Seattle Schools Community Forum

Today is PISA day (no, not the leaning tower although, having lived there, it's great).  That's the day when the results of the international test (the Program of International Student Assessment) are announced.  (It's given every three years to 15-year olds around the globe and where we get our hair-pulling upset over US students versus students in other countries).  The Answer Sheet has the U.S. breakout stats.  Guess where the U.S. ended up?  In the middle. As Diane Ravitch points out, this has been going on since the U.S. started taking this test in the early '60s.  And, since that time, the U.S. has grown into the strongest, most innovative economy in the world. I'm not saying the scores are great; they aren't.  But the hand-wringing is somewhat overwrought. The U.S. actually did better in science than math which isn't something I would have predicted.   I am surprised that the U.S. doesn't do better in reading where we scores abou...

That's the question that Thomas Friedman asks in the NY Times this week.    The reason he brings it up is a recent study by PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) which is the testing group for 15-years around the world on math, science and reading skills.  It's the testing used to compare countries' education systems. PISA was encouraged by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to go beyond testing and look at what is happening in the home.  They looked at about 20 countries and parents of 5,000 students in those countries.  They then compared that information with test results and published these three findings. “Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all." "On average, the score difference is 25 points, the equivalent of well over half a ...

I had wanted to put this quote in from the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, because it made me laugh. He made this remark after the NFL postponed the Sunday football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings (which was played last night and the Vikings won). The NFL called the game off because of the danger of fans getting safely to and from the stadium because of a huge snowstorm. “We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” The " doing calculus on the way down " made me laugh. But then there was this interesting piece on NPR today about Chinese education. Basically, the point is that they are great at learning and memorizing facts but not very good at analytic, problem-solving t...