http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120701178.html
So what if the US is in the middle of scores?
Does this statistic even mean anything? How do we know what students they are choosing to test in the US? Private or public schools?
More importantly, what about the other countries? How do we know what students they are choosing to test? Public school students or private?
It doesn’t matter. I do awful on standardized tests while I’ve seen complete idiots in my school get almost perfect scores because they know how to study for them. I’m not speaking for all Americans when I say this, but we’re much better at creating jobs and being entrepreneurs. School doesn’t matter these days unless you’re going into a hard science/engineering field, and then there are still loads of things you can learn outside.
These tests are just another reason to show us that we need government schooling because “kids these days just won’t learn anymore!” and they need to fix it.
“These tests are just another reason to show us that we need government schooling because “kids these days just won’t learn anymore!” and they need to fix it.”
Interesting…
although, kids really should learn some basic math…at least up to algerbra…and learning how to read at an 8th grade level wouldn’t hurt either.
It means a lot to collectivists who want their collective to be “the best”. Why they want it to be “the best”, other than to let them stroke their egos vicariously, is beyond me.
I don’t see how one can get by in this world without those skills.
As Brian said earlier- sometimes the students who do horrible in class can get great scores on standardized tests, or vise versa. I’ve seen both- one of my school’s National Merit Semi-finalists (did not become a finalist) was only able to take tests well, outside of that he was not as great.
The other side of this is you have to look at what students are doing on their own- I helped my roommate, who’s an aerospace engineering major, with his stuff although I’m a mechanical engineering major. Why? Because I was thinking of becoming an Aerospace Engineer, until 1) I started learning AE and seeing the implications of 2) what the gov’t is doing with NASA and all the soon to be unemployed Aerospace Engineers who have real-world experience.
"The other side of this is you have to look at what students are doing on their own- I helped my roommate, who’s an aerospace engineering major, with his stuff although I’m a mechanical engineering major. Why? Because I was thinking of becoming an Aerospace Engineer, until 1) I started learning AE and seeing the implications of 2) what the gov’t is doing with NASA and all the soon to be unemployed Aerospace Engineers who have real-world experience. "
So, obviously, getting an education is very important to you and hopefully will be very helpful.
Look it, I’m all for having no government (that includes no government schools)…but when talking with people who are still ignorant on the free market and its benefits, sometimes they want to know things, like are American public schools that much worse than other countries’s public schools?
The only way to get an idea is to know whether these other students from other countries taking the test are from private schools or public schools.
I agree that they need to be learned, but the means of doing it through compulsory schooling isn’t the way. I was reading way, way past high school levels when I was entering middle school because of how much my parents got me to love reading. Once they let me realize how fun reading is, I went on my own to get fiction books, and that’s what I credit for my reading/writing level now. I did the same for algebra because of how bad my teachers were. I just brought the books home and my parents taught me on the weekends quicker than I would have done in school.
American public schools are average (according to the charts) at teaching their students to take standardized tests. That’s all it’s showing. And it doesn’t matter whether foreign students attend private or public schools because they all teach different things. The public schools in other countries may just be better at teaching students how to take standardized tests, and the foreign “private” schools may do the exact same thing because they need those scores for better funding/subsidies (even though they’re ‘private’). That’s why it’s important to just worry about how you are doing instead of everyone else. If everyone just asked themselves, “Have you learned enough to have a job, make money, and be comfortable?” If the answer is ‘yes’, then you did your job. Everyone else is their own problem. I’m not responsible for their unemployment and lack of skills.