After correcting for demographics, US schools fare better than EU/Asian schools

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html

by yummyfajitas • 16 years ago

111 191 16 years ago

super-economy.blogspot.com

powera• 16 years ago

The Daily Howler ( http://dailyhowler.com/ ) has been blogging about the "our schools aren't bad, everyone just likes saying they are" for months and months and months. He's talking about this study today as well, and notes the real cause of this isn't really immigration, but the legacy of slavery (blacks score 75 points lower than whites):

"Among those 34 OECD nations, only the United States spent centuries aggressively trying to stamp out literacy among a major part of its population. The legacy of that benighted history lives with us today, although our “reformers” work very hard to avoid such painful discussions."

lucasjung3• 16 years ago

I'm with you until you point the finger at slavery. Blaming it on the "legacy of slavery" seems to me to be intellectually lazy: first, it is vague to the point of uselessness. Second, it ignores all of the things which have happened since the end of slavery, some of which happened as the part of the aftermath of slavery, but some of which happened for completely independent reasons. It also ignores the fact that slavery ended at very different times, under very different circumstances, in different parts of the country, but those differences largely aren't reflected in test scores or other measures of social or economic success. If we're going to solve the problem, we need to identify the real, proximate causes so that they can be addressed.

I don't have any stats handy, but I've read several times that after the civil war, blacks saw steady improvement in their economic status, on similar (albeit slower) trend to various immigrant ethnicities who faced initial integration troubles, but that this progress stopped and then reversed in the '70s. This reversal correlated very strongly to the rise of out of wedlock births among blacks. I've read that, if you correct for single-parent/dual-parent families, the difference in school performance between all ethnic groups almost completely disappears, even if you don't correct for things like income level or the education level of parents (although those two things also correlate with single/dual-parent status, so correcting for it tends to correct for them to some degree). Did slavery cause marriage and stable families to decline among blacks over a century after the 13th amendment? It seems to me that, just as our society was finally putting "the legacy of slavery" to rest, something else happened to hurt the black community even worse. If we can figure out what it was, we'll be well on our way to closing the gap. Unfortunately, so much damage has been done at this point that I don't think that simply removing the original cause will fix the problem--extra measures will be needed to repair the damage.

drndown20072• 16 years ago

Wish I could up vote this a hundred times. I also wonder what happened in the 70s. A big cultural change in 'white' America that was copied/amplified in 'Black' America? I can't put my finger on it either, but there really is something concrete about 'family values' that expresses itself for generations.

Anechoic11• 16 years ago

something else happened to hurt the black community even worse. If we can figure out what it was, we'll be well on our way to closing the gap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_drug_laws

te_platt• 16 years ago

Perhaps you are thinking of this:

http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

I wonder how African-Americans score compared to African-Europeans. It seems that would be a relevant comparison.

feral• 16 years ago

"Among those 34 OECD nations, only the United States spent centuries aggressively trying to stamp out literacy among a major part of its population."

I'm Irish, and I'd question the accuracy of that statement - whether the US was unique in that regard.

You could argue over the specifics of what it means 'to try stamp out literacy', but for 100s of years here (Ireland), the native language (Irish/Gaelige), and education through it, got a very tough time from the occupying British government.

More generally, the country had a tough time. The majority of the population (Catholics) had little to no opportunity, and little education ('the penal laws' etc). Many of those who could left as emigrants (going to places such as USA).

Now, Republic of Ireland - the OECD nation - has been around less than 100 years, and we've made big strides in this time. Many peoples parents are now college educated; but this is probably the first generation where that's true.

So, what does it mean to compare the population of Ireland 'corrected for the demography', as is done on the last chart in that page? And then make statements about the legacy of slavery in the USA, using that comparision?

I really think the analysis lies in tatters at that point.

While this post is - clearly - raising interest in the measurement of education (a good thing) the method used is just much too crude to possibly draw the kind of conclusions the author, and others, are making.

There's just too much historical differences between what it means to be an immigrant in different countries, and too much different history, for such crude analysis to support the conclusions drawn.

pmorici5• 16 years ago

"Libertarians in the United States have often claimed that the public school system (which has more than 90% of the students) is a disaster."

The Libertarian argument isn't that public schools are a disaster. Their argument is that the federal government shouldn't be involved in education and it should instead remain a local or state issue where people have more direct control over the system.

lotusleaf19875• 16 years ago

And then Texas would refer to slavery as the "triangular trade system" see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-re...

pmorici5• 16 years ago

So you are assuming then that your preference over their preference would win a majority vote in congress? Local control protects liberal leaning policies as much as nutty ones.

dctoedt• 16 years ago

Texas's extremely-conservative state board of education will be changing soon, because at least one of the hard-line board members who pushed the "reforms" mentioned in the Guardian article was subsequently voted out of office in favor of a more-moderate candidate. (I think two of the hard-liners got the boot.)

_delirium2• 16 years ago

That's one of the philosophical arguments (though many libertarians don't think state or local governments should be doing schools either), but it's also quite common for libertarians to argue that one reason people should support their view is that the current public schools are a failure and thus need major reform.

pmorici5• 16 years ago

I think people may be conflating corporatism with libertarianism.

doyoulikeworms3• 16 years ago

There are two types of libertarians, consequentialist libertarians and natural rights libertarians.

They come to more or less the same conclusions, but for entirely different reasons. The former's argument appeals to the efficiency and productivity perceived to be afforded by a libertarian society. The latter has everything to do with whether or not the existence of, say, public schools is just. Either side will tend to argue that you, luckily, don't have to choose between prosperity and justice, but always fall back to their philosophical roots.

mmt• 16 years ago

Even more broadly, we[1] argue that the government shouldn't control[2] education, but, rather, that the parents should.

This could well include even the decision of whether education is enough of a public good to be supported by taxes.

Personally, I think it is, so I strongly favor a system that allows parents to pay for private schools with public money, such as vouchers.

[1] I can't speak for the Libertarian Party, whom I consider a tad extreme, though I consider myself a small-L libertarian

[2] Involvement at all would be too all-encompassing a proscription.

spoiledtechie3• 16 years ago

I think the author actually mispoke and meant to say Liberals, not libertarians...

towelrod2• 16 years ago

No, he already said that Liberals like to say that public schools are bad so the government can spend more money on them.

He has a strawman argument for conservatives, too.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

Libertarians also point out that school spending has been rising over time with no corresponding rise in national test scores.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-s...

I would be surprised if these international test scores showed any correlation to changing spending either.

klbarry• 16 years ago

This is fairly mind-blowing to me, and if this argument is true, then we need to look at education reform a different way.

Alex39178• 16 years ago

The best way to describe this argument is "not even wrong."

Judging the quality of our schools solely by using standardized tests to compare our students with students in other countries is moronic, and excluding minorities is even more so. Yes, of course parenting and culture have an enormous effect on student outcomes, but this data doesn't actually illuminate anything of use. Don't get me wrong, it makes an interesting talking point, but there's nothing here that you can actually use to make schools better.

Charuru• 16 years ago

I think that's the point. There IS nothing that needs to be done to make schools better. Reforms need to happen culturally and at home.

yummyfajitas15• 16 years ago

No, "not even wrong" is a pretty crappy way to describe this argument. "Not even wrong" implies a non-falsifiable claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

The claims made by this article are easily falsifiable: do a more accurate ethnicity-based slicing of the data and show that US schools fare poorly as measured by standardized tests.

You may not find the results useful for your chosen aims ("make schools better"), but that's irrelevant. Is evolution also "not even wrong" because it can't be used to "make schools better"?

matwood• 16 years ago

This is a common problem when looking at the US as a whole compared to many other countries. The US is a huge, very diverse place. When I travel to the NE, then to the south, and finally to the west coast it feels like I've been in 3 different countries. The language while still english is slightly different, the attitudes are different, and the people are different. In this environment it really does make sense to have less federal involvement and more local involvement since each locale likely has completely different issues.

On the whole it makes much more sense to start breaking the US into regions when doing comparisons with other countries. From there we might be able to find the real problems and look for focused, local solutions.

simonsarris• 16 years ago

I try to explain North America to others like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Nations_of_North_America

Volscio• 16 years ago

Nice, thanks for this. :)

huherto• 16 years ago

nice! From now on, I will be a Mexamerican.

elblanco• 16 years ago

It's actually very interesting. Anecdotally, as somebody who grew up in a "Foundry" area...when I think of moving to another city, other Foundry cities come up first in my mind as places I want to live. I never really attributed it to regionalism but I suppose it makes a kind of sense. Even regions geographically close to mine don't have the same kind of draw as those close to mine.

duck• 16 years ago

Along those lines, I would recommend to anyone to try to live in as many of these different regions of the country as possible. Visiting is one thing, but by actually living and creating roots in such different communities you end up seeing what makes America(and IMHO why it is so great). You often hear people talking about why living abroad is so great, but we often forget the diversity we have right here.

DanI-S• 16 years ago

"Guys, don't panic - our schools are great, as long as you're white!"

If they're failing to educate a large number of students, they're not working as intended.

pmorici5• 16 years ago

Thats not what he concludes. It's "as long as your parents are educated".

Alex39178• 16 years ago

And he's wrong again. The reason high-SES kids score better on standardized tests isn't because they learn more in school, it's because they learn more at home. In fact low-SES kids actually learn almost as much at school than high-SES kids[1], it's just that they start out 2-3 years behind in Kindergarten[2], and instead of learning over the summer they actually regress[1]. What the data actually shows is that students DON'T learn if they're white, but in a feat of epic illogic this guy has somehow managed to convince himself that the opposite is true.

[1] http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED037322.pdf (C.f. figure 2 and 3)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Meaningful-Differences-Everyday-Experi...

towelrod2• 16 years ago

He didn't control for parental education, he controlled for recent immigration status.

cletus2• 16 years ago

There's something a little creepy about saying there's nothing wrong with the American education system by only looking at those in the US of European descent and excluding all others.

Basically it doesn't matter how well or badly the rest of the population does, it doesn't change the OP's hypothesis.

The point about immigrants scoring lower is well-taken but this is largely a language barrier. How exactly does this apply to, say, the African American segment of the population, many of whom have been in the US for hundreds of years and most of whom know no other language than English?

Socioeconomic factors, the education level of your parents and so on obviously come into play here but I read this post and read it like this: "if we exclude all the problems in the US education system, the US education system is fine!"

Perhaps that's not entirely fair but one must be very careful before discounting selection bias when drawing conclusions such as these.

Now I'm not claiming the US education system is bad. Frankly I have no personal experience with it (coming from the "negative gap" of Australia).

I will say one thing: the US has something we don't in Australia and that's a tenured teacher system that makes it (near-)impossible to fire teachers [1]. It's still not easy in Australia but it is easier. That strikes me as a problem.

[1] http://reason.com/assets/db/12639308918768.pdf

jerf• 16 years ago

Step one in solving problems is identify the problem. Especially in the political sphere people love to skip over this step for a variety of reasons I hardly have to spell out.

If in fact our schooling policies are basically OK and the problem lies almost solely in the homes, then solutions involving throwing more money at school won't work. This is a worthy investigation.

My personal biases lead me to believe that if anything there's problems in both places, so my main point isn't that this person is necessarily right or wrong, my main point is Step One: Identify The Problem. It's often harder than you might think and often requires biases to be discarded.

Alex39178• 16 years ago

"[If] the problem lies almost solely in the homes, then solutions involving throwing more money at school won't work. This is a worthy investigation."

Except that we already know how much of the problem stems from the home from the decades worth of research that has already been done. The PISA numbers don't contribute anything to our understanding of the problem, they're just a red herring designed to get people asking the wrong questions.

2arrs2ells• 16 years ago

"If in fact our schooling policies are basically OK and the problem lies almost solely in the homes, then solutions involving throwing more money at school won't work. This is a worthy investigation."

Even if we accept your premise, I'm not sure we need to accept your conclusion. Just because the cause of the problem is a difference in home life, doesn't mean that the easiest solution to the problem is to "fix" the home life (i.e. end poverty).

There are a number of schools (usually charters) who teach low-income students and structure themselves to compensate for any disadvantages students may have coming in (with strategies like longer school days/years). Some of these schools (KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Harlem Children's Zone) have had incredible success.

It might seem strange to "overcompensate" for differences at home in schools - but it's a lot easier to change schools than it is to change people's home life.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

If in fact our schooling policies are basically OK and the problem lies almost solely in the homes, then solutions involving throwing more money at school won't work. This is a worthy investigation.

I would love to see this country actually try real wealth redistribution. Not 90% tax on the top 2%... but 90% tax on the top 60%.

If throwing money at schools doesn't work... does throwing money at people?

endtime9• 16 years ago

>How exactly does this apply to, say, the African American segment of the population, many of whom have been in the US for hundreds of years and most of whom know no other language than English?

There's an extreme anti-education element to black culture in the US. Caring about and one's education and working hard in school is derided as "acting white". It doesn't apply to everyone, of course (I knew black Americans at Georgetown and Stanford), but it's significant enough to bring down aggregate measures quite a lot. I've also seen studies showing that black parents spend less time helping their children with schoolwork than white and Asian parents.

The US school system isn't perfect (the inability to fire bad teachers, largely because of unions, is, in my opinion, among the biggest problems in the country), but it's not totally or even primarily at fault for the education problems among black people.

Also:

>There's something a little creepy about saying there's nothing wrong with the American education system by only looking at those in the US of European descent and excluding all others.

You're misrepresenting this, not sure if it's deliberate, but this is done for the sake of comparing the US to Europe, which is pretty reasonable and not crypto-racist as you imply.

airfoil2• 16 years ago

I'd agree that the US school system is not be the primary reason for education problems among blacks, but neither is the "extreme anti-education element." This element isn't exclusive to blacks and I don't see it as significant enough to bring down aggregate measures for blacks. That's too easy. Most black parents want their kids to do well in school. Unfortunately single parent households are prevalent in the black community. When a single parent is struggling to pay bills and keep food on the table that doesn't leave a lot time for helping with homework.

Also, the lack of black role models has an impact. Artists and athletes are the overwhelming majority of the successful blacks that we see and I wouldn't consider them most of them to be role models. How many blacks do you see out front in the most successful companies? The psychological impact is hard to quantify, but it's there. Why should a black kid be an engineer when he can be a rapper? This isn't necessarily "extreme anti-education" it's more pro-do-what-I-see-as-successful. This loop has existed for hundreds of years in various forms and is incredibly hard to break. Black kids desperately need to see success in areas other than entertainment and sports.

chegra2• 16 years ago

One point to note is that black culture in American is not monolithic. In this article, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=... , they mention the success of West Indian blacks.

They pointed out in that articles West Indian born generally grow up with their fathers. I think this is important. Here is some statistics of being fatherless:

15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders

4.6 times more likely to commit suicide

6.6 times more likely to become teenaged mothers

24.3 times more likely to run away

15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders

6.3 times more likely to be in a state-operated institutions

10.8 times more likely to commit rape

6.6 times more likely to drop out of school

15.3 times more likely to end up in prison while a teenage

73% of adolescent murderers come from mother only homes

6.3 times more likely to be in state operated institutions

http://www.fathersunite.org/statistics_on_fatherlessnes.html

70% of Black Americans are raised in a single parent household and if you can combine that with the above statistics, the picture is not pretty.

Yes so my point is if you cut the black culture along different lines you will get a pattern that emerges similar to the Jews and Asians.

Anechoic11• 16 years ago

There's an extreme anti-education element to black culture in the US. Caring about and one's education and working hard in school is derided as "acting white".

This is a very popular meme in tech circles, based mainly on John Ogbu's work, but if you actually look at the literature in the area, the results are all over the place. Roland Fryer at Harvard is a proponent of the "acting white" theory, but even he didn't agree with Ogbu and he had to "adjust" the definition of acting white to show a trend: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Empiric...

Tyson et al found that reduced academic achievement was generally for a variety of reasons ("fear of not doing well academically" being the biggest) and not "acting white": http://www.tc.columbia.edu/students/see/events/Darity_et_al_...

Cook and Ludwig as well found that "acting white" was not much of a factor in academic perforamnce: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-66...

Erika Fisher: "According to the students themselves, their lack of academic success is not seen by them as a way to be anti-White or proBlack by any means. .. When asked how they felt about the high-achieving students, underachievers claimed to respect their determination and commitment to academics. They cite individual personality differences rather than a racial or ethnic divide as the cause of the achievement disparity between the groups." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3626/is_200507/ai_n1...

borism6• 16 years ago

who are the people "of US descent"?

yummyfajitas15• 16 years ago

There's something a little creepy about saying there's nothing wrong with the American education system by only looking at those in the US of European descent and excluding all others.

Controlling for exogenous variables is "creepy"?

African Americans (and Asians) are excluded from comparison simply because Finland doesn't have them. Similarly, when comparing the US to Asian schools, the author excludes whites as well. The point here is to compare like to like.

cletus2• 16 years ago

And you don't find the idea that in terms of education potential, the author's assumption that there is something fundamentally different about Americans of Asian, Caucasian or African descent just a little bit creepy?

Like I said: I totally buy into the immigrant argument (including the language barrier) but to only compare Whites from the US to Europe (for a supposed "like for like" comparison), you're going beyond language and culture and introducing race as a variable.

And no this isn't some kind of crypto-racist accusation. I just don't see how you can reasonably differentiate between someone of Chinese descent whose ancestors came here in the 19th century to build the railroads to someone of Irish descent who came here a century ago.

rue2• 16 years ago

You're right, there are no African-Americans or Asian-Americans in Finland… There are some African-Finns and Asian-Finns though.

healthyhippo• 16 years ago

African Americans and Asians Americans are people. I heard that Finland has people (though I'm not really sure). So, their school systems seem comparable. Because after 1st generation immigrants, race is more linked to identity within a society.

Asians perform better on tests when they are reminded beforehand of their heritage because it reinforces their own stereotype of themselves. African Americans perform worse. There are racial subgroups in most diverse nations (including Japan) that have the same effects going on, despite the fact that to a foreigner there would be no appearance on

But to say that in some way African Americans are "comparable" to people in Africa, or to say that of non-1st-generation Asian immigrants, doesn't really seem fair.

Frankly, on a more personal note, I found this analysis to be structurally unsound.

What I take away is that America spends more money on its schools than any country vs. Luxembourg, but doesn't have the highest test results. So throwing money at the problem may not be the right way to fix it. Or it may have some impact, but its going to be like running water through a leaky fire hose.

We haven't developed the right educational system yet. A lot of smart people are working on this issue, and probably the right solution is to throw more money at them specifically.

djacobs• 16 years ago

Based on race alone? I can understand culture being an important factor. But not race.

jberryman2• 16 years ago

Comparing light-skinned Americans with light skinned Finns is not comparing "like to like", it is making an arbitrary comparison based on false assumptions. "race" as we tend to think of it isn't a very scientific concept.

cdavid4• 16 years ago

Controlling for exogenous variables is not creepy, but I find the focus on "ethnicity descent" a bit weird when it is the sole parameter being checked. For example, how does this study make sure that there is no other explanatory variable hidden in the country of origin (like e.g. household income) ? He mentions that the US spend a lot of money on education, but since he removes a big part of the students in each country, conclusions are much more difficult to draw: I would expect the money spent per student to be significantly different depending on demographics, for example.

Also, the text uses all encompassing categories with straw man arguments about PISA tests comparison. For example, I can tell you that when the scores went out last year and was discussed in French news, nobody was bragging about how smarter we were compared to the US given how bad the results were for France. He makes some interesting points, but it is hidden within too much authoritative argumentation, which weakens his analysis IMO.

IOW, I think it is an interesting starting point, but it is too crude to make any conclusion, especially the ones he is trying to draw.

ianb• 16 years ago

The implication of comparing PISA scores unfavorably is that the US should then imitate other countries in order to improve. Another option is that we synthesize our own ways to improve education. That's what this article is really addressing... the implication is not that we should not try to do better, but how.

tensor• 16 years ago

My understanding of the problem with US schools is that they are funded by the taxes of the surrounding neighbourhood. Thus, a low income neighbourhood will have low quality schools. Even if a student does well in one of these schools, their chances for getting into a good university are still low due to the poor reputation of the school.

I'm Canadian and this information came from talking to someone working in the Detroit area school system. So I'd appreciate any corrections or extra details. But, if this is correct, it seems to me that taking only those of european decent into account would completely hide the problem, as most europeans do not move into extremely poor areas.

Anechoic11• 16 years ago

How exactly does this apply to, say, the African American segment of the population, many of whom have been in the US for hundreds of years and most of whom know no other language than English?

"English" (at least as practiced in the USA) is not a singular thing. Go have a conversation with a "native" English speaker in inner city Baltimore or the backwoods of Georgia and I suspect that you'll spend a lot of time asking people to repeat themselves.

edit: well someone apparently thinks this comment doesn't add to the discussion, so let me try to clarify: most everyone speaks "English" in the USA, but not the same "English". There are accents of course, but there are also different terms to reference the same thing ("pop" vs "soda" vs "coke", "grinder" vs "sub" vs "hoagie"), different pronunciations ("ask" vs "aks", "nuclear" vs "nukuler") and then you have regions like New Orleans where foreign words are regularly mixed in with English.

For those that have the time, I recommend slogging your way through this ArsTechnica thread for a more in depth explanation of what I'm trying to say: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112892... (if you don't have a lot of time, start on Page 3)

jhamburger• 16 years ago

I see what you're getting at but the examples you give- everyone knows what all of those words mean. Someone may say "pop" but they still know what soda is. People who say "aks" are not confused by the word ask.

sdfdfgsdfgh• 16 years ago

After correcting for me being short,fat and middle aged I'm an olympic athlete

mdda• 16 years ago

If you like, you can follow the author's suggestion to jump to the graphs to avoid the methodology. But then you'd miss the following important adjustments being made to the figures :

""" So ... let us compare Americans with European ancestry (about 65% of the U.S population, and not some sort of elite) with Europeans in Europe. We remove Asians, Mexicans, African-Americans and other countries that are best compared to their home nations. In Europe, we remove immigrants. """

The author has a clear agenda : Some American citizens are more equal than others.

btilly5• 16 years ago

If you jump to the graph and read what it says on the legend, you would not miss that. It says that right there in the legend on the graphs.

If you read the article, you'll find reasoning for that methodology. Furthermore I suspect that every major ethnic group does better in the USA than in their respective home countries. From the data in the article, it holds true for those of European and Asian descent. Given what I know about the appalling state of education in Mexico, I am sure it applies for Hispanics as well. I know less about Africa, but wouldn't be surprised if the same holds for African-Americans.

I fully agree that we can and should do better about erasing differences, but on the whole I'm happy counting that as a success.

DanielBMarkham4• 16 years ago

"After correcting for demographics..."

I didn't read the article, but isn't that just a fancy way of saying "certain people are smart and certain people aren't. We just have a lot of stupid people."

I exaggerate, of course, but that's how it looks from a cursory glance.

Correcting for demographics is the one thing we cannot do in measuring education's effectiveness, as the purpose of an education is for folks to gain habits and be able to do things in the real world -- a world that does not care which demographic you belong to.

btilly5• 16 years ago

You should read the article. Because that is really not what it says.

One of the major demographic things corrected for is the fraction of the country that is made up of immigrants. First and second generation immigrants perform significantly worse in school, and this relation holds across most countries. (The significant exceptions are Australia and Canada, which have a skill-based immigration system that selects immigrants who are likely to perform better in school.)

It is worth noting that the author was an immigrant from Iran to Sweden. (I don't know whether the author has since moved elsewhere.) Furthermore the author in the comments very strongly comes out against the notion that any race is naturally less intelligent than any other.

DanielBMarkham4• 16 years ago

I think you've got race on the brain and are missing the point.

You can't externally label and measure groups of people -- by race, by income, by percentage of immigrants -- as part of an effort to improve education outcomes.

This is management by statistical measurement, and it's fraught with problems, the basic one is that it confuses measurement with meaning, correlation with causation.

Externally-defined statistical measurements are attractive, as they claim to give understanding. But in reality they provide very murky value at best.

zephyrfalcon• 16 years ago

tl;dr: We manipulate data until the US looks good.

jmtame• 16 years ago

"In almost all European countries, immigrants from third world countries score lower than native born kids. Why? No one don’t know exactly why." might want to adjust this, has a double negative and feels awkward to read

warmfuzzykitten• 16 years ago

Correcting for demographics, US schools are great. Correcting for demographics, the US doesn't have a disproportionate number of incarcerated citizens. Correcting for demographics, the US doesn't have much of a jobless problem. I couldn't decide which was more charming, the claim that Americans of European descent (65% of the population) are not some sort of elite, or the call to compare African Americans to those in their "home nations". The US is their home nation! This article is racist rot.

cema2• 16 years ago

Actually, only the former may be correct, and in any case, it is the only claim that is discussed in the paper.

If you close your eyes you will not be able to see if a problem exists, identify it, find a solution and follow it through. And calling people names would not help either.

davidedicillo• 16 years ago

Beside what said by Cletus, I think that the main problem behind that post is that nobody is saying that American are dumb. The problem is that many Americans are ignorant (please don't take offense here), especially regarding things outside the US. For example the italian school system (the only one I really know) sucks big time, and it doesn't prepare students to the real world in any way, but on the other hand it provides a pretty good general knowledge, that helps to have a more open and flexible mind.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

In the conversations I've had with Europeans on the internet many have an ignorant, almost comical view of American culture. Perhaps everyone is a bit provincial.

Europeans and American leftists have a tradition of claiming Europe is better than America that goes back centuries. If hard facts aren't at hand, they'll make up soft ones. American schools might be better than Italian ones in every way, so you just claim that Italians have "a more open and flexible mind" - a conveniently unmeasurable quantity. It sounds like you are simply asserting stereotypes as fact.

afhof• 16 years ago

A few thoughts that occurred to me:

What is PISA? Why do they only target 15-16 year-olds? Are they a representative sample?

Can the entire test be lumped into 3 categories: Math, Science, and Reading? All of these subjects are interrelated.

Anyone can play with these numbers until a preferable conclusion is made. For example, the first graph that the article presents makes Greece look half as competent as Finland.

ugh• 16 years ago

PISA is a set of standardized triennial tests organized by the OECD.

InclinedPlane2• 16 years ago

It's important to know what sort of problems US schools face. It seems likely based on a lot of evidence (anecdotal and otherwise) that US schools are no worse than EU and Asian schools. However, American schools do have a different problem because we can't simply accept the inability to educate a huge subset of American students merely due to their culture or ethnicity. Less diverse countries may seemingly have an easier problem in education, but that doesn't get rid of our need to cultivate a literate and educated citizenry.

But there are even bigger unexamined issues at play here. Firstly, are we able to accurately measure quality of education through these studies? Given the increasing reliance on college degrees as necessary credentials for basic competency in core skills such as literacy and math it seems likely the answer is no. Secondly, what confidence do we have that modern public schooling provides any educational value? Given the similarity of educational achievement on standardized tests across much of the developed world when adjusted for socio-economic status one has to wonder. How much of a students basic educational competency would they acquire regardless of public schooling merely due to the educational status and expectations of their parents and peers?

InclinedPlane2• 16 years ago

Followup: consider a "control" experiment (which, due to ethics cannot be conducted) whereby schools are replaced with "classrooms" of hundreds of students and a single custodian. There is no curriculum, there is no teaching, students sit for several hours a day at desks. They are allowed only to read or write, sit doing nothing, or do anything that looks vaguely like doing homework (though it could be doodling), as long as it's done quietly. Every month their parents are asked to fill out a survey of how they think their children are doing education wise, but there are no consequences attached to any of this.

Now, the big question is how would students fair in terms of education in this experiment relative to existing schooling, especially when correlated by socio-economic and cultural background? I highly suspect that we'd get similar results to today's educational system. Kids with educated and/or affluent parents would tend to acquire some modicum of education, other students would do less well.

The work the OP has done tends to lead to this conclusion which is not anything like an endorsement of the current public educational system.

Symmetry• 16 years ago

I seem to recall a similar study I heard about a while ago, showing that although the average life expectancy of Norway was a lot higher than that of the US, people of Norwegian descent in the US tended to live longer than those in Norway.

spoiledtechie3• 16 years ago

Whats the crime ratio. How many people get murdered in the US compared to Norway. Those numbers you speak of are scued not to a persons health, but to how long they actually live. Maybe taking a survey of everyone above 50 of each country since they have grown past many stupid accidents and are less prone to being killed and see what the ratio is then...

anamax• 16 years ago

> Whats the crime ratio. How many people get murdered in the US compared to Norway.

The US has a higher murder rate. That tends to push down the lifespan. Are you suggesting that Norwegians in Norway are more likely to be murdered than Norwegian-Americans?

jessriedel• 16 years ago

The murder rate in industrialized countries is much too low to have a significant effect on life expectancy. The vast majority of people die of disease or accident. 15k people were murdered of 300m in the US in 2009. That's 0.005% of people per year, meaning roughly 0.3% of people die from murder.

spoiledtechie3• 16 years ago

The main reason I "think" liberals want to poor money into the public school system, is because most teachers/educators are liberals. If there was a study of politcal parties in the American Education system, it would vastly weigh towards most educators are Liberals/Democrats.

paradoja• 16 years ago

That would mean, by itself, pretty little. They could be liberals due to the liberal stand on education, not the other way around.

partition• 16 years ago

I'm taken aback by this whole discussion. For all the bashing that goes on in HN about schools being glorified test prep centers and not living up to their potential for educating students, we sure are quick to accept "studies" like this that use test scores as an indicator of intrinsic worth of the educational system in a country.

mike4u2• 16 years ago

"After correcting for demographics..."

GOOD students will do fine in almost any school system. I think what makes a difference is how you motivate the kids with problematic backgrounds.

Excluding them from studies is certainly NOT the solution.

alain94040• 16 years ago

I flagged this article:

1) poor style, using his own experience to draw vast generalizations

2) clear editorializing, so the author is pushing an agenda and makes no attempt at objectivity

2) data is possibly cooked. For instance, the author says removing recent immigrants in Europe could raise the score by 50 points, then goes on to look at the white population for the US, and it's now 24 points ahead of Europe. So you corrected one country and not the others and are draw huge conclusions from that fact?

joelmichael• 16 years ago

He excluded first and second generation immigrants from the European set in his comparison.

ig1• 16 years ago

The author is clueless about the research in this area. I was formerly the co-founder of a social mobility think-tank so I'm pretty familiar with the work that's been done in this area.

The author's statement "In almost all European countries, immigrants from third world countries score lower than native born kids." is just false.

A quick look at the British data will tell you that students from Chinese or Indian ethnic backgrounds do considerably better than "White British":

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/c...

This is broadly true in most European countries.

If you look at for example children of Pakistani immigrants, they do much better in some countries such as Canada than they do in the UK. Cross-country studies pretty much all agree the difference is down to parental background.

If the parents have middle-class backgrounds than their children are much more likely to perform better than average (regardless of country of origin).

Essentially by cutting out non-whites he's just disproportionately cutting out the poor and lower-class children which is pushing the scores. It's nothing to do with race. Note particularly how he's treating the ethnicities which are primarily middle-class as "white" (e.g. jews).

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

There's a better article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jim-taylor/are-public-educa...

The real point is that this person is controlling probably more for wealth/income than anything else.

But the problem persists. If most of our country is being educated as if it was a third world country, what does that say for the future of the US?

tokenadult• 16 years ago

Any time taxpayers are paying real money for something, one part of the value proposition is price. I have lived outside the United States, and I have a first-generation immigrant to the United States in my immediate family, and I live in an ethnically diverse ("race" or place or birth considered) neighborhood, with supposedly good public schools. What most analyses like this ignore to too great a degree, and what most of the more than 100 comments posted here so far aren't focusing a lot on is how much provision of government-operated schooling costs in the United States compared to what it costs in other countries. By most reasonable standards of comparison, United States schools provide less learning added to learners per dollar of inputs than most schools in quite a few other OECD countries. That's apparent whether one looks at a variety of comparisons of mathematics achievement (a crucial educational goal), or second-language achievement (a goal often neglected in the English-speaking United States), or in science achievement (a safeguard against irrational public policies). Having grown up in the United States, and having lived overseas for two separate three-year spans, the second one with my children, I can't be complacent about the provision of government-operated schools in the United States.

HilbertSpace• 16 years ago

It's a very old story: But if compare students in Finland with students in the US with ancestors from Finland, then might have something. Similarly compare students in Nigeria with students in the US with ancestors from Nigeria. But do NOT compare all students in the US with all students in Finland.

To heck with Nigeria and Finland. Instead, there is a general result: For some positive integer n of, say, a few dozen, take n relatively homogeneous populations. Give the tests. Take the best, say, 5 populations on that test. Now, for population n + 1, take a 'mixture' of the populations of the n other populations, give the test, and compare with the top 5. Then very likely population n + 1 loses. This is true just by a simple convexity argument that never mentions Finland, Nigeria, or the US but still does explain why the US has a hard time beating the best of the homogeneous countries.

The NYT, the McKinsey study, etc. won't tell you any of this.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

"So much for the bigoted notions that Americans are dumb and Europeans are smart."

Yes, let's move to other bigoted notions...

DanKurt• 16 years ago

Perhaps I missed it but why not consider mean racial IQ as a factor in the differences found.

Chi019• 16 years ago

This reflects human biodiversity. When you compare groups with similar evolutionary backgrounds they have similar levels of intelligence.

After correcting for demographics, US schools fare better than EU/Asian schools

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