Is it time to revise the old canards about United States math and science education?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=SlowMindThinking]
The “sweeping statements about what US kids believe” is actually from an NSF study on adults. Read the first statement in your own quote.
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Thank you, SlowMindThinking.

I was doubtful the US Department of Education through NCES published statements about student or adult beliefs in pseudoscience. There may be a religious connection to those beliefs and the Department of Education steers clear of personal spiritual belief systems for obvious reasons. I would be interested in a link from the Department of Education (NCES) with those statements. After poking around I didn’t find anything.

Therefore, I did make the assumption that the statements about what the American populace believes and understands about science are from a Wall Street Journal editorial and drawn from the IEA /TIMSS study since the OP’s statements followed with the AIR review of IEA/TIMSS data and a different conclusion.

The National Science Foundation, which is not part of the US Department of Education, does conduct attitude and understanding surveys. Many of the statements seem to be based on the survey. NSF

22

Alternative medicine is a broad category. I have benefited from acupuncture in the past, yet am perfectly aware that homeopathy is steaming BS.

23

[QUOTE=straight man]
I don’t actually know why you wrote a second paragraph that says the precise opposite to the first, but I assume I’m just missing something there.

In America, a good education is not the only way to do well at life – there are tons of low-level jobs that offer an acceptable living with next to no education. It’s much harder to become wealthy, but you can probably get by. Compare that to less developed countries, where education can potentially be the sole difference between starvation and wealth. Even among intellectuals, that makes a massive difference in how hard you work.
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Color me confused. You seem to be saying that you would expect the general population in Botswana to be better educated than the general population in the US, or the Netherlands, or Japan. Education is a luxury for a subsistence farmer in a country with few resources. A good education might ensure a higher quality of life in the long run, but often kids must quit school in order to help the family survive the current year.

I don’t see how my paragraphs contradict each other. The OP is basically said, “hey, the US did pretty well compared to all these other countries, so all that stuff about the US educational system being poor is wrong.” I tried to say, “No, the report does not say that. The report says that in absolute terms, we are appallingly poorly educated. The report also says we are solidly midpack, even when the group to which we are compared includes countries that either have extremely poor educational systems or do not attempt to educate most of their population.”

The final conclusion of the report on which the OP is based is the opposite of the OP’s conclusion. The report acknowledges that the general US population is poorly educated. It analyzes how we compare to other countries. It’s final conclusion is that the US is “solidly midpack”, and well behind the east Asian countries. If you read the report, they clearly view their results as indicating we really do have a problem, and we need to stop trying talk about it and do something. They don’t explicitly call attention to the fact that the comparison group of countries is dominated by countries not known for their educational system, but it is implicit in their written conclusions.

24

[QUOTE=SlowMindThinking]
The final conclusion of the report on which the OP is based is the opposite of the OP’s conclusion. The report acknowledges that the general US population is poorly educated. It analyzes how we compare to other countries. It’s final conclusion is that the US is “solidly midpack”, and well behind the east Asian countries. If you read the report, they clearly view their results as indicating we really do have a problem, and we need to stop trying talk about it and do something.
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Again, appalling is a relative term. Also, I certainly didn’t argue that we shouldn’t make strident efforts to improve the educational system in the United States or elsewhere.

The question remains, how do we go about doing so? If nothing else, it’s clear the wholesale importation of an education system from a lot of other nations doesn’t stand to benefit us a great deal. For me, that was a major shift in the debate.

If the United States schools had the absolute worst value in education outcomes compared to our spending and the only place to go in that value was up, there would be a rational argument to just, “stop talking and do something,” as you’ve so cleverly and uniquely implored. As it turns out, we don’t have a singularly bad educational system, and if just, “doing something,” at considerable cost and effort gives us the educational system of the UK, Norway, or the Netherlands, then apparently we won’t have accomplished much as all.

Should our strategy for educational improvement be revolutionary or evolutionary? I think that this study makes a strong argument for the latter.

25

[QUOTE=SlowMindThinking]
The report says that in absolute terms, we are appallingly poorly educated. The report also says we are solidly midpack, even when the group to which we are compared includes countries that either have extremely poor educational systems or do not attempt to educate most of their population."

[/QUOTE]

The report says absolutely nothing of the kind.

We are not “midpack”; the TIMSS results show us up to 15th out of 44 or so in 2003 at the 8th grade level, and significatly ahead of the mean. 4th grade results are similar.

Second of all, on an absolute basis, we are anything but “appallingly poorly educated.” A both in terms of the percentage of students with the same or similar knowledge, and in terms of the knowledge demonstrated, our students know quite a lot at the 8th grade. The fact that other countries’ students know more does not make us appallingly anything.

26

[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
The report says absolutely nothing of the kind.

We are not “midpack”; the TIMSS results show us up to 15th out of 44 or so in 2003 at the 8th grade level, and significatly ahead of the mean. 4th grade results are similar.

Second of all, on an absolute basis, we are anything but “appallingly poorly educated.” A both in terms of the percentage of students with the same or similar knowledge, and in terms of the knowledge demonstrated, our students know quite a lot at the 8th grade. The fact that other countries’ students know more does not make us appallingly anything.
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The reason I put quotes around the words “solidly midpack” is because I quoted those words from the conclusion. That same paragraph goes on to say we are well behind the countries with whom we compete economically.

The words “appallingly poorly” are mine. The actual report says something along the lines of “our educational system isn’t working”, and lists various other studies about the quality of American education. It also lists some of the results from the NSF “A Nation at Risk” report, which were included in the OP. When 50% of the American public does not know how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun, and 25% does not know that the Earth indeed orbits the sun (I do not believe any measurable fraction adopted a General Relativistic attitude that there is no meaning to such statements), and that 58% can’t calculate a 10% tip, I think the words “appallingly poorly” apply.

27

[QUOTE=threemae]
Again, appalling is a relative term. Also, I certainly didn’t argue that we shouldn’t make strident efforts to improve the educational system in the United States or elsewhere.

The question remains, how do we go about doing so? If nothing else, it’s clear the wholesale importation of an education system from a lot of other nations doesn’t stand to benefit us a great deal. For me, that was a major shift in the debate.

If the United States schools had the absolute worst value in education outcomes compared to our spending and the only place to go in that value was up, there would be a rational argument to just, “stop talking and do something,” as you’ve so cleverly and uniquely implored. As it turns out, we don’t have a singularly bad educational system, and if just, “doing something,” at considerable cost and effort gives us the educational system of the UK, Norway, or the Netherlands, then apparently we won’t have accomplished much as all.

Should our strategy for educational improvement be revolutionary or evolutionary? I think that this study makes a strong argument for the latter.
[/QUOTE]

If you go merely from the numbers in the report, you would say that we should try importing Singapores, or some other country’s schools. The difference in scores is rather large. No, it is very large.

However, I do not believe that will work. The conclusion of the report includes an interesting anecdote. One person witnessed the test administration in South Korea and here. Students were selected at random from a group in cafeterias in each country. Those selected in South Korea were cheered for getting to represent their country. Those in America were laughed at.

Until being smart is valued by the society at large, I don’t think much will improve. I think it is fair to say that much less emphasis is placed education in this country than in South Korea or Singapore. Kids grow up wanting to be athletes, or actors, or models; not CEOs or scientists. Movie stars are the mouth pieces for issues. The smart kids are almost always nerdy and unpopular in our movies. Scientists are almost always eccentric in the extreme, Buckaroo Bonzai was about the only one reasonably studly that I can recall. I don’t know about you, but I did my best to hide how quickly I learned in school. There was a very real danger of getting beat up, and I endured enough ridicule as it was. I don’t know what we can do about it.

28

Ah, this old saw. One thing I’m not so sure is covered in these studies is whether they are comparing the general population or only the current students. In some countries, not all people in the 6-18 year old range are in school. The poorer students may well be working in sweatshops, while only the brightest are able to continue on to a high school equivalent and take part in studies.

I believe that industry wants people with math and science skills, and these are the cries we hear when they actually have to compete for a limited supply.

Now I happen to have one of those Math degrees that we so often hear are in short supply. Soon as someone starts offering some money I might think the skill is in demand and valuable. I would, and have, recommend to any young person looking for a career to try something that pays a living wage, like alternative medicine, faith healing or astrology.

29

And wouldn’t it be a good thing if nobody ever calculated a 10% tip again?

30

[QUOTE=Plan B]
You’re serious, right? :frowning:
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Completely. There are always going to be variations in natural talent, drive, and discipline, not to mention intellectual/emotional growth rates. I’d love to see the current North American K-12 education model heavily customized so each child progresses as quickly as he or she can handle and slower-paced development means moving a child to something useful but low-pressure until he or she finds something they can actively pursue. Standardized NCLB testing is useless; draining resources away from teaching promising students to spend it on heel-dragging dullards. Given the time and resource limitations, at best a teacher can try to get weaker students to memorize test answers by rote.

I suggest doing away with generalized educations, beyond 3R basics (i.e. after Grade 2-ish) and start steering students into customized programs that meet their interests and talents. The well-rounded student is an anachronism, kids may as well start going narrow but deep early on in what suits them. Of course, this is going to be massively expensive, but c’est la vie.

Some large segment of the population is always going to be made up of drones who want to do their jobs and watch their sporting events and drink their beer and be left alone. Let 'em. They’re not hurting anyone.

31

All this shows, of course, is that students in some other countries are better than us at taking tests.

Which is perfectly natural, considering those countries put a great amount of emphasis on standardized tests.

The students here in Cameroon can do math that we don’t see until college. They can recite their science textbooks word for word.

But give them something requiring critical thinking, and chances are all you’ll get is a blank stare. In America, we teach our children to be creative, risk-taking, and flexible. This is why we succeed in so many areas. The creative, risk-taking, flexible person is going to win over the guy who does well on tests every time.

32

I hope this post doesn’t run afoul of the moderators’ view of what is or isn’t a zombie thread, but the analysis of the 2007 TIMSS data was released yesterday:
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_1.asp
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_3.asp

The nations highlighted in bold performed statistically significantly better than the united States at a p-value of 0.05, the nations highlighted in pale were worse.

Certainly, room for improvement, but on the whole we’re not in bad company.

If pressed, I’d attribute this improvement to No Child Left Behind and predict that NCLB will be a comparatively bright spot in Bush’s legacy.

33

The results of both are due to psychological effects such as the placebo effect rather then any physiological mechanism. There is a great book that goes into the subject in detail called Snake Oil Science. The author is a statistician whose job is to analysis scientific studies to determine if the results are statistically meaningful. He has an entire chapter on single blind acupuncture tests (Double blind is impossible, and single blind difficult in any type of physical treatment). The interesting thing was that there was no statistical difference between those that got the real treatment and those that got the placebo (which consisted of pressing and turning metal tubes, but no needles). There was a hugely significant difference between the group that thought they got the treatment and those that thought they did not. It’s a good read that covers the latest research into how the placebo affect works and how it can be blocked and compensated for as well as a review of the state of science when it comes to Complementary and alternative medicine.

In a democracy it does matter to some extent. If 90% of the people believe that homeopathic medicine is more effective than conventional medication, they will vote for politicians who shift research funding to match, as one example. You don’t need a population of scientists, but it would be preferable to have a population who is scientifically literate.

Jonathan

34

Missed the edit window, so just ignore my last post.

I agree that, if effective, NCLB should increase standardized test scores. To me the question remains if that should be our primary educational goal.

Jonathan

35

This is somewhat my take on it.
If you take U.S. math/science scores as a whole of the population sure we probably lag behind other countries. But in reality do you want an entire population of math and science aces?
Now if you took the top 5% of the U.S. scores I would put those up against any other country to meet or exceed their scores. The US is dominant along with a few other countries in the intelligenge of our best and brightest. And even that small slice of our populations best and brightest can be thousands and thousands of people.

36

Can anyone provide a link to actual sample evaluation questions?

37

Some correct answers:

Either 365.242 or 365.256 days, depending on whether you measure based on the position of the sun or against the fixed background of stars.

The earth doesn’t “go around” the sun. Both orbit a common center of mass.

38

Yes, those are available from the TIMSS website:

Not overly difficult stuff.

39

Have to throw out an old story of mine…

I taught college math…and had a significant number of foreign students from all over the globe. One was a woman (18ish) from Japan. She showed up after a week to drop the class. I prodded her to see if it was language issues or maybe need a tutor etc…no…she wanted to drop.

As she was leaving, she stopped, turned around and said “Americans are supposed to be horrible at math but many seem to understand the material so far…”

LOL. Not everyone follows the stereotypes and the stereotype might not be true conversation followed.

:slight_smile:

40

Of course since the center of mass is within the radius of the Sun, both statements are correct.

Jonathan