• Mathematics scores for the top-performer, Shanghai-China, indicate a performance that is the equivalent of over two years of formal schooling ahead of those observed in Massachusetts, itself a strong-performing U.S.
These results should not be taken at face value:
So how overblown were No. 1 Shanghai’s PISA results? By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post
March 20, 2014
When the 2012 scores were released late last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors PISA, said that the schools that were used in the Shanghai sample represent the city’s 15-year-old population. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution and some China experts said that migrant children are still routinely excluded from schools in Shanghai, which is wealthier than the rest of China, but OECD stood by the results. Earlier this month, however, Andreas Schleicher, OECD deputy director of Education and Skills, told the British Commons Education Select Committee that PISA represented 73 percent of Shanghai’s 15 year olds, which is lower than the 79 percent he had said in December, according to TES Connect, a popular British education Web site. The U.S. sample, on the other hand, covered 89 percent of 15-year-old students.
Furthermore, we know that Chinese-Americans outperform academically, especially in math. If the Chinese are beating us in math, to what extent is it due to differences in curriculum, teacher training, or innate ability?
