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January 22, 2007
Hope springs eternal for the unbiased media
Could it be that we're seeing signals that the era of swallowing and regurgitating untruths about our schools is starting to wane? BoardBuzz celebrated when, over bagels and coffee yesterday, we spied Paul Farhi's editorial in the Washington Post's Outlook section. The piece examines "Five Myths About U.S. Kids Outclassed by the Rest of the World," which are:
- U.S. students rate poorly compared with those in the rest of the world.
- U.S. students are falling behind.
- U.S. students won't be well prepared for the modern workforce.
- Bad schooling has undermined America's competitiveness.
- How we stack up on a international tests matters, if only for national pride.
Farhi notes that when "you cherry-pick results" American kids do rate poorly. However, "University of Pennsylvania researchers Erling E. Boe and Sujie Shin looked at six major international tests in reading, math, science and civics conducted from 1991 through 2001. Their conclusion: Americans are above average when compared with 22 other industrialized nations. In civics, no nation scored significantly higher than the United States; in reading, only 13 percent did." Sounds good to us.
Additionally, our students aren't falling behind as would be suggested by those who suggest things. Farhi tells us that "As the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows, America's eighth-graders improved their math and science scores in 1995, 1999 and 2003. Only students in Hong Kong, Latvia and Lithuania—three relatively tiny and homogenous entities—improved more than the United States did. Indeed, no nation included in the major international rankings educates as many poor students or as ethnically diverse a population as does the United States."
And another thing—the ranking of U.S. students on international tests matters, but "if being No. 1 in education is our goal, shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely linked to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health care and reduction of childhood poverty? National pride can be a destructive concept, especially when it views learning as a zero-sum game ("their" gains are "our" losses, and vice versa). Continuous improvement should be our goal, regardless of whether we're No.1 in the test-score Olympics." You can see more research about standardized testing by clicking here, here, and here and read previous BoardBuzz coverage here.
Posted January 22, 2007 3:04 PM |
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