

U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/education/us-students-still-lag-globally-in-math-and-science-tests-show.html

======
droithomme
Interesting they cite Finland and then immediately claim the answer is more
schooling. That's not how Finland sees it. In Finland school starts at age 7
as it is considered that before 7 you should be playing, not bored with
academics. For those who wish it, a year of "preschool" is available at age 6,
the same year the US starts first grade after a year of what is often
mandatory Kindergarten, which is now academic and has homework in much of the
US, and which follows 1-3 years of preschool and daycare. There is pressure to
make preschool academic as well in the US.

Also in Finland, mandatory school lasts 9 years, not 13 years, and you're done
at age 16. If you wish, you can at your choice then continue either with
college prep or vocational finishing school for three years at no cost with
content comparable to a good american community college.

Many systems that do better than the US have kids in school for fewer hours,
have less bureaucracy, and cost less to operate than american schools, yet
more hours and more spending are always given as the only possible answers to
america's supposed school problems, along with dismissing the things that do
work in the US, namely homeschooling and private schools which get much better
results at a lower cost.

~~~
naner
I always wonder if problems like these are exacerbated by our (comparatively)
massive population in the US. We have somewhere around 311 million people to
Finland's 5 million and we are all spread out over 50 states. Is it any
surprise we can't manage a nationwide school system well?

~~~
byoung2
The US is also more ethnically diverse than Finland, which I'm sure impacts
teaching.

------
tokenadult
I read the first hour's worth of comments here before posting my own comment.
I attended the official United States Department of Education webinar
announcing these newly released results this morning before posting this news
report here. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on
Hacker News four years ago,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123>

after earlier years of noticing that Paul Graham writes from time to time
about education policy issues. I'm glad to see that so many HN participants,
from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking
facts on education issues. Plainly, the United States continues to outperform
a lot of countries, as it has throughout my lifetime. The countries that have
disastrous education systems seem to be especially concentrated among the
countries of the Arab League, and to a lesser degree in Latin America.

On the other hand, the report reveals some examples of countries that have
consistently outperformed the United States throughout the time that TIMSS
testing has occurred (since the mid-1990s) and since PIRLS testing has
occurred (since the turn of the current century). Most of those countries are
concentrated among the newly industrialized countries of east Asia, with a few
other conspicuous strong performers to be found in Europe.

A key difference between United States schools and schools in countries with
better performance: American teachers show a method and then expect students
to repeat applying the method to very similar exercises, while teachers in
high-performing countries show an open-ended problem first, and have the
students grapple with how to solve it and what method would be useful in
related but not identical problems. From _The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from
the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom_ (1999):

"Readers who are parents will know that there are differences among American
teachers; they might even have fought to move their child from one teacher's
class into another teacher's class. Our point is that these differences, which
appear so large within our culture, are dwarfed by the gap in general methods
of teaching that exist across cultures. We are not talking about gaps in
teachers' competence but about a gap in teaching methods." p. x

"When we watched a lesson from another country, we suddenly saw something
different. Now we were struck by the similarity among the U.S. lessons and by
how different they were from the other country's lesson. When we watched a
Japanese lesson, for example, we noticed that the teacher presents a problem
to the students without first demonstrating how to solve the problem. We
realized that U.S. teachers almost never do this, and now we saw that a
feature we hardly noticed before is perhaps one of the most important features
of U.S. lessons--that the teacher almost always demonstrates a procedure for
solving problems before assigning them to students. This is the value of
cross-cultural comparisons. They allow us to detect the underlying
commonalities that define particular systems of teaching, commonalities that
otherwise hide in the background." p. 77

A great video on the differences in teaching approaches can be found at "What
if Khan Academy was made in Japan?"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHoXRvGTtAQ>

with actual video clips from the TIMSS study of classroom practices in various
countries.

We would reasonably expect a wealthy country, like the United States, to get
return on its investment in education

<http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf>

but the United States somewhat disappoints that expectation compared to other
countries, on a purchasing-power-parity basis. Noteworthy about the United
States is that it lags compared to several other countries in how well the
school system meets the needs of the most disadvantaged learners in the
country.

<http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf>

What jumped out at me from the report released today, as summarized in the
official Department of Education webinar, is what a large gain in results on
international testing is found among students in Iran. Iran is still poorer
than many other countries, despite its inherent wealth from petroleum exports,
but despite all that is dubious about current governance in Iran, it appears
that educational provision there is improving, as gauged by the international
testing programs. (I note too that Iran is becoming a consistent contender in
the International Mathematical Olympiad,

<http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx>

at a much higher level of mathematical performance.)

As usual, my home state, Minnesota, which is one of several states that
participates in TIMSS as a separate statistical unit as well as in the
aggregate national ranking of the United States, is outperforming the United
States median score. Even at that, there is a growing market here in Minnesota
for the services I provide, supplemental mathematics education at a more
advanced level than the school curriculum of suburban school districts, which
parents who are aware of international standards are happy to pay for out-of-
pocket even after paying their taxes to the local school system. (More
information about that appears in my user profile.)

I would sum up today's news by saying that the United States is by no means
doing as badly as it possibly could, but policy makers in the United States
would be well advised to develop curiosity about how to do better in
education. Living overseas a decade ago opened up my eyes to what is possible.
For the amount of resources invested in public education in the United States

<http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66>

(more than what is invested by India and China COMBINED, even though each has
a larger school-age population than the United States), education policy
makers should continue to look around the world for the best path to good
results. Specifically, the idea that we do well by able students is directly
disagreed with by scholars who have spent years studying the issue.

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

"Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of
2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries
with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of
the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International
Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world's
industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the
international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests."

The full reports just released today on TIMSS and PIRLS testing are linked at
the United States Department of Education website.

<http://nces.ed.gov/timss/>

<http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pirls/>

~~~
debacle
Do you think that recent changes to schooling (e.g. NCLB) are stymieing strong
learners from having better results than they may have had, say, ten years
ago?

~~~
dgabriel
It seems like the data in the "Teaching math to the Talented," article refutes
that assumption.

"In short, the incapacity of American schools to bring students up to the
highest level of accomplishment in mathematics is much more deepseated than
anything induced by recent federal legislation."

------
geebee
According to the article, the biggest gap is at the high performing level, not
the average.

"Although the average scores among American students were not significantly
lower than the top performers, several nations far outstripped the United
States in the proportion of students who scored at the highest levels on the
math and science tests."

This may suggest that America's elite students are either 1) unable to get the
kind of education that leads to high math and science scores, or 2)
uninterested in putting in the amount of effort it takes to get past a certain
level of competence.

Here's the forbes list of highest paid careers...

[http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/04/jobs-careers-
compensation-l...](http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/04/jobs-careers-compensation-
lead-careers-cx_pm_0604bestjobs_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=20000&boxes=custom)

8 of the top 10 are medical specialties. The other two are orthodontists and
CEOs.

Here's a link to the amount of math and physics typically required for a med
school application.

[http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-
admissi...](http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-admissions-
doctor/2011/12/05/how-to-select-undergraduate-premed-coursework)

(posted again here)

• two semesters of biology with laboratory (up to four semesters at some
schools)

• two semesters of inorganic chemistry with laboratory

• two semesters of organic chemistry with laboratory

• two semesters of math, at least one in calculus

• two semesters of physics with laboratory

• two semesters of English and/or writing

So, "at least one semester of calculus". UCSD (my alma mater) had an easier
track of physics that required an easier track of calculus that was acceptable
for many of the med-school bound bio majors (while not one of the most elite
undergraduate universities, UCSD does have a very high rate of admission to
med school).

You do need to take a few tough courses (ochem and so forth), but all in all,
I think the highest paid fields tend to reward moderate skill in the sciences,
but not exceptional mathematically ability.

In short, it doesn't appear that access to the highest paid professions in the
US requires a tremendous amount of math. You can't ignore it, but a single
semester of calc seems to do the trick.

I've heard OChem is tough... I haven't taken it. But perhaps US students are
behaving rationally by rationing the amount of effort they put into math and
physics?

~~~
w1ntermute
The reason why pay is so high in the medical field is because it is highly
government regulated, and is an anomaly in that regard. Not only is the number
of medical students admitted each year tightly regulated (reducing the
supply), the costs of medical treatment are paid indirectly (via insurance
companies), obscuring costs and making it easier to raise rates.

If regulations were loosened, you'd end up with a similar situation to what
you see with lawyers now - a lot of students graduating from law school and
finding out that most lawyers these days don't actually make that much (or
can't even find a job).

~~~
geebee
I agree, and the "cartel" that you've described carefully limits the number of
foreign physicians who can compete with Americans. I agree with you about law
at the middle to low end, but clearly the very elite schools still often lead
to lucrative careers - and this is another field that clearly has established
barriers to entry that make it more difficult for foreign firms or lawyers to
compete.

Elite science and engineering programs, on the other hand, seem to be going in
the opposite direction from the AMA and ABA - the graduate schools in these
fields are willing to enroll a majority of international students, and the US
senate is talking about "stapling a green card" to every graduate degree in a
STEM field (but not to every JD, MD, or DDS). And even if they did include the
professional degrees, the respective professional organizations are empowered
by the US government to severely limit how and where they can practice.

All that said, I think this simply lends more support to my original point,
which is that US citizens have discovered that the fields that require heavy
science and math often put them in the path of competing with very talented
immigrants and international students, whereas fields that require less math
are more lucrative and offer a safe haven from international competition.

It may not be a free market at work, but it clearly is a rational and expected
response to market conditions created by government policy.

In short, if you're a very talented US citizen who wants to maximize the
return on the effort you put into education, it is rational to get a little
bit good at math, but there isn't much of a premium on getting really good at
math relative to what the professions offer. If you're an international
student who aspires to immigrate to the US, on the other hand, getting really
good at intensive math and science fields is a high probability way to gain
access to the US market.

~~~
001sky
Medicine is profitable because it is potentially ~extortive, even correcting
for government regulation.

ie, "your money, or your life"? is the negotiating dynamic.

Note this is also historically why Lawyers ("your money, or your life"?) and
investment bankers ("your money, or your life/company"?) are also highly
remunerative careers, at least traditionally.[1,2]

_______

[1] It helps also that in addition to negotiations under proximate duress,
there is a highly exclusionary hiring process (a/k/a guilds or qualifications
to be admitted into "the professions" etc).

[2] <https://www.google.com/search?q=hold+up+problem>

~~~
w1ntermute
I don't think that's a valid argument. You could say the same thing about the
food industry - if you don't eat, you die. The food industry (notwithstanding
the FDA) is relatively free from government regulation and is quite
competitive. Strong competition in any industry inevitably drives prices down.

There can certainly be situations where time is of the essence, but that
doesn't explain why an MRI costs thousands of dollars or why a visit to a
specialist can cost hundreds for a 15 minute visit.

~~~
001sky
_I don't think that's a valid argument._

\-- It's not an 'argument' as much as it is a negotiating strategy/dynamic.

The food case is trivial. Its not the case that you negotiate from a position
of massive information assymetry. There are 1XXX variations of healthy diet,
for example. Medical, legal, and Banking services are akin to the food case if
you were in an alien planet where 90/100 items in the food store or to be
foraged were poisonous/deadly to humans, yet indeterminately so. So, you must
pay for the 'information' element to not kill yourself (ie, like a local alien
guide).

~~~
w1ntermute
If the issue is information asymmetry, you could say the same thing about car
repairs. Most people don't know a thing about fixing their car, and if it's
not fixed correctly, they could die. I don't see this pricing issue happening
with car repairs though.

I think that with sufficient competition and a system that doesn't
require/encourage people to go to the specialists recommended by their primary
care physicians, you could significantly drive prices down. There is in fact
probably a place for technology in all this, insofar as curating and
maintaining accurate statistics on the record of individual doctors in a
manner that is easily accessible to all patients. Then you wouldn't have
primary care physicians giving referrals to friends from medical school or
residency (a change that could actually improve specialist quality).

~~~
001sky
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-up_problem>

The stakes are much higher in medicine/law/and finance. But similar "hold-up"
dynamics are pretty frequent as low levels in car repairs (classically, taking
advantage of women). A more intermediary example is is Home Building (the so-
called change-orders, also at play in public works). Its really a combination
of information assymetry, high-stakes, and some form of sunk cost or
switching/searching costs that are prohibitive. You can't change your builder
with a hole in the ground, you can't change your car-repair guy with your car-
motor in pieces, etc.

Alas, I don't want to beat the explanation to death. Its not meant to be the
sole explanatory variable. I just thought it was useful to be aware of. In the
case of healthcare, in particular, I don't dis=agree with the structural
market issues (lack of direct pricing, non-transparency, etc.). But if you
look at drug pricing, see what they charge for cancer drugs. And look at
places like the NHS in britain who won't pay $100k for a course of drugs out
of principle.

There is more to the story for those interested in the subject is all.

------
rayiner
Completely pointless to perform these comparisons without adjusting for
demographics. Finland is so homogenous they don't even keep demographic
statistics about ethnicity. In the US, 12.6% of the population is black (and
deals with the continuing effects of slavery and systematic
discrimination/segregation that ended only 50 years ago), and 16.4% of
Hispanic (many of them relatively recent immigrants, as well as being
disproportionately in the lower socioeconomic calsses). I don't imagine
Helsinki's public schools are filled with 90% minority students of whom 87%
are low income, like Chicago's.

The problem in the US is not education. The problem is the education of poor
urban and rural childern who are parts of ethnic minorities. In the US, we
segregate all of these kids together in schools that spend most of their time
suppressing the resulting gang activity. We don't need more teachers, except
in the inner cities, or better curricula, or more or less standardized
testing, what we need is to tackle inner city and rural poverty and mitigate
the effects of segregation that linger from the 1950's.

~~~
w1ntermute
> The problem is the education of poor urban and rural childern who are parts
> of ethnic minorities.

Exactly: [http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

If you break down American students by their ethnicities and compare them to
students in the parts of the world their ancestors migrated from, American
students always do better or the same. That is, European Americans do better
than Europeans, Asian Americans are about as good as Asians, Latino Americans
do better than Central/South Americans, and African Americans do better than
Africans.

The problem is that there's such a large gap between different countries that
despite a performance improvement among Latino and African Americans relative
to Central/South Americans and Africans, they drag down the overall American
average, bringing America below many countries in Europe and Asia.

------
yummyfajitas
I've posted this here a number of times, but it looks like it is still needed.
Here are some stats on US performance, broken down by ethnicity:

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-
above-...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-
average-american.html)

tl;dr White Americans do very well when compared to White Europeans. Asian
Americans do roughly as well as east asian nations (a bit worse on math, a bit
better on reading/writing).

The bulk of the gap between the US and other nations is caused by Blacks and
Hispanics (groups which are uncommon in Europe and Asia) dragging the US
average down. I.e., the problem doesn't live in the education system.

~~~
theorique
Assuming these figures are accurate, how do we address this question in a way
that doesn't confront awkward questions of race, ethnicity, and class?

------
dgabriel
Here's my theory on why so few US children score as advanced level in math:

I have a fifth grader in public school now, and as far as I can tell, schools
are nearly incapable of identifying advanced learners, and most teachers don't
have the training to teach differentiated math/science. So we settle on
curriculums that target the "bottom average." The bright kids get bored and
drift away, the slower kids get help, but almost never enough, and the middle
group never get properly challenged.

It took two years to get my son math instruction appropriate to his level, and
now the school system doesn't seem to know what to do with a 10 year-old who
is finishing up Algebra 1. The answer seems to be Kahn Academy, which is not
enough. I can't imagine what the battle is like for a single parent with two
jobs, or parents who are not native speakers.

~~~
LDale
Teachers/administrators/schools do not have their funding tied to the
improvement of their high-performing students.

This is a natural by-product of the Texas model of educational reform
(NCLB/Race to the Top/etc.): teachers cannot be trusted to teach and assess
their students where those students might be (with regards to content mastery)
so we implement standardized tests which focus attention on the lowest
performing students (often overwhelmingly teaching them test-taking skills
irrelevant to real life) and thereby reducing the time allotted to core
curriculum for everyone. It's a system that only improves academics on a
superficial level (raising scores without raising academic mastery) and
diverts billions of dollars out of already constrained school budgets to
private testing/content material providers (NCLB requires tests and other
measures without providing resources to implement them - hence resources must
be stripped from other programs or services at the schools).

~~~
yummyfajitas
Standardized testing is orthogonal to focusing on the lowest performing
students.

You could use standardized tests and focus on top students just as easily - we
just focus on the underperformers because that's what our political culture
demands.

------
lbo
This article does nothing to convince me that singing or playing math games
with my young kids has a causal link to better math, science, or reading
performance. Those both seem like signs of parents who are generally involved
and likely correlate with lots of other constructive activities throughout the
child's life (like caring about how they're doing in school) that could be the
real reason for why the kids do better at a later age.

------
RiffMcGriff
The U.S. has no past of consistently placing among the 'best' in the world as
measured by standardized tests. We are not 'losing competitiveness' due to
these countries because they are smarter. The United States' emphasis on
allowing mistakes in the business world more than make up for the fact that
our students don't win at math test scores. The United States has never placed
among the top 5 in math scores, but that didn't slow down progressive
movements in the last 60 years. Being consistently good on math tests is
frequently a tautology, as you win the award of "best on math tests", but
there is little strong evidence of increased innovation and economic growth
based on math test scores alone.

------
wmeredith
I could have told you that without testing. There leaders are running on anti-
science platforms and getting lots of press and support for doing so.
(Creationism, global warming deniers, forced conception denial.) What about
our culture promotes science and math?

Yes, there are pockets that deviate from the mean (like HN for instance) but
as a society, the US is pretty anti-intellectual. For me, that's the scariest
thing about this country (that I love).

~~~
debacle
There are entire states that deviate from the mean.

The reality is that there's a large percentage of the US that is quite dumb,
and it drags states with good education systems down.

~~~
Gormo
> and it drags states with good education systems down.

How does poor-quality education in one state adversely affect better-quality
education in another?

~~~
rprospero
It's not that the existence of poor schools makes the students at good schools
dumber. It's the horrible quality drop between the good and bad schools makes
the statistics misleading. The report could be titled in a completely
different way:

"American 8th graders significantly better at science than European 8th
graders."

I went to the actual data set (
<http://nces.ed.gov/timss/idetimss/dataset.aspx> ), selected the 8th grade
science tests, and asked for the average score from the European nations. The
result was 501 +- 0.9. The American score was 520 +- 2.9.

Now, I'm a bit concerned about their averaging methodology, since I don't
think that it's accounting for population density (adding the scores for each
country and dividing by the number of countries gives the average returned by
the dataset). Still, if we assume that the results are correct, then the
United States is doing significantly better than Europe in science education.

Of course, the English and the Hungarians, with scores of 542 and 539,
respectively, have nothing to fear for the average American, while Turkey, at
454, should be pretty concerned.

Which brings us back to the diversity of educational quality in the US. While
the average might be 520, I wouldn't be surprised, as a Hoosier, to find
Indiana down near Turkey's 454. On the other hand, I'd expect Massachusetts to
compare favorably with England's 542.

~~~
droithomme
You make a very good point that comparing american total aggregate scores to
the best of the individual european states is misleading. We could compare
total american average results against total european and show that the US
does better, as you have, or even better is to present histograms showing
american state by state results and comparing to european state by state
results. This makes sense and is a fair way to compare since in both europe
and the US, educational policy is mostly determined at the individual state
level rather than at the union of states level.

------
yardie
I wonder how long American exceptionalism can keep taking this battering until
the nitwits in the state and national assembly agree that education is
important. Pre-K and Headstart is important. Afterschool and tutoring is
important And school lunch is important.

I have too many friends that are absolutely struggling to get their kids into
Pre-K or headstart only to find out it's been cancelled or enrollment reduced
due to budget cuts. Then the only option is private care where at one end of
the school it's TV for 6-8 hours and the "good" schools cost almost your
entire paycheck.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, "it's goddamn expensive to be
poor!"

------
Irregardless
These stories pop up at least once a month, and it always leads me back to
this one: "Why It's Never Mattered That America's Schools Lag Behind Other
Countries'"

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/16/why-its-never-mattered-
that...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/16/why-its-never-mattered-that-
americas-schools-lag-behind-other-countries/)

In short: Kids aren't computers -- you can't just feed them facts and formulas
then expect them to go apply those in meaningful ways. And economies are led
by the top students who usually go to top schools, both of which we have more
than our fair share of.

------
contango
It would be interesting to see the difference in, say, the 20th percentile
between countries (those who care, in other words).

Most people are not interested in math, and frankly have little use for it.

------
sakopov
I find the use of "still" rather humorous. Still? Like there was a grand
expectation of the quality of education to all of a sudden get better. What
have we done to improve this? Nothing.

------
DanielBMarkham
Although this is an important topic, I have some structural concerns with this
particular article.

"...Fretting about how American schools compare with those in other countries
has become a regular pastime in education circles..."

Gee, patronize much? Talk about disqualifying your own story. Ouch.

"...What’s remarkable is that in all the countries, this concept of an early
start is there over and over again..."

I feel as both the problem, how I should feel about the problem, and the
answer are all presented to me in this one article. I remember back in the
day, reporters used to just report on things. I liked it back then.

I also note that according to some statistics, some native English speakers in
inner cities don't read, write, and understand English at the same level as
the same-aged kids in foreign cities growing up speaking a different language.
We could easily end up in a spot where non-native speakers are used to teach
English to kids growing up in the language. Amazing.

