IGX

While I don’t know what scores will be revealed this week from the triennial PISA, I can anticipate the tenor of American media coverage by recalling the 2010 brouhaha over how badly American students scored. In reality, American kids did surprisingly well on that last PISA, as long as you adjust for race. As I wrote in 2010, the main focus of the 2009 test was reading, and American students read relatively well:

• Asian Americans outscored every Asian country, and lost out only to the city of Shanghai, China’s financial capital.

• White Americans outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white countries tested, except Finland.

• Hispanic Americans beat all eight Latin American countries.

At the continental level, PISA (and the competing TIMSS test) show the same general broad patterns as seen in countless tests in the US: On average, Northeast Asians are out front, then Europeans, then Latin Americans, then blacks. So the PISA results have some prima facie validity. Of course, it’s discouraging to learn that PISA’s global results are largely the American bell curve writ large, so nobody notices.

BucketHead wrote:Don't get all scholarly. I'm laughing that the graphic had us at 21th place.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:http://takimag.com/article/pisa_piece_b ... z2mZl955nQ

While I don’t know what scores will be revealed this week from the triennial PISA, I can anticipate the tenor of American media coverage by recalling the 2010 brouhaha over how badly American students scored. In reality, American kids did surprisingly well on that last PISA, as long as you adjust for race. As I wrote in 2010, the main focus of the 2009 test was reading, and American students read relatively well:

• Asian Americans outscored every Asian country, and lost out only to the city of Shanghai, China’s financial capital.

• White Americans outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white countries tested, except Finland.

• Hispanic Americans beat all eight Latin American countries.

Terry B. wrote:So, the IGX rebuttal is that you can't compare countries because Asia doesn't have blacks nor Mexicans to educate?

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Axly..it is a very interesting situation in that when you adjust out the diversity of various ethnically organized subcultures, on their own each does nowhere near as bad and those pesky northeast asian kids seem to kick ass wherever they are.