Major Reanalysis of International Tests Show Achievement Gaps in All Countries, Big gains for US

[HiPointDem]

Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy, both highly accomplished scholars, have reanalyzed the international test score data and arrived at some startling and important findings.

Their study is titled “International Tests Show Achievement Gaps in All Countries, with Big Gains for U.S. Disadvantaged Students.” It includes not only their major analysis of international test scores, but critiques by the leaders of OECD and PISA, and their response to the critiques.

This important study should change the way international tests are reported by the media...In every nation, students from the most affluent homes are at the top of the test scores, and students from the poorest homes are at the bottom. In other words, there is an “achievement gap” based on social class in every nation.

"The share of disadvantaged students in the U.S. sample was larger than their share in any of the other countries we studied. Because test scores in every country are characterized by a social class gradient—students higher in the social class scale have better average achievement than students in the next lower class—U.S. student scores are lower on average simply because of our relatively disadvantaged social class composition.” In other words, we have more poverty than other nations with which we compare ourselves, and thus lower scores on average.

*They discovered that “the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children is actually smaller in the United States than it is in similar countries. The achievement gap in the United States is larger than it is in the very highest scoring countries, but even then, many of the differences are small.”

The U.S. scores on PISA 2009 that so alarmed Secretary Duncan were caused by a sampling error. “PISA over-sampled low-income U.S. students who attended schools with very high proportions of similarly disadvantaged students, artificially lowering the apparent U.S. score. While 40 percent of the PISA sample was drawn from schools hwere half or more of students were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, only 23 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.”*If the PISA scores are adjusted correctly to reflect the actual proportion of students in poverty, the average scores of U.S. students rise ...Instead of 25th in mathematics, the U.S. is 10th. “While there is still room for improvement, these are quite respectable showings.”

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/25/good-news-major-re-analysis-of-international-tests/

[ananda]

1. My suspicion meter has just jerked way to the right.

..

[HiPointDem]

2. how's that?

[dballance]

3. Liars, damned liars, and statisticians

My bullshit meter just went off the scale. We, "reanalyzed" the results and now all of a sudden all the other countries suck and the US is doing great?????

[HiPointDem]

6. No, "we" didn't. An independent research team did. And the reanalysis = 1) Adjusting

for the KNOWN higher incidence of poverty in the US & 2) correcting for the OVERSAMPLING of low-income people in the 2009 tests (40% of test-takers in the US sample were low-income, v. 23% incidence in the US).

The international tests have ALWAYS been criticized for problems in comparing apples & oranges; this is the first time an actual statistical analysis has been attempted to back up the criticisms.

The results don't say 'the other countries suck'. It says:

1) there are big class-based achievement gaps IN EVERY COUNTRY;
2) that gap is smaller in the US than in most other countries;
3) low-income students are actually making faster gains than their peers in most other countries;
4) the US has significantly MORE incidence of poverty than most of the comparison countries & adjusting for that difference puts AVERAGE scores on a par with France, UK, etc.

[Fumesucker]

10. Unfortunate that our society does not "adjust" for the level of poverty here

This study will of course be used to further blame the poor for their plight.

What we need to do is mandate that all parents be upper middle class or better, that would solve our education problems handily.

[Squinch]

4. Shall we take bets about whether this ever gets the attention of the mainstream?

[Recursion]

5. Americans have been flipping out about test scores since the 1950s

and we still remain the world's leader in science, technology, and the arts (yes, the arts. How many French vs. American films win at Cannes?)

Our schools work fine, they just need more reliable funding. Make it so.

[immoderate]

7. In the article: "gains ... were even larger prior to NCLB."

--imm

[joeybee12]

8. Why would they feel the need to take out those in poverty?

Other than to adjust the scores?

[HiPointDem]

12. they didn't 'take them out'. they adjusted to statistically to account for the fact that the US

HAS DOUBLE OR MORE THE POVERTY RATE OF MOST WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, JAPAN, ETC.

Low-income students do worse in EVERY country. Which means that if you have a poverty rate DOUBLE OR MORE THAT OF COMPARISON COUNTRIES, your numbers will be worse than if poverty rates were the same.

The US actually does BETTER for its low-income students than most of the comparison countries, particularly in reading.

[reteachinwi]

9. Arne Duncan

Now all we need are policy makers for whom evidence is more important than union busting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/kansas-chamber-of-commerce_n_2536360.html

[Starry Messenger]

11. Thank you Rothstein and Carnoy.

Those PISA scores have seemed nuts for years. Unfortunately the political momentum of the ed reform movement probably won't be halted by this revelation. I've already seen yelling back that we still suck, somehow, therefore corporate takeover is necessary.

[HiPointDem]

13. Why Gloomy Pundits and Politicians Are Wrong About America's Education System

Here's what everybody knows about education in the United States. It's broken. It's failing our poorest students and codding the richest. Americans are falling desperately behind the rest of the developed world.

But here's what a new study from the Economic Policy Institute tells us about America's education system: Every one of those common assumptions is simplistic, misguided, or downright wrong.

When you break down student performance by social class, a more complicated, yet more hopeful, picture emerges, highlighted by two pieces of good news. First, our most disadvantaged students have improved their math scores faster than most comparable countries. Second, our most advantaged students are world-class readers.

Why break down international test scores by social class? In just about every country, poor students do worse than rich students. America's yawning income inequality means our international test sample has a higher share of low-income students, and their scores depress our national average. An apples-to-apples comparison of Americans students to their international peers requires us to control for social class and compare the performances of kids from similarly advantaged and disadvantaged homes.

That's precisely what Martin Carnoy, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and Richard Rothstein have done in their new paper, "What Do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance?" Carnoy and Rothstein dive into international standardized tests and compare U.S. performance, by social class, to three post-industrial countries (Germany, the UK, and France) and three top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea).





http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/why-gloomy-pundits-and-politicians-are-wrong-about-americas-education-system/267278/

[quaker bill]

14. So, in short form

The schools are fine, the teachers are fine, the parents are normal, our income distribution is the problem. This makes sense. However I don't think it will ever officially be reognized as the problem because the fix is too inconvenient for the wealthy.

[HiPointDem]

15. kick