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U.S. students' math scores plunge in global education assessment

36 points by beejiu 3y ago

cjdrake 3y ago
"31 countries and economies maintained or improved upon their 2018 math scores, including Switzerland and Japan. Countries that did so shared some common characteristics, including shorter school closures during the pandemic and fewer impediments to remote learning, per the report." Who could have predicted that lockdowns and Zoom class would have a negative impact on education? I'm shocked.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  The “fewer impediments to remote learning” doesn’t seem to support your position. Seems like Japan did a better job of zoom class than we did.
svaha1728 3y ago
AI will only make this worse. Even my son, 12, assumes I’ll be out of a job soon because of what he heard on YouTube.
helpfulclippy 3y ago
I’ve seen several articles now about an increase in private and home schooling after the pandemic. I don’t recall the numbers quoted, but my local district’s budget shows a significant drop in enrollment in a lot of its schools in 2021, which it has not yet recovered from… I wanna say it’s over 30% at some elementaries, even though the city population has grown, and school boundaries have remained similar. Taking out a significant chunk of the better-off kids (who tend to score higher in the first place) seems like it’d contribute to a drop in average scores.
- spamizbad 3y ago
  I might be wrong, but based on my understanding is that PISA also covers private schools, although that may only apply outside the US perhaps? I say this because many studies that compare US public vs private education student populations will sometimes cite differences in PISA scores. Students who are home schooled are excluded, but that population (even in the US) is far too small to move the average (It peaked at 5.22% during the pandemic I believe)
sct202 3y ago
The reading scores look good, stable with pre-covid and ranked 9th in the world. This might be a curriculum related issue. I've heard from friends that they have to send their kids outside of school tutoring in math now because their local public schools decided to keep everyone at the same math level and their children are bored out of their minds.
- yellowpencil 3y ago
  See Cambridge, MA as an example. https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/cambridge-schools-are-divided-over-middle-school-algebra/ https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/camb...
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    I am not sure why so many people are against mathematics in school. Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees. I would think they would realize the importance of math. This trend is really upsetting. My daughter is a baby but i am already looking into math circles and alternative mathematics curriculums since us math education was bad before this trend of gutting mathematics education.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees Are their kids in public school? In some areas, the rich and educated have completed separated from public education, which leaves poor, overworked parents prey to well-meaning but clueless activists.
      - yellowpencil 3y ago
        In public schools the only way to "vote with your wallet" is to relocate, the next best option which is less disruptive to a family is to opt out of the school system if the means are available. What other options are there?
spamizbad 3y ago
I'm curious: Why did the US improve with reading while the OECD dropped? And why did everyone's math score fall in 2022?
solardev 3y ago
Here's the full list comparing math, reading, and science scores by country: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/OECD_2022_PISA_Results_Comparing%20countries%E2%80%99%20and%20economies%E2%80%99%20performance%20in%20mathematics.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/OECD_2022_PISA_Results_Comparing%2... ---- Anecdotal side story: I grew up in Asia (30 years ago) and went through primary school there before moving to the US. The country I was raised in had and has some of the highest international math scores in the world. But I always wondered why that mattered at all. Every weeknight after school, I was forced to attend something called "Kumon", which is a Japanese torture method that puts kids in dank basements for multiple hours a day, doing hundreds of rote math problems in harsh florescent light. https://www.kumon.com/how-kumon-works https://www.kumon.com/how-kumon-works I did that for several years in lieu of having any after school social life or what the West would consider a "childhood". Eventually I just couldn't take it anymore and started getting all wrong answers on purpose, then tearing out random pages, then throwing entire booklets out the window, much to my proctors' and parents' chagrin. Eventually I just refused to do any more, period, and would rip up every booklet and break every pencil they gave me. All that really taught me was to absolutely hate math and question authority. It contributed to significant depression and I dropped out of high school as a suicidal teenager. Eventually I moved to America and got a GED (high school equivalency diploma). I finished the test in a third of the time and scored the highest math scores that exam center had ever seen (they told me), ending in the national 99th percentile. I shrugged. What the US considered high school equivalent I had learned in elementary and middle school. I wasn't proud of it, far from it... it all seemed like a pointless dog and pony show. I never really used math again after that, even after 20 years of programming. Maybe some arithmetic here and there for bills and to split a Venmo dinner. That's about it. Why was there such a high focus on such a pointless yet painful skill? I know one statistician in my life, but nobody else I know uses anything past basic algebra in adult life. Most never even use arithmetic. Meanwhile, traditionally underappreciated humanities like English reading and writing have profoundly shaped who I am as a person, in terms of developing perspective, ethics, and empathy. Being able to write fluently in English -- better than some native speakers -- has led to more job and career and romantic opportunities than math ever did. Maybe it's not a bad thing we're falling behind in math. The US still has one of the biggest economies (the wealth gap is different), and maybe that is in part because of our cultural focus on individual differentiation and a diverse curriculum, not a tunnel vision focus on rote STEM problems? Maybe kids shouldn't waste time on esoteric math that they'll likely never use in adult life anyway. It's like cursive, some aristocratic holdover from a time before everyone had smartphones, Google Sheets, etc. Just my two trauma-informed cents.
calmlynarczyk 3y ago
The Economist did an article about this as well and pointed out that math scores were already sliding downward in the US prior to 2019. They argued that COVID is only partly to blame for the decrease. https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pandemics-toll-on-schooling-emerges-in-terrible-exam-results https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pande...
Always_Anon 3y ago
I wonder how much of the drop in scores had to due with the West's wholesale importation of barely literate third worlders for years. Countries like Japan, Korea, Latvia, and Hong Kong that do not import anyone saw rises in their scores.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  This refutes your hypothesis: > While the U.S. scored below the OECD average in math, it managed to score above the OECD average in reading and science.
  - Always_Anon 3y ago
    The US did not import the third world like Germany and France did. Hypothesis not refuted.
- blitzar 3y ago
  > barely literate third worlders yet they score better than you on tests
  - Always_Anon 3y ago
    No they don't. What issue do you have with that line? English is my second language.
francisofascii 3y ago
> PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy. So when they compare results from different years they are not really comparing the "same" 15-year-olds. To me, that is less meaningful than when they track the learning progression of the same group of students over a time period.
sirspacey 3y ago
This isn’t that surprising. The math curriculum we are familiar with works nowhere. Most countries with better scores rely on tutors.
cashsterling 3y ago
I have written some of my thoughts on this topic before on HN (like in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36650010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36650010) In short.... The math curriculum my kids have experienced in California and Colorado is village idiot stupid. Math course need to be based upon well written books... student need print copies of the book. The books need to have well written and designed lessons with numerous fully worked out examples, and need to use good print quality with an appropriate amount of limited color to the engage the reader. Books do not need to change every 2 years at the K-12 level... the books i used back in the late 80's, early 90's were fine... the math literally hasn't changed at all since then. Students need to be encouraged to take written notes during class. Students need a lot of consistent homework practice with gradual increase in concept complexity/difficulty (ranging from "plug & chug" to challenging word problems and physics/engineering/real-world examples) and proper spaced repetition. A "proper" rate of increase in difficulty and the amount of spaced repetition is critical to optimize kids confidence in their mathematical capability and their enjoyment of the topic... if they think/realize they are actually good at math, the may enjoy and appreciate it more. In both CA and CO the math classes: - have no book, or an e-book which is dog shit bad. - my kids were encourage just to listen and pay attention but not take notes. - only had like 2-5 homework problems every other night. - lesson plans seemed to make many illogical leaps in topics and subject matter and material difficulty... I'm especially looking at you, California. Literally copying the Kumon math curriculum would be better. I'm begin to believe that the degradation of US math education is a "long-game" plan of "nefarious actors" to rot the US's long term technical capability from within. Also considering how little teachers are paid, etc.

36 points by beejiu 3y ago

"31 countries and economies maintained or improved upon their 2018 math scores, including Switzerland and Japan. Countries that did so shared some common characteristics, including shorter school closures during the pandemic and fewer impediments to remote learning, per the report." Who could have predicted that lockdowns and Zoom class would have a negative impact on education? I'm shocked.

tstrimple 3y ago
The “fewer impediments to remote learning” doesn’t seem to support your position. Seems like Japan did a better job of zoom class than we did.

svaha1728 3y ago

AI will only make this worse. Even my son, 12, assumes I’ll be out of a job soon because of what he heard on YouTube.

helpfulclippy 3y ago

I’ve seen several articles now about an increase in private and home schooling after the pandemic. I don’t recall the numbers quoted, but my local district’s budget shows a significant drop in enrollment in a lot of its schools in 2021, which it has not yet recovered from… I wanna say it’s over 30% at some elementaries, even though the city population has grown, and school boundaries have remained similar. Taking out a significant chunk of the better-off kids (who tend to score higher in the first place) seems like it’d contribute to a drop in average scores.

spamizbad 3y ago
I might be wrong, but based on my understanding is that PISA also covers private schools, although that may only apply outside the US perhaps? I say this because many studies that compare US public vs private education student populations will sometimes cite differences in PISA scores. Students who are home schooled are excluded, but that population (even in the US) is far too small to move the average (It peaked at 5.22% during the pandemic I believe)

sct202 3y ago

The reading scores look good, stable with pre-covid and ranked 9th in the world. This might be a curriculum related issue. I've heard from friends that they have to send their kids outside of school tutoring in math now because their local public schools decided to keep everyone at the same math level and their children are bored out of their minds.

yellowpencil 3y ago
See Cambridge, MA as an example. https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/cambridge-schools-are-divided-over-middle-school-algebra/ https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/camb...
- ecshafer 3y ago
  I am not sure why so many people are against mathematics in school. Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees. I would think they would realize the importance of math. This trend is really upsetting. My daughter is a baby but i am already looking into math circles and alternative mathematics curriculums since us math education was bad before this trend of gutting mathematics education.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees Are their kids in public school? In some areas, the rich and educated have completed separated from public education, which leaves poor, overworked parents prey to well-meaning but clueless activists.
    - yellowpencil 3y ago
      In public schools the only way to "vote with your wallet" is to relocate, the next best option which is less disruptive to a family is to opt out of the school system if the means are available. What other options are there?

spamizbad 3y ago

I'm curious: Why did the US improve with reading while the OECD dropped? And why did everyone's math score fall in 2022?

solardev 3y ago

Here's the full list comparing math, reading, and science scores by country: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/OECD_2022_PISA_Results_Comparing%20countries%E2%80%99%20and%20economies%E2%80%99%20performance%20in%20mathematics.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/OECD_2022_PISA_Results_Comparing%2... ---- Anecdotal side story: I grew up in Asia (30 years ago) and went through primary school there before moving to the US. The country I was raised in had and has some of the highest international math scores in the world. But I always wondered why that mattered at all. Every weeknight after school, I was forced to attend something called "Kumon", which is a Japanese torture method that puts kids in dank basements for multiple hours a day, doing hundreds of rote math problems in harsh florescent light. https://www.kumon.com/how-kumon-works https://www.kumon.com/how-kumon-works I did that for several years in lieu of having any after school social life or what the West would consider a "childhood". Eventually I just couldn't take it anymore and started getting all wrong answers on purpose, then tearing out random pages, then throwing entire booklets out the window, much to my proctors' and parents' chagrin. Eventually I just refused to do any more, period, and would rip up every booklet and break every pencil they gave me. All that really taught me was to absolutely hate math and question authority. It contributed to significant depression and I dropped out of high school as a suicidal teenager. Eventually I moved to America and got a GED (high school equivalency diploma). I finished the test in a third of the time and scored the highest math scores that exam center had ever seen (they told me), ending in the national 99th percentile. I shrugged. What the US considered high school equivalent I had learned in elementary and middle school. I wasn't proud of it, far from it... it all seemed like a pointless dog and pony show. I never really used math again after that, even after 20 years of programming. Maybe some arithmetic here and there for bills and to split a Venmo dinner. That's about it. Why was there such a high focus on such a pointless yet painful skill? I know one statistician in my life, but nobody else I know uses anything past basic algebra in adult life. Most never even use arithmetic. Meanwhile, traditionally underappreciated humanities like English reading and writing have profoundly shaped who I am as a person, in terms of developing perspective, ethics, and empathy. Being able to write fluently in English -- better than some native speakers -- has led to more job and career and romantic opportunities than math ever did. Maybe it's not a bad thing we're falling behind in math. The US still has one of the biggest economies (the wealth gap is different), and maybe that is in part because of our cultural focus on individual differentiation and a diverse curriculum, not a tunnel vision focus on rote STEM problems? Maybe kids shouldn't waste time on esoteric math that they'll likely never use in adult life anyway. It's like cursive, some aristocratic holdover from a time before everyone had smartphones, Google Sheets, etc. Just my two trauma-informed cents.

calmlynarczyk 3y ago

The Economist did an article about this as well and pointed out that math scores were already sliding downward in the US prior to 2019. They argued that COVID is only partly to blame for the decrease. https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pandemics-toll-on-schooling-emerges-in-terrible-exam-results https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pande...

Always_Anon 3y ago

I wonder how much of the drop in scores had to due with the West's wholesale importation of barely literate third worlders for years. Countries like Japan, Korea, Latvia, and Hong Kong that do not import anyone saw rises in their scores.

dehrmann 3y ago
This refutes your hypothesis: > While the U.S. scored below the OECD average in math, it managed to score above the OECD average in reading and science.
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  The US did not import the third world like Germany and France did. Hypothesis not refuted.
blitzar 3y ago
> barely literate third worlders yet they score better than you on tests
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  No they don't. What issue do you have with that line? English is my second language.

francisofascii 3y ago

> PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy. So when they compare results from different years they are not really comparing the "same" 15-year-olds. To me, that is less meaningful than when they track the learning progression of the same group of students over a time period.

sirspacey 3y ago

This isn’t that surprising. The math curriculum we are familiar with works nowhere. Most countries with better scores rely on tutors.

cashsterling 3y ago

I have written some of my thoughts on this topic before on HN (like in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36650010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36650010) In short.... The math curriculum my kids have experienced in California and Colorado is village idiot stupid. Math course need to be based upon well written books... student need print copies of the book. The books need to have well written and designed lessons with numerous fully worked out examples, and need to use good print quality with an appropriate amount of limited color to the engage the reader. Books do not need to change every 2 years at the K-12 level... the books i used back in the late 80's, early 90's were fine... the math literally hasn't changed at all since then. Students need to be encouraged to take written notes during class. Students need a lot of consistent homework practice with gradual increase in concept complexity/difficulty (ranging from "plug & chug" to challenging word problems and physics/engineering/real-world examples) and proper spaced repetition. A "proper" rate of increase in difficulty and the amount of spaced repetition is critical to optimize kids confidence in their mathematical capability and their enjoyment of the topic... if they think/realize they are actually good at math, the may enjoy and appreciate it more. In both CA and CO the math classes: - have no book, or an e-book which is dog shit bad. - my kids were encourage just to listen and pay attention but not take notes. - only had like 2-5 homework problems every other night. - lesson plans seemed to make many illogical leaps in topics and subject matter and material difficulty... I'm especially looking at you, California. Literally copying the Kumon math curriculum would be better. I'm begin to believe that the degradation of US math education is a "long-game" plan of "nefarious actors" to rot the US's long term technical capability from within. Also considering how little teachers are paid, etc.