor shape. If you’re looking for philosophers and really high end thinkers, it’s in abysmal shape.
JT:
Which is one more clue that it may be a design rather than being a failing.
What Frankly said! There are multiple issues that impact performance in school and one that gets glossed over sometimes is the home life of the student, or lack thereof.
There needs to be a cultural sea change and there’s very little the government can do about that. The students and far too many parents have a horrible attitude about education. There was an article in the Chicago papers lasts week about a program to give $25 gift certificates to parents to get them to come to parent teacher conferences. Once you have to resort to that you’ve already failed. The last study I read along these lines also noted our students were #1 in self confidence. I suspect we’re still near the top in that metric.
money may not be the only issue but it is a very large issue. I heard conservatives running around this fall saying we spend twice as much per student now as we did in 1979. The problem is that inflation makes a dollar just 25% of what it was in 1979 so in terms of real dollars we are spending half of what we did per student. Its not just kids who can’t do math politicians can’t do present value calculations either.
Add the burden placed on schools by ADA that has never been funded by Congress and you have a recipe for damaging schools. The elementary school my kids went to was designed for 25 kids per room but held 30-32 then & are now at 35-36. Even in ideal circumstances 30 kids are too many for one teacher but jammed together it is impossible.
People talk about one-room school houses and how hard it must have been to teach kids in so many different grades etc. But look at the photos! There are never more than 10-15 kids and quite often less in those old schools. But that would cost money & heaven forfend the government spend a dime unless I personally am in line for 15 cents
I forgot to add class size as another example of encouraging failure amongst our K-12 students. According to the NCES (national center for educational statistics), effective learning occurs when the student to teacher ratio is no higher than 10:1. In my state of missouri, as in most states, it is legal to have at the most 25-26 students in one class! No wonder the national high school graduation rate is a dismal 55%.
How else to create a work force for poverty level wages?
In those countries that score better than the US, is education compulsory or is it just for the children of the well off?
SM, How much of the federal dollars are going to charter and religious schools? not they’re doing a better job.
It would be interesting to see the breakdown of the numbers by race and gender to see at what age do women and African-Americans are not encouraged to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics) careers. Some studies state that this lack of encouragement begins in the elementary schools. Furthermore, our educational system refuses to change by not doing the following: connecting the right teaching style(s) to students learning styles. Evidence shows that women and minorities learn differently than white males, and that the current teaching styles used in our schools hinders learning amongts not only women and minorirites, but white male students are also finding it difficult to learn with the archaic teaching styles. Finally, our government purposely created an educational system in which the low-income students are in poorly funded schools, while most middle and upper-income students enjoy the best schools, thanks to the property tax system for funding education. Makes you wonder if all this is done to keep certain socio-economic class structures in place?
SM – money is not the problem. If only it were that easy.
“In fiscal 1989, the last year that President Reagan was in office, the U.S. Education Department spent $21.468 billion, according to OMB. Even adjusted for inflation, that would only be $39.664 billion this year. That means, that since 1989 the Department of Education spending has grown by almost 150 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars (from $39.664 in 2012 dollars to $98.467 in 2012 dollars).” The feds actually seems to be spending more but not getting results.
Texas with its already poorly performing public schools cut the education budget by 4.5 billion to in order to provide more money for corporate welfare.
It’s not a priority because it involves a goal that might not realized before the next election cycle and because students do not immediately provide elected officials with campaign contributions or other renumerations the pols crave. That’s my cynical, overly simplistic reason.
The best answer I can provide is “I don’t know” it makes no sense from a pragmatic approach that our pols neglect what is so obviously important but then again so many on the federal level are as beneficial to the public as leeches. This cynicism is becoming a problem.
I have said before this is one example where a person cannot afford to sit idle while the system continues to be under-funded and broken. They have to take charge for their own or the childrens’ education. It shouldn’t have to be that way but it is.
I suppose 100,000 equals the cost of one dumb bomb is all you need to know…… The rest is elementary….
Time to break up Ma Bell.