Top US students fare poorly in international PISA test scores, Shanghai tops the world, Finland slips
Conventional wisdom is that top U.S. students fare well compared to their peers across the globe. According to this line of reasoning, the US doesn’t make it on the list of the top 25 countries in math (or top 15 in reading) because America has higher poverty and racial diversity than other countries do, which […]
Shanghai likely to repeat strong results on international PISA test in December
Back in 2010, experts were stunned when 15-year olds in Shanghai, China earned the top scores in reading, math and science on the 2009 PISA exams, also known as Program for International Student Assessment. And when the 2012 results come out on Dec. 3, it seems that Shanghai may be poised to do it again, […]
Data Debate: Smartest U.S. states don’t hold a candle to global competitors
On Oct. 24, 2013, Julia Ryan wrote in The Atlantic that American Education isn’t Mediocre — It’s Deeply Unequal, after digesting new test score data that rank U.S. states among other nations. “Students in Massachusetts are doing great compared to their international peers, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. Students in Alabama, Mississippi, […]
Education might be the next weight loss fad; obesity rate much lower among college grads
The obesity rate among college graduates is significantly lower than for high school drop outs or those with only a high school degree. This obesity gap exists not only in the United States, but also in 23 other countries around the world, according to a new data report, Education at a Glance 2013, by the […]
New data on Australians who go into teaching
The Australian teaching system has long been revered in the United States. Even today Aussie is the biggest professional development consultancy in New York City. Back in Australia, the government is trying to use data to track the teaching profession more closely. A first annual data report on the teaching profession was recently released in […]
India data show test scores rise when students are automatically promoted to the next grade
A controversial 2009 law in India outlawed the practice of holding failing students back and making them repeat the entire year of school in classes 1 through 8. In India, it’s called “detention” and at least one student union staged a protest this Spring to bring detention back, arguing that automatic promotion undermines academic quality […]
Education of girls and youth literacy varies widely in Africa, new educational data on developing nations
Last week on May 23, 2013 the Global Partnership for Education launched an Open Data Project that consolidates education indicators from 29 developing nations, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The World Bank Development Data Group and the aid data organization Development Gateway are supporting it. The data posted so far is uneven and scanty. For many nations, a lot of data is […]
Do U.S. students lag behind the rest of the world?
In a May 3, 2013 HuffPo story, ‘We’re Number Umpteenth!’: Debunking the Persistent Myth of Lagging U.S. Schools, Alfie Kohn takes issue with the conventional wisdom that American students are slipping behind their peers abroad. Kohn is partly right. The international ranking tables are largely a reflection of how much poverty you have in your nation. Countries […]
