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There isn't really a "problem" in American education, in the sense that it's unusually bad compared to other countries. Looking at PISA scores, Latin American

There isn't really a "problem" in American education, in the sense that it's unusually bad compared to other countries. Looking at PISA scores, Latin American / European / Asian students in the USA do as well or better than in their mother countries. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_5a.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_... http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_5e_1.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_...

mercer 11y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you per sé, but it is possible that some crucial stuff is learned in the 15 years before these tests were administered? The reason I'm asking is that purely based on a 'hunch', I feel that the most useful years of my education were before the age of around 12-13 and after the age of 20. I have no solid evidence to support this, just my experience and that of my peers. Edit: to try and support my hunch: in my country 12-13 is the age where the 'sorting hat' is applied and you move to middle/high school (physically different location, on of three levels based on earlier performance), and 20 is generally around the second or third year of 'higher vocational training' or 'university' where the non-motivated are sorted out and (generally) the ones who are going to finish college are left. It's also the point where classes become less general, multiple-choice, massive (300+ classes sometimes) and instead become more focused and interesting.
tokenadult 11y ago
Those PISA charts don't say what you are summarizing them as saying. It used to be that people would cite a certain blog post to make the same point you are making here, but the data don't back up the blog author either. I have lived in another country, and the students there do better than their cousins who study in the United States.
- fiatmoney 11y ago
  What do they say, then? Because I read, for instance, the highest-scoring Latin American nation (Mexico) as having a lower mean (424) than US Hispanics (478). Other PISA components show similar results.

mercer 11y ago

I'm not disagreeing with you per sé, but it is possible that some crucial stuff is learned in the 15 years before these tests were administered? The reason I'm asking is that purely based on a 'hunch', I feel that the most useful years of my education were before the age of around 12-13 and after the age of 20. I have no solid evidence to support this, just my experience and that of my peers. Edit: to try and support my hunch: in my country 12-13 is the age where the 'sorting hat' is applied and you move to middle/high school (physically different location, on of three levels based on earlier performance), and 20 is generally around the second or third year of 'higher vocational training' or 'university' where the non-motivated are sorted out and (generally) the ones who are going to finish college are left. It's also the point where classes become less general, multiple-choice, massive (300+ classes sometimes) and instead become more focused and interesting.

tokenadult 11y ago

Those PISA charts don't say what you are summarizing them as saying. It used to be that people would cite a certain blog post to make the same point you are making here, but the data don't back up the blog author either. I have lived in another country, and the students there do better than their cousins who study in the United States.

fiatmoney 11y ago
What do they say, then? Because I read, for instance, the highest-scoring Latin American nation (Mexico) as having a lower mean (424) than US Hispanics (478). Other PISA components show similar results.