HUFFINGTON POST: …The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s PIRLS and TIMSS 2011 exams, released Tuesday, measure reading in fourth grade, and math and reading at fourth grade and eighth grade respectively. Across the board, East Asian countries occupied the upper ranks in the comparison of more than 60 world education systems, far outperforming the U.S.. Because the tests measure different groups of students from year to year, the results are best used as snapshots of performance relative to other countries at one point in time. Overall, the U.S. ranked sixth in fourth-grade reading, ninth in fourth-grade math, 12th in eighth-grade math, seventh in fourth-grade science and 13th in eighth-grade science…
The scores come after much hand-wringing on the part of the school reform movement, which has used international rankings to claim that America’s school system needs a serious overhaul if it wants future generations to compete in a global economy. Over the summer, StudentsFirst, the group run by former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, raised eyebrows with Olympics-themed advertisements that portrayed U.S. students as flabby, failed educational Olympians that don’t measure up. The ads based that portrayal on America’s rankings on the PISA, another international exam that tests students at age 15, whose most recent administration found that out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math…
But America’s poorest students aren’t doing as well. “Our most impoverished students lose ground,” said Claus von Zastrow, the chief operating officer Change the Equation, a Washington-based group that advocates for math and science education. “They were holding even with the international average in some grade levels, fourth grade, but in eighth grade, they’ve dropped below. It means they’re getting less competitive as they’re going through the school system and that’s a tragic story.”… (more)
