> On international tests of reading ability, the U.S. scores well above the average for developed countries, but in math we score below average.
The average is completely irrelevant here, and this is important because we could burn a lot of money, and make a lot of children miserable, by trying to move the average up.
What we need is as many students with exceptional math abilities as possible. I'm not going to offer my opinion on good ways to do this, what I am going to point out is that moving a bunch of students from the global 40th percentile to the global 60th is completely irrelevant, we have no evidence that it would be good for those students, and we shouldn't do it without a compelling reason, which this isn't.
Keeping students who could be 99th percentile from ending up 90th due to sub-par education, and lack of opportunity, would be a very big deal.
The average is completely irrelevant here, and this is important because we could burn a lot of money, and make a lot of children miserable, by trying to move the average up.
What we need is as many students with exceptional math abilities as possible. I'm not going to offer my opinion on good ways to do this, what I am going to point out is that moving a bunch of students from the global 40th percentile to the global 60th is completely irrelevant, we have no evidence that it would be good for those students, and we shouldn't do it without a compelling reason, which this isn't.
Keeping students who could be 99th percentile from ending up 90th due to sub-par education, and lack of opportunity, would be a very big deal.