
After correcting for demographics, US schools fare better than EU/Asian schools - yummyfajitas
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html
======
cletus
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>

~~~
yummyfajitas
_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.

~~~
cletus
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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_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?_

That's not an assumption, it's just a possibility the author is attempting to
control for.

 _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._

The simplest way to reasonably differentiate between them is to look at them:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irish_Americans.jpg>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_American>

You seem to be asserting that allowing for the possibility that cultural or
biological factors might affect educational outcomes is creepy. Is that an
accurate assessment?

~~~
anigbrowl
And what bearing would these visual differences have on education, pray tell?

~~~
btilly
People don't only have stereotypes about others.

A lifetime of people looking at you and reacting to you causes you to perform
differently. Performance can change surprisingly quickly. Researchers have
found that reminding people of their ethnic identity before they take a test
will affect their performance on the test in accord with racial stereotypes.
(Asians improve, blacks get worse.)

While it is politically correct to try to be colorblind, reality doesn't
cooperate. You can be PC and pretend those effects aren't there. Or you can be
intellectually honest and honestly look at how big an impact they have.

(That said, we can and should reduce the size of those effects. However we
can't even begin to have a proper discussion of how to do that as long as we
shoot the messenger that tells us that the effect is there.)

------
matwood
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
I try to explain North America to others like this:

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

~~~
elblanco
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.

------
pmorici
"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.

~~~
_delirium
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.

~~~
doyoulikeworms
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.

~~~
_delirium
That reminds me of an interesting counterfactual that I believe Ilya Somin
proposed (he's a libertarian law professor born in the USSR). Most market
advocates believe communism, and especially the USSR's version of central-
planning, strong-state authoritarian communism, was wrong as a matter of
principle.

But what if the USSR had managed to keep a high standard of living, comparable
to how it did quite well in science? And let's say it also avoided some of the
worst bouts of mismanagement, like the large famines. Even libertarians who
argue that central planning is inefficient might grant that it's at least
hypothetically possible that the USSR could've turned out much better / less
badly than it did, had a few things and personnel been different. What would
people think of it then?

His guess (iirc) is that, unfortunately from his viewpoint, the USSR is as
unpopular as it is basically because it "didn't work": it had a lower standard
of living than the capitalist west, large famines, etc. If it were
authoritarian but "worked", so East Germans and Muscovites had the same
televisions and cars as West Germans and Parisians, he fears the anti-
communism consensus would not really be strong at all.

~~~
j_baker
Wait, who says the USSR _wasn't_ effective? However bad things were during
communist rule, they were worse beforehand. Not to mention that it brought one
of the most heavily battered combatants in WWII to become a superpower
afterwords.

Plus, there are plenty of examples of capitalist governments that have had
famines and such. India is a notable example.

~~~
doyoulikeworms
I don't want to open a can of worms, but there's a hefty debate behind your
insightful (but succinct) comment. I feel like a couple counterpoints to your
statements are in order, though.

If the quality of life of the USSR increased, we need to ask two questions.
Would it have increased _more_ or _less_ under a more liberal regime? How are
you factoring in the murder of tens of millions of people? Even low end
figures show that 5% of the peak Soviet population was slaughtered or
imprisoned.

Regarding India's woes, systems of government/economy are in no way a panacea.
Besides, India's economy was extremely communist, almost explicitly modeled
after the USSR. India only turned to liberalizing their markets recently, even
later than China.

~~~
dman
India began on socialistic ideals and the streak continues somewhat to the
current day (it has reduced immensely since the liberalization in the early
90's). That being said I do not recall India or its economy being communist at
any point. (There is a Communist Party of India to this day but it has never
been significant on the national stage).

~~~
doyoulikeworms
Wikipedia can tell you more, but India employed 5-year plans and nationalized
a fair share of industries, among other things.

------
ig1
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...](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm081014/text/81014w0030.htm#081014100004585)

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).

------
powera
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."

~~~
lucasjung
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.

~~~
Anechoic
_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>

~~~
lucasjung
I would categorize this as more of a catalyst than a cause. Once the breakdown
of family norms begins, this would accelerate the process by putting more
young black men into prison, turning some of them into absentee fathers, thus
normalizing single motherhood. However, strong family structures tend to
discourage illegal or risky behaviors like drug dealing or drug use, leading
me to believe that something else must have happened to weaken them before
large numbers of black men would end up in prison for drug offenses.
Furthermore, I doubt if there is much overlap between the set of "guys who
would deal illegal drugs for a living" and the set of "guys who would settle
down with the girls they impregnated and be good fathers, if only they weren't
in prison." In other words, the increase in drug dealing/use (which
facilitated increased incarceration due to draconian drug laws) and the
increase in single motherhood were not cause and effect, but rather effects of
the same root cause.

~~~
Anechoic
The problem with the Rockefeller drug laws and subsequent enforcement was the
unequal application - despite the fact that whites and blacks use and deal
drugs at roughly the same rates, blacks are more likely to be arrested and
jailed for drug crimes and given longer sentences.

You talk about "norms" but as was pointed out in another HN thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2031655>) drug use is essentially a
"norm" in the USA. The problem is that only certain segments of the population
get punished for it, which leads to not finishing school, not being able to
get a job, etc. It certainly is a cause.

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

------
DanI-S
"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.

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

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

~~~
pmorici
It seems like he is using immigration status as a proxy for parental education
level. As he later notes the effect is non existent and in fact opposite in
Canada and Australia which he attributes to the skills based immigration
system.

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

------
Symmetry
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.

~~~
spoiledtechie
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...

~~~
jessriedel
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.

------
warmfuzzykitten
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.

~~~
cema
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.

------
tokenadult
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.

------
InclinedPlane
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?

~~~
InclinedPlane
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.

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

------
kenjackson
There's a better article here: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jim-
taylor/are-public-educa...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jim-taylor/are-
public-education-chic_b_798354.html)

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?

------
jmtame
"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

------
mike4u2
"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.

------
Chi019
This reflects human biodiversity. When you compare groups with similar
evolutionary backgrounds they have similar levels of intelligence.

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
Alex3917
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
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.

~~~
kenjackson
I don't understand how that follows from the data? Even comparing apples to
apples, so to speak, the US is at the 25th %ile. With most countries above
(and below) being likely countries, once you exclude the poorest 35% from our
country.

To put it another way -- stacking the cards in our favor should really put us
a lot higher up the stack, considering he didn't control from spending or
income.

------
HilbertSpace
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.

------
partition
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.

------
DanielBMarkham
"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.

~~~
btilly
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.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
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.

~~~
btilly
Take a look at
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-EMpadQx4hM/TRKZ5kB-49I/AAAAAAAAAY...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-EMpadQx4hM/TRKZ5kB-49I/AAAAAAAAAY8/c_2n4vdbkPk/s1600/immigrant.jpg)
and tell me again that it is appropriate to ignore immigration levels in
judging how effectively the education system is doing its job of educating
students. (Note that the exceptions of Australia and Canada are discussed in
the article.)

When factors that big are out of the control of the education system, a proper
analysis of the performance of the education system itself should not ignore
them. The resulting outcomes may not be what is wanted, but that is not
necessarily the fault of the schools.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I looked at the link, and I also read the article.

Full analysis here: <http://bit.ly/i8WTbA>

~~~
btilly
My summary of your analysis. _People aren't statistics so you shouldn't form
your opinions about anything involving people using statistical data._

I'm sorry, but that trips my BS detector. It lets you believe anything you
want to believe, and makes those beliefs impervious to any data you might be
presented with.

If you don't believe me, then ask yourself these questions. What experiment
can you imagine setting up that would convince you that immigrants truly are
at a disadvantage of school, even when the school tries? What experiment can
you imagine that could convince you that significant academic gaps between
ethnic groups are not within the realistic ability of the school system to
fix?

I suspect the answer is that nothing could ever convince you. In which case
your belief is a position of religious faith, and is impervious to any form of
data.

By contrast I accept that student performance is affected by many factors,
some of which are out of the ability of schools to control. Schools can't
readily fix what language you were raised with, your family's attitude towards
education, various other possible problems at home, the effects the
stereotypes have on self-image, and cultural differences around things like
what age it is appropriate to start having children. Yet those things are
strongly tied to your ethnicity, and have a significant impact on your
academic performance.

How big a factor is this? How difficult to control? I don't know. But when
presented with data that suggests that it is enough to explain the educational
differences between the US and other industrialized countries, I'm not going
to throw it out out of hand. And conversely if presented with different data
that says it is not enough, I'm not going to throw that out either. I'm going
to read both analysis, and form the most educated opinion that I can.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm going to try to throw aside all this emotional content and go at your
point, mainly because I think you might learn something here.

Look -- I don't care about immigrants, one way or the other. Statistically,
sure, you can make a measurement that has a correlation. Good for you. Lots of
measurements and correlations in the world.

To directly answer your question, why would I go about conducting an
experiment to show that immigrants are at a disadvantage? To what ends would
that serve? What would be the point?

Instead, I might would look at teacher performance, or learning styles, or
class size, or school construction, or any one of a million other variables
that correlate with immigrants doing a good job. Then I would look for
correlation between your immigrant groups and those other variables.

You can pick and choose things to measure and emphasize all day long -- and it
doesn't get you anywhere. You want to say that schools are doing a great job
and there are factors outside their control that make their outcomes poor in
certain circumstances. Fine. I get that. Could be true. Might not be true.
Worth exploration.

But the measurement of data and the observation of a correlation is just the
initial, total bullshit stage of actually fixing anything. Most of the time
correlations don't pan out. Most of the time there are counter-examples to the
conclusions you want to reach. Most of the time things change right after you
measure them. Most of the time people who don't want/know-how to solve things
just sit around making these observations as sort of a chatting class. Most of
the time it's nigh impossible to string together any of these correlations
into something useful. Something that sounds insightful? Very easy to do.
Something that actually has value? Very difficult.

The reality of things is that schools are paid to make a difference, and that
there are certain skills that are non-negotiable in our environment. You can
add the fact that some schools are doing a very poor job of teaching these
skills.

I think those statements are not very provocative.

So, make whatever measurements you want, find whatever correlations you want,
build whatever models you want, _as long as it further serves the purpose of
doing the business of schools: providing an education_. If the only purpose is
to provide excuses and make ourselves feel better, then it's not really
worthwhile. Just go decide you're going to feel that some schools never got a
fair shake and be done with it. It's fine with me. It's a perfectly valid
point of view to have.

Everything in life is like this, not just schools. You have a job. You do a
poor job of it. You either: a) dig down into some data to provide evidence you
are not at fault, or b) dig down into some data to start forming models you
can test, _realizing that the formation of models is only the barest
beginnings of anything worthwhile at all_. You seem to want to make the
measurement, observe the correlation, then announce that it's causal (and
then, presumably, go forward to draw some sort of political conclusion)

That's just a bit too far.

How big a factor? How difficult to control? Who knows? Who cares? The point
isn't to sit around making observations and bemoaning our ignorance and lack
of funds/talent/whatever. The point is that the data is only a very small bit
of a solution. We can sit around measuring things and pulling theories out our
ass all day long. Not going to help any kids get a better education. The only
thing it might do is make us feel better about our preexisting opinions.

I'm not saying that these assertions are false. I simply don't know. All I'm
saying is that this type of conversation can go on for a long, long, long time
without any useful results. You don't want to do that, either in the real
world or with some philosphical school-immigrant problem.

------
mdda
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.

~~~
btilly
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.

------
davidedicillo
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.

~~~
jacoblyles
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.

------
alain94040
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
He excluded first and second generation immigrants from the European set in
his comparison.

