Test That Makes U.S. Look Bad May Not Be So Good - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education:
"A key failing of PISA, Loveless said, is “it does not measure what kids have learned in school.” Why not? Because PISA exams are written by the losing side in a century-old debate over how to teach math. For convenience, call the pro-PISA people progressives and the anti-PISA people traditionalists. Loveless, who taught sixth grade in California for nine years before getting his Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago, is a traditionalist but appreciates the arguments on both sides. The progressives want to make math instruction more relevant to the real world, and emphasize mathematical reasoning more than calculation. The traditionalists say you can’t reason well without mastering the fundamentals. They dislike their approach being dismissed by progressives as “shopkeeper math,” Loveless said, “like it was old-fashioned to try to compute anything.”"
"A key failing of PISA, Loveless said, is “it does not measure what kids have learned in school.” Why not? Because PISA exams are written by the losing side in a century-old debate over how to teach math. For convenience, call the pro-PISA people progressives and the anti-PISA people traditionalists. Loveless, who taught sixth grade in California for nine years before getting his Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago, is a traditionalist but appreciates the arguments on both sides. The progressives want to make math instruction more relevant to the real world, and emphasize mathematical reasoning more than calculation. The traditionalists say you can’t reason well without mastering the fundamentals. They dislike their approach being dismissed by progressives as “shopkeeper math,” Loveless said, “like it was old-fashioned to try to compute anything.”"