The Facts: the Phony Crisis
Some of the additional facts regarding international comparisons need to become common knowledge–to back up the previous (below) blog. Also from Tienken article. (Anyone know how you can link into this?) Examples. .
2009 PISA. The US scores were better than 77% above of 65 OED nations. Better than you thought? BUT–and that’s where it gets interesting–Tienken documents why we’re comparing apples to oranges. “Because of (a) selective sampling on the part of some countries, (b) (the effect of) negotiating questions to align with a country curriculum sequence, and (c) lower overall child poverty in the United States” even that’s deceptive. Because, every country that outranked us had substantially lower poverty rates. If controlled for poverty we’d “be at the top.” Even without such “refinements” in fact 4th graders in the US ranked 7th out of 53 in 2011 science tests. And Mass., despite 15% poverty (vs 3% in Finland–but low for the US)) — was in 2nd and 5th place internationally on most test comparisons. So we turned, of course, not to Mass. (which at the time had no state-wide testing) but to Texas to find a solution? Thus the “Texas miracle”. Will unequivocal lies, disguised as “just the facts”, ever fade away?
In fact, of course, while tearing up our public schools and teachers, we have more than ignored the conditions of
2009 PISA. The US scores were better than 77% above of 65 OED nations. Better than you thought? BUT–and that’s where it gets interesting–Tienken documents why we’re comparing apples to oranges. “Because of (a) selective sampling on the part of some countries, (b) (the effect of) negotiating questions to align with a country curriculum sequence, and (c) lower overall child poverty in the United States” even that’s deceptive. Because, every country that outranked us had substantially lower poverty rates. If controlled for poverty we’d “be at the top.” Even without such “refinements” in fact 4th graders in the US ranked 7th out of 53 in 2011 science tests. And Mass., despite 15% poverty (vs 3% in Finland–but low for the US)) — was in 2nd and 5th place internationally on most test comparisons. So we turned, of course, not to Mass. (which at the time had no state-wide testing) but to Texas to find a solution? Thus the “Texas miracle”. Will unequivocal lies, disguised as “just the facts”, ever fade away?
In fact, of course, while tearing up our public schools and teachers, we have more than ignored the conditions of
