Math Skills Survey Shows U.S. Lags Behind

3l1za writes "The New York Times reports that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has released its results (pdf) for a test of mathematical skills given to 15 year olds in 40 different countries. A few apparent anomalies: The US kids rated 28th of 40 (so in the bottom third) while the Czech Republic, which spends in education 1/3 of what the US spends, ranked in the top 10. Further, only about 1/3 of US kids reported that they did not feel as though they were good at math, whereas about 2/3 of Koreans reported this--and the Koreans ranked in the top three. 'Mr. Schleicher said that students in countries that emphasized theorems and rote learning tended not to do as well as those that emphasized the more practical aspects of mathematics.'"

Outsourcing - or - Do you want fries with that?

[notthepainter]

At a recent job, exceptionally strong math skills were required. I had them, as did all of us in Engineering. Of the 16 or so folks there, only 4 of us were not in H-1B visas. Why? We couldn't find anybody locally who qualified for the job. I graduated from MIT, that got me into this job. We had one kids from Russia who just blew us all away.

The engineers from outside the US were able to do the job. Only the top notch products of the US school system could cope.

It was very sad.

It's not an anomalie

[mindstormpt]

A few apparent anomalies: The US kids rated 28th of 40 (so in the bottom third) while the Czech Republic, which spends in education 1/3 of what the US spends, ranked in the top 10.

It's not an anomalie, eastern european countries have great education systems, even if "cheap". I live in Portugal and we get a load of imigrants from Ukrania an several other countries of the area, trying to earn some money. They mostly end up in the construction business, but they're all college graduates, management, economy, engineering. And they're well-formed people.

Egalitarian? Who are you kidding?

[Pi_0's don't shower]

The US is pretty egalitarian in our education system, compared to your typical poor country.

Hold on a second. Now, I grew up in New York City, and attended public school there until age 17. I taught High School in inner city Los Angeles, and I'm currently living in Gainesville, FL, where I get a good look at the school system. My little brother went to High School in Centreville, VA. Can I tell you how different these four experiences were? I was branded a nerd growing up because of my success in math, but it wasn't a horrible stigma. It wasn't like I couldn't play baseball or basketball because of that. It wasn't like I got beaten up every day. And I got a lot of encouragement from people all around me -- even from some of my peers. My brother, who lives in a Virginia suburb, goes to a high school where the average SAT score is over 1200. Success at math is not only not "uncool", it's actually the norm. Meanwhile, where I taught high school, in a school with ~500 HS juniors, NO ONE in the school even managed a 700 on the math, and only a handful achieved a 600 or better. There is a HUGE socioeconomic stratification in terms of education in this country. The question is, what can we do about it? The first step is admitting we have a problem (which we do), that there's no reason why we should be lagging behind ANYONE! Now, what's the solution?

Re:Statistically invalid samples

[stanmann]

And you went to school? where? Guess what, a decent education(for free) is where you find it. getting a decent education happens all the time in the inner city. The problem is largely cultural. A culture of students and parents who don't value education and believe that the best way to make it big is to

a)win the lottery
b)be good at sports
c)get a music contract.

unfortunately of those 3 choices the most likely one to happen is a, and the odds get progressively worse.

All you need to get into a decent college is decent grades and all you need for decent grades are decent motivations. In this country if you are needy, your college is paid for by

wait for it

still waiting?

TAX MONEY!!! DING!

The US is HUGELY egalitarian. In most countries if you don't try, or fail they tosss you out of school, in the US, they let you stay and hold back everyone else.

US Education Funding not for Teaching

[Macrat]

What would you expect?

Most education funding goes into administration. There are a lot of non-teachers getting salaries from that funding. I've heard that in California and Arizona there are more administration headcount than there are teachers.

When I went to school, the administration position for the elementary school (principal) was the 6th grade teacher. The administration office for half the county was this little 2 office building near the high school. How things have changed.

Re:Very Telling Indeed

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The Czech Republic has universal education until the age of 16.

And it most definitely isn't fair not to have universal education. The government has a duty to provide the best conditions possible for the happiness and welfare of the people, and a way to do this is to provide education for everyone. In fact, the responsibility to do everything possible for happiness and welfare is a moral imperative. Governments that would ignore the education needs of the people would be exactly like a father that ignores the education needs of his children. A father that raises his children in ignorance isn't any kind of man at all, and a government that doesn't provide for the basic education needs of the people is morally deficient.

Even worse in minority communities

[Lord Kano]

Chris Rock once said that "Nothing makes a nigger happier than to not know something"

Imagine being a nerdy black kid. I was. The black kids sometimes though that I was "trying to be white" because I was good at math. The white kids often resented that I was "showing off" that I was good at math.

LK

Re:Laziness

[TheKidWho]

engineers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, bioligists, you know those guys that make new tech for us.

Re:With Bush in office its no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I got the point. I was pointing out you got the quote wrong. His words were, "Is our children learning?" You got the last word of his quote wrong.

Re:With Bush in office its no surprise

[10Ghz]

Actually, the corrected text would be, "Are our children learning?"

I thought the actual quote was "is our children learning?".

Re:US School System

[The-Bus]

A friend of mine was let go from the Red Clay Consolidated School District [k12.de.us] for not passing enough of his students (he's a H.S. history teacher). The kids would complain, if you're hard on them, the parents complain to you or to the school -- and when you're fair in grading (and not passing people just to pass them), you're "not a good teacher".

Now it might be possible there is more to the story but I have heard a lot like this coming from many different people all across the U.S.

Re:out of how many kids, though?

[Rovaani]

Finland is at the very top and we educate every kid. Finland also had one of the smallest deviations in the stats.

Re:Statistically invalid samples

[aralin]

I am from Czech Republic and live in US and there was a lot of news about this survey too on czech web sites. Mostly they take it as "we are only good in math, while US prepares kids for life". So it seems every country takes the negative part out of it.

BTW Trust me that all the schools are tested, not just the top rated. I am product of one of the special math school in Czech Republic and what we had in math in high school is more than you get from frist two years of community college here in US. If they took survey in just the elite math schools, it would leave everyone trailing way behind.

Re:Laziness

[Himring]

The goal should be to make the children see *relevance* to what they're being taught.

The founders of western civilization knew this. That's why Plato's Academy was a walking school wherein everyday objects and occurances were models for teaching. No rote memorization and real world application....

Re:With Bush in office its no surprise

[awhite]

Just wait, soon Kansas science will take over and we won't be teaching evolution. We'll be teaching that burning more coal and oil will improve the environment. We'll be teaching who knows what other Bush-science.

It has already begun. Another poster pointed out that creationism is sneaking into the classroom in the form of "Intelligent Design". And now the National Park Service is selling a book that says the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood [ems.org].

The complete list

[Psionicist]

If you are as lazy as me, here it is:

1. Finland
2. Korea
3. Canada
Hong Kong-China
Netherlands
Macao-China
Lichtenstein
Japan
Australia
Switzerland
Iceland
New Zealand
Denmark
Belgium
Czech Rep.
France
Ireland
Sweden
Austria
Slovak Rep.
Norway
Germany
Luxemburg
Poland
Spain
H ungary
Latvia
United States
Portugal
Russian Fed.
Italy
Greece
Serbia
Uruguay
Turkey
Thai land
Mexico
Brazil
Tunisia
Indonesia

Re:Quiz of the day: a third of fourty is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha! Christ, you're a retard.

And it's spelled 'forty', you utter, utter dipshit.

This really works ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a guy named John Mighton who has worked wonders tutoring very weak math students. He has proved that almost all students can become very proficient at math. One of the important things is that they actually think they can do it and don't give up. His method takes the students at whatever level they are and builds them up from there. The results are astounding. /www.jumptutoring.org/content/2.about.html

His book is called "The Myth of Ability." That pretty much says it all. The basic premise is that we should be able to expect all students to excell at math and he proves it.

Basically, the way we teach math is disasterous because it allows students to get left behind. They then get farther and farther behind and we use the excuse that: "They just don't have the ability." Mighton proves that is complete bunk!

Re:Statistically invalid samples

[apanap]

It would have been more relevant to do it on the basis of percentage of the GNP (Gross National Product, if you're wondering) or a similar statistic rather than the total cost of the educational system.

Ok, I KNOW this is slashdot, but... If you'd RTFA there IS a comparison to GNP... Page 93 of the PDF if I remember correctly...

Re:And in contrast, in Korea...

[HungWeiLo]

Asian kids are in school from 6 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon (typical, may vary). On top of that, a number of them get sent off to private tutors for an addition couple of hours of instruction to reinforce concepts they just learned in the last 10 hours of the day. The other kids perhaps get to study music or other non-athletic activities.

And you wonder why the US is behind in math and other assorted subjects?

Re:Could you display results in a USA Today graph?

[Otter]

More likely, it's the Canadian score that might go down. As a pair of irate Canadian ACs have pointed out, their country did quite well despite what is, IIRC, the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world. Of course, their single largest source of immigrants is China while the US's is Mexico. Now look back at the graph...

Anyway, all this is speculation without the data. Another thing I'd be curious to see is the breakdown within the US, but those numbers seem to be excluded from the regional breakdowns in the report.

Re:Laziness

[ninejaguar]

People need to feel that what they're being taught is relevant to them; otherwise, they'll never learn it. I can attest to this, as I'm sure can most people here.

I agree with you. Here's a free online video [learner.org] on demand series called "For All Practical Purposes" meant to address the issue with 26 half-hour programs (Episode 14, "Zero Sum Games" is pretty neat) from the Annenberg Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the accompanying textbook [maths.org]. That was the easy part. Now, how're we going to get the kids to watch it?

= 9J =

Re:You're right its cool to be stupid

[killmenow]

Do I have a study?

How about a few books on the topic:

1. Dumbing Us Down [newsociety.com]
2. Another Gatto book [johntaylorgatto.com]
3. An online write-up [education-reform.net]
4. Many Children Left Behind. [beacon.org]
5. Saving Our Schools [barnesandnoble.com]

I could go on...

Re:It all comes down to the parents.

[alcourt]

Tell me about lazy kids and schools not being accountable. I just came today from a meeting with my son's school teachers about his math program. My son wants to do more advanced math work, has been ready for it for some time. The school's response was to claim that the ability to perform arithmetic on paper has little to do with mathematics and then deny him access to ability appropriate mathematics. So a child who has been doing full multi-digit addition and subtraction with carrying and borrowing is asked to do single digit addition with answers no higher than 15 as the most advanced math they will offer him.

Part of it is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has allegedly endorsed a program that deemphasizes pencil and paper arithmetic to the point that some of the more extreme advocates of this program have proposed banning traditional algorithmic arithmetic until close to fourth grade.

The listed criteria that the school has identified as necessary skills are available at the NCTM website [nctm.org].

This list may look initially acceptable, but the application of it at least in my son's school was to claim that arithmetic is not even a significant part of math, at least not a standard algorithmic understanding of how to do the standardized problems. Instead, an emphasis on "strategies" is supreme to the point that if a problem cannot be done in one's head, it isn't worth doing.

The other issue is the "No Child Gets Ahead Act". It requires teachers to bring up to minimal standard as many students as possible and ignore those students who meet the minimum requirements without trying. This approach discourages advanced work in all too many cases that I have seen.

There are often problems with lazy students, but that is not the whole of the situation, overly rigorous school programs are just as much to blame.

Re:With Bush in office its no surprise

[Shadwhawk]

You seem to be using the wrong definition of 'theory'.

The 'theory' of evolution is a scientific theory: a hypothesis that makes predictions ("Humans and chimps have markedly similar morphologies. I wonder if they're related."), has been repeatedly tested ("Hey, howabout we test the DNA?") and repeatedly confirmed ("Wow. 97%+ similar to human DNA. That's a very close relationship!"). Refer to the theory of gravity, electron theory, and germ theory.

The 'theory' of creationism is not a scientific theory: it makes no predictions beyond "God Did It". The absence of predictions means it cannot be tested. Thus, creation theory is a layman's theory: an unproven assumption.

Both do have a place in a science class, however: one as an example of science, one as an example of what science isn't.

The problems as I see them

[reactionary]

The Economist has a good article on how the legal system is running the schools amok: "Who needs a bad teacher when you can get a worse judge?" [economist.com]

I see the problems being the following:

- too much leeway in defining curricula
- too difficult to fire useless teachers
- too difficult to censure/expel misfit kids
- too much "money = results" mentality
- not enough standardized testing
- too much pandering to the LCD (the troglodytes)
- too much of the pervasive culture of ignorance that the US peddles in. Kids don't get education from the media any longer.
- disengaged parents
- subcultures: Black and Chicano subcultures in the US just don't emphasize the importance of school as much as others (Asian/Euro-Americana cultures for instance). It's time that ghetto culture is not sexed up and sold to us on CDs because it doesn't deserve any clout.

Sigh...No child left behind is Ted Kennedy's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Even school teachers I know don't know this. The Democratic propaganda was complete. Bush, as a bi-partisan gesture, let Kennedy write the bill.

Then, Bush gets blamed for No Child Left Behind not funding the schools properly, the tests are too hard, etc.

The bill was not intended to fund schools, but to set incentives for improvements in standardized tests, hold schools accountable for drop-out rates, etc..

The thing is, the American educational system has been working so hard for the last 20 years to make sure that everybody graduates and never gets held back (even though they can't read, write, or do basic math) because it might hurt their self esteem that they don't know how to teach the kids the basics and make graduation a reward, not a handout.

what's the problem with a teacher's salary?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure where the impression comes from that public school teachers are necessarily horribly paid. I just took a look at "average" salaries for my part of Connecticut on www.salary.com - elementary school teachers were listed at ~ $49,000/year, and high school teachers at ~ $51,000/year. This is for a job that requires a bachelor's degree and qualifying exam, and has very good job security.

For a similar level of training (eg. BS degree), starting level electrical engineering pays a little more ($57k/year). Same for chemical engineering. An architect with experience, graduate school, and a license comes in at $65k/year. A CAD drafter (who knows AutoCAD) can expect to make $39,000. An Assistant Branch Manager at a bank could hope to make $41k/year.

And if you expect that teachers could make another $4k by working for 10 weeks during the summer (and still having a month of vacation), it really doesn't sound like teachers make a bad salary. Not the same as a doctor or lawyer, but I don't see how you can say "Our society has made it nearly impossible to live on a teachers salary".

Would paying more attract better teachers? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not; but that's a different question.

Re:what's the problem with a teacher's salary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... you realize your comparing average salaries for teachers with the *starting* salaries for engineers right? In other words, those average teacher salaries include teachers that have been teaching 20+ years.

Also, you also have to remember that a lot of school districts have continuing education requirements for teachers and require them to take classes that they have to pay for themselves. We're not talking a few credits at the local community college either, we're talking about classes at an accredited college that you would take to get your Master's Degree.

Since teaching tends not to be one of those 9-5pm jobs, the really only "free time" teachers have to take those classes is during the summer so so much for making extra money during the summer (maybe you can make enough to pay for the classes you're taking).

Re:Here's another possible issue

[Sique]

First: Germany fares quite low in the table.
Second: The testing sample in Germany consisted of pupils of all types of schools.
Third: It is currently discussed in Germany if separating the children at age 10 is way to early, because then the further way in life is somehow determined, and the motivation to learn is taken from everyone. People attending the Gymnasium think they are fine off anyway, because they get higher education without further effort, people at the Realschule think, fine, so they will learn a trade, no point in looking for higher math skills or developing an interest in literature. And people at the Hauptschule think, they are losers anyway, so what's the point in learning?

Re:Bfd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada:

Net migration rate: 5.96/1000
Population: 32,507,874

Pretty good score for all that.

More research is clearly required. Mostly by you.

Re:Here's another possible issue

[Calroth]

I had already sunk a few moderator points into this discussion, but I really need to put a response on here.

What I continually find is that the Chinese students in particular are very good with memorization and forumlas, but very bad at analysis and application. They can crunch numbers like nothing, but when it comes to applying that knowledge to simple real-world scenarios, they are sunk. For them, being smart is knowing a lot of facts and forulams and being able to mash them together, not being able to synthesize and apply data to the real world.

From The Sydney Morning Herald: [smh.com.au]

"Asian countries proved their mathematical and scientific dominance, especially Hong Kong/China, Japan and Korea.

Professor Masters said their performance could not be stereotyped as the result of drilling, as PISA was about problem solving, reasoning and application rather than memorising facts."

Re:Laziness

[blahplusplus]

If you want kids to get excited about higher education make sure there will be jobs for them, thats the #1 reason I know lots of people skipping higher education and going for trades, because they can't as easily be outsourced. Higher education is becoming increasingly commoditized worldwide, a higher education won't do you any good if you can't pay back the debt and can't find a job. It's all about the bottom line: Money.

Re:It all comes down to the parents.

[jp10558]

Well, one thing that is taught in all the review books etc for the standardized tests like SAT or GMAT in the math areas are stratigies.

Basically the idea is to figure out a way to quickly (say in 5 seconds) look at a complex formula or math problem and estimate the answer so you get close enough to pick the right one out of 5 choices.

I'm not good at this as I've always worked out problems, and am struggling to remember and use the various tricks to very quickly answer the questions for my upcoming GMAT.

Of course, this really is only useful if you have some question with 5 possible answers given. Which most likely will never happen in real life.