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Uploaded: Tuesday, January 15, 2013, 4:00 PM
Scholar: international education comparisons misleading
U.S. students rank higher if social inequality properly considered, Stanford professors says
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 | Rankings that show U.S. students lagging their international peers in academic achievement are misleading because they inadequately account for social inequality, a Stanford University scholar has asserted.
American students would rise to fourth from 14th in reading and to 10th from 25th in math on the most recent international comparison if the U.S. had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations, said Stanford Graduate School of Education Professor Martin Carnoy and his research partner, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute.
Carnoy and Rothstein delved into databases from the Program for International Student Assessments (PISA) and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), disaggregating test scores by students' social and economic characteristics, school composition and other criteria.
"U.S. average performance appears to be relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from the bottom of the social class distribution," the scholars said.
"Because social class inequality is greater in the United States than in any of the countries with which we can reasonably be compared, the relative performance of U.S. adolescents is better than it appears when countries' national average performance is conventionally compared," they said.
If corrected for social-class distribution, average U.S. reading scores would be higher than averages in France, Germany and the United Kingdom and average math scores would be about the same as such places.
Even so, U.S. students still would lag top-scoring Canada, Finland and Korea, they said.
"At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse," than students in those countries, Carnoy and Rothstein said.
"Although controlling for social class distribution would narrow the difference in average scores between these countries and the United States, it would not eliminate it."
The two said that policy conclusions drawn from the international studies are often "oversimplified, frequently exaggerated and misleading.
"They ignore the complexity of test results and may lead policymakers to pursue inappropriate and even harmful reforms.
"A careful analysis of the PISA database shows that the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children is actually smaller in the United States than it is in similar countries," they said.
"The achievement gap in the United States is larger than it is in the very highest-scoring countries but, even then, many of the differences are small," they said.
Their report -- "What Do International Tests Really How About U.S. Student Performance?" -- is posted on the Economic Policy Institute website.— Palo Alto Weekly staff Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by Bob, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Jan 15, 2013 at 7:14 pm Presumably this is good news--but there is so much data involved in this study, and who knows how much statistical hand-waving, that the authors of this study are probably the only two people within a thousand miles who have any idea what they have done.
However--it does call into question: "Who, other than these two Stanford types, is actually minding the store--when it comes to designing/evaluating/comparing student performance tests here in the US?"
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Posted by Sharon, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Jan 15, 2013 at 7:31 pm
In fact most credible research shows academic achievement are misleading
-because they inadequately account for ethic genetic differences in IQ.
For example- ethnic Finns in Finland and elsewhere score the world highest in IQ
Finland also at the top in academic performance
High IQ is an inherited trait.
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Posted by Hmmm, a resident of East Palo Alto, on Jan 15, 2013 at 8:27 pm [Post removed by Palo Alto Online staff.]
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Posted by Doubting Thomas, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, on Jan 15, 2013 at 8:39 pm Let's address this as well:
When Sharon uses terms like "in fact" as in "In fact most credible research shows...." you are advised to ALWAYS doubt the claim that follows. Sharon rarely substantiates or documents her claims when requested. She usually ignores any request, as frequently she is unable to prove her absurd claims.
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Posted by anonymous, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Jan 15, 2013 at 8:40 pm I'm curious about the association/link between achievement and length of the school day.
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Posted by silly study, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, 22 hours ago This is silly. Those other countries have a different social class composition because right now, they're all making more investments in their people than we are. Other work shows the US is no longer the upwardly mobile leader it once was. The question is: if we made comparable investments, would we have a more educated population, too, that would perform better? We have only to look back to our past and the explosion in knowledge, technology, and productivity that happened when we educated the greatest generation through the GI Bill after WWII.
This is like saying our average income would be as high as those nations if we just didn't include poor people in the numbers. Or that our medical outcomes would be better if we just didn't include all the uninsured.
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Posted by Sharon, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, 21 hours ago Finland has less class time and less homework and the highest achievement.
I know China
A key factor in China is eugenics
-the policy of ending the birth of any children who have heredity handicaps--how many Downs Syndrome children do you see in China?
-Zero
The one child edict was designed to limit the population of the peasants and boost the population of the the elites
-pure eugenics
It is horrific-but it worked from a cold eugenics perspective.
My parents are from China, they escaped
-in China many female children are aborted.
China is trying to achieve higher IQs through forced abortion
But Finland does it naturally and organically as a result of a general genetic high IQ and appropriate education.
In California we need to test for IQ at 11 years and stream kids into vocational schools or academic schools based upon their IQ-
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Posted by Hmmm, a resident of East Palo Alto, 21 hours ago [Post removed by Palo Alto Online staff.]
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Posted by Gerg, a resident of another community, 9 hours ago I find the notion of intrinsic intelligence differences among races disturbing. Although it is easy to find academic literature that backs up the notion one way or another, it is difficult to prove that the lack of intelligence is innate to race, rather than socioeconomic or environmental reasons. Giving up on our attempt to raise educational standards because we cannot compete with other races is ridiculous.
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Posted by What-Darwin-Said, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, 8 hours ago > I find the notion of intrinsic intelligence differences
> among races disturbing.
If you believe in evolution--then it stands to reason that once the human race began to diverge from a common ancestor that all aspects of the human condition (skin color, height, weight, IQ) would be subject to the inputs that are alleged to be the drivers of Darwinian-style breeding, or just adaptivity to the myriad of local conditions where "Homo Sapiens" found himself, over time.
If you don't believe in evolution--then maybe one might settle on a belief that all races have the same IQs.
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Posted by Moved, a resident of another community, 8 hours ago IQ has been shown to be highly correlated to socio-economic status and maternal education. IQ has also been shown to be racially biased. The use of IQ for anything is suspect . . . Suggesting that people be laned at 11 according to their IQ score suggests that we want a world dominated by a class of persons who perform a certain way on a test designed by old dead white guys. My mom was a child psychologist who refused to let us be tested, I refused to let my kids be tested - we are all doing great and contributing to society in many ways. Go figure.
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Posted by Doubting Thomas, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, 8 hours ago Again, Sharon posts opinions (vile ones at that - eugenics) without any collaborative evidence or links. ALWAYS doubt her claims. Verify yourself (if possible, obviously, so many are off base and cannot be verified)
So Sharon alludes to China's alleged smaller population of Down's babies as a reason. Does she really think American Down's population slant the studies?
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Posted by Hmmm, a resident of East Palo Alto, 7 hours ago [Post removed by Palo Alto Online staff.]
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Posted by Anonymous, a resident of the Palo Alto Hills neighborhood, 7 hours ago I read an article in the Chronicle that implied that there were more disadvantaged people in the US than in the other countries studied. Can that be so?
BTW, Sharon, if IQ is always inherited, why did my friend and her husband, both PhDs, have have one autistic and one Down's Syndrome child? There is a study going on now, reported in the Wall St Journal, about the fact that so many MIT PhDs have children who are autistic, learning disabled, etc, ESPECIALLY when both parents are MIT grads!!!!
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Posted by Anonymous, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, 4 hours ago The EPI put the students into six social classes but didn't specify the criteria by which the students were segregated. In the U.S., 20% of the students were in the lowest social class. In S. Korea, it was 5%. 18% of U.S. students were in the next lowest social class. Based on this class distinction, 38% of U.S. students were in the lowest social classes where test results were terrible. On the other hand, the highest U.S. social class had results comparable to Western Europe's highest social class. It then recomputed the countries' average assuming they all had the same distribution of class structure to lift the U.S. to fourth place.
The methodology seems pretty dubious because it's not at all clear how the students were segregated into classes. And the redistribution effectively reduced the weighting of real test results.
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