Saturday, July 10, 2010

Another reason not to aggregate elementary and post-elementary school data

This is from a National Center for Education Statistics summary of TIMSS data from the Nineties* when the reform movement was pretty much settling into its present form. They were already sounding the alarm about math and science scores and proposing extensive reforms for grades K through 12, despite the fact that the performance issues were almost entirely limited to junior high and high school.
In mathematics, fourth-grade students in 7 countries outperform our fourth graders (Singapore, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Austria). Students in 6 countries are not significantly different from ours (Slovenia, Ireland, Hungary, Australia, Canada, and Israel). U.S. fourth graders outperform their counterparts in 12 nations (Latvia, Scotland, England, Cyprus, Norway, New Zealand, Greece, Thailand, Portugal, Iceland, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Kuwait).

In science, students in only one country--Korea--outperform U.S. fourth graders. Students in 5 countries are not significantly different than ours (Japan, Austria, Australia, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic), and U.S. fourth graders outperform their counterparts in 19 nations (England, Canada, Singapore, Slovenia, Ireland, Scotland, Hong Kong, Hungary, New Zealand, Norway, Latvia, Israel, Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Thailand, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Kuwait).

*I'll try to dig up some more recent results just to see how things are trending.

No comments:

Post a Comment