Top US students lag far behind top students around the world in 2012 PISA test results
Top U.S. students, those that are among the top 10 percent of the population, lag far behind the top students in the highest achieving countries, a gap that is far bigger than the gap between the bottom students in the United States and elsewhere. That’s if you measure it by the results of the 2012 […]
Top US students decline, bottom students improve on international PISA math test
Distribution of scores in mathematics in PISA 2003 through 2012, by percentiles PISA 2012 Change in percentiles between 2003 and 2012 (PISA 2012 – PISA 2003) Percentiles 10th 25th 75th 90th 10th 25th 75th 90th Score Score Score Score Score dif. Score dif. Score dif. Score dif. United States 368 418 543 600 11 […]
U.S. private school students not much better than public school students in math
In the 2012 international test that measures what 15-year-old students know, called PISA, private school students did only a smidgen better than public school students on the math test. Almost seven percent of American 15-year-olds attend private school and they scored an average of 486, only four points more than the average public school student, […]
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 […]
Is gentrification in Washington DC driving the surge in test scores?
As I wrote on Nov. 7, 2103, Washington DC posted the one of the strongest test score gains in the nation on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress and I wanted to look at how demographic shifts in the nation’s capital might be influencing these test results. I began by constructing this table. […]
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, […]
Teach for America teachers found to be at least as effective as other math teachers
A new Institute of Education Sciences study conducted by Mathematica found that middle and high school math teachers from Teach For America and the TNTP Teaching Fellows programs were as effective as, and in some cases more effective than, other math teachers in the same schools. It’s a note-worthy finding because TFA teachers are often criticized […]
Clinical trials for textbooks and curriculum
When I first happened upon the Institute of Education Sciences‘s “What Works Clearinghouse,” I wrote a little piece back in early June 2013 about the Saxon Math curriculum. But I didn’t realize how ground breaking this research was. In fact, I worried that my post was a bit PR-ish for the Saxon Math program. But Gina […]
Data on teacher absenses, sick days and substitutes
On May 16, 2013, Choice Media, an online education news service that is critical of teachers unions, posted a provocative story, What’s Making Asbury Park Teachers Sick?. They collected data from a few New Jersey towns, through a Freedom of Information Act request, and found that Asbury Park’s teachers averaged more than 18 absences a […]
Data on taking algebra in eighth grade, and the watering down of U.S. math instruction
Here’s some of the findings presented at a session on U.S. math instruction at the AERA annual meeting on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. Another data-driven study shows that the judgment of teachers can often be wrong. In a study of middle-school math education in a California school district, standardized test scores and grades were a […]
