4 ms·

Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281

Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues. There is very good research on boosting student achievement in another charter school network, the Uncommon Schools network http://www.uncommonschools.org/our-approach/thought-leadership/teach-like-a-champion http://www.uncommonschools.org/our-approach/thought-leadersh... that produced the book Teach Like a Champion. http://teachlikeachampion.wiley.com/ http://teachlikeachampion.wiley.com/ http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470550473.html http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470... Practicing the techniques in that book is improving my own teaching as a private-practice mathematics instructor. There are a lot of stupid comments that suggest that the main disadvantage of the United States is its ethnic diversity, but the real disadvantage the United States has is low expectations all around, from the most advantaged students http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/ http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/29/look-east-young-man/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/29/lo... http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ to the least. http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf The hypothesis that "race" differences matter most in the United States educational achievement profile is thoroughly discredited, http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdiffs.pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdi... and meanwhile there is abundant evidence--for the rare American who speaks or reads any language besides English--that school systems in other countries sometimes provide a better learning environment simply by expecting more of students, http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd... including, by the way, often learning a second language just to receive school instruction or a third language as a core part of the secondary school curriculum (both of which were part of my wife's experience in Taiwan when Taiwan was still part of the Third World). If further research on KIPP and on The Uncommon Schools network continues to alleviate the effects of the de jure racism in United States public schools that survived into my lifetime, and also gives the lie to ongoing excuses for racism, so much the better. AFTER EDIT: One more point on the subject of international comparisons in education is that the TIMSS and PISA series of tests don't wholly agree in methodology, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2013/01/09-timss-pisa-loveless http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts... and hence don't wholly agree in conclusions, although the United States plainly doesn't do as well in educational achievement as its high level of spending on public schools would warrant. P.S. Every time I see a Hacker News discussion of this subject I reflect that my occupation (supplemental mathematics lessons for advanced learners in mostly suburban school districts in one of the states in the U.S. with the highest academic achievement) wouldn't exist if United States schools were really doing so well for the brightest. See my user profile for more details.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
asdfgyuiop 14y ago
Hey tokenadult, It's good to see someone that is much better read on this topic than I. You comment implies that you reject a hypothesis that I find interesting and I'd like to get your thoughts on it more directly. A blogger pointed out that American racial groups score better on PISA than their countries of origin. Asian Americans do very well compared to Asian countries, White Americans outperform every European country except for Finland, and Hispanic Americans outperform every Latin American country. Subsaharan African nations aren't included - the only real "black" country is Trinidad and Tobago, and African Americans do better than that. I am aware of the scientific weakness of the concept of race (there is a ton of diversity that is obscured by a simple label like "black" or "white"!). But I think the data can support the statement that Finland does well because it is populated by Finns - with all the cultural advantages that Finns enjoy. Whereas America has many cultures, some with a stronger evaluation of education than others. Surely a country that receives an immigration equal to 10% of its population over a few decades from a country that performs lower than the country's average on the PISA is going to see its PISA scores go down. Here are some interesting graphs from his blog: http://www.vdare.com/images/121910_ss002.jpg http://www.vdare.com/images/121910_ss002.jpg http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize/images/James_Fulford/121910_ss001c.png http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize... And yes, I know Sailer is racially obsessed and not a creditable source. But his analysis holds up to reason, and maybe we could check his numbers to make sure they are true? I do not read Sailer's blog, but I found a link back to this from a more mainstream source that I normally enjoy. I'm going to be reading through your other links. I'm browsing and there is lots of great material here.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I know Sailer is racially obsessed and not a creditable source. That's an understatement. Links to his blog and other edits inspired by his blog have been a plague on Wikipedia for years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/... Finland is officially bilingual. (The minority official language is Swedish, which is not even cognate with the Suomi language that is usually "Finnish" in English.) Because schools in Latin America, and particular in Mexico, are notoriously underperforming (the reason for that is the role of schoolteacher trade unions in national politics), it is not surprising that first-generation immigrants to the United States from the largest source country, Mexico, start out disadvantaged in school compared to native-born children from English-speaking families. But the latest PISA results look separately at the issue of how the surveyed OECD countries do in helping the least advantaged students in each country's school systems, http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf and the United States is not a conspicuously strong performer by that standard, even though the United States has a level of public school spending. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf For more information on the "race" issue, see the user bibliography "Anthropology, human biology, and race citations" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol... which links to better sources than those considered by most Wikipedians so far.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

asdfgyuiop 14y ago

Hey tokenadult, It's good to see someone that is much better read on this topic than I. You comment implies that you reject a hypothesis that I find interesting and I'd like to get your thoughts on it more directly. A blogger pointed out that American racial groups score better on PISA than their countries of origin. Asian Americans do very well compared to Asian countries, White Americans outperform every European country except for Finland, and Hispanic Americans outperform every Latin American country. Subsaharan African nations aren't included - the only real "black" country is Trinidad and Tobago, and African Americans do better than that. I am aware of the scientific weakness of the concept of race (there is a ton of diversity that is obscured by a simple label like "black" or "white"!). But I think the data can support the statement that Finland does well because it is populated by Finns - with all the cultural advantages that Finns enjoy. Whereas America has many cultures, some with a stronger evaluation of education than others. Surely a country that receives an immigration equal to 10% of its population over a few decades from a country that performs lower than the country's average on the PISA is going to see its PISA scores go down. Here are some interesting graphs from his blog: http://www.vdare.com/images/121910_ss002.jpg http://www.vdare.com/images/121910_ss002.jpg http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize/images/James_Fulford/121910_ss001c.png http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize... And yes, I know Sailer is racially obsessed and not a creditable source. But his analysis holds up to reason, and maybe we could check his numbers to make sure they are true? I do not read Sailer's blog, but I found a link back to this from a more mainstream source that I normally enjoy. I'm going to be reading through your other links. I'm browsing and there is lots of great material here.

tokenadult 14y ago
I know Sailer is racially obsessed and not a creditable source. That's an understatement. Links to his blog and other edits inspired by his blog have been a plague on Wikipedia for years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/... Finland is officially bilingual. (The minority official language is Swedish, which is not even cognate with the Suomi language that is usually "Finnish" in English.) Because schools in Latin America, and particular in Mexico, are notoriously underperforming (the reason for that is the role of schoolteacher trade unions in national politics), it is not surprising that first-generation immigrants to the United States from the largest source country, Mexico, start out disadvantaged in school compared to native-born children from English-speaking families. But the latest PISA results look separately at the issue of how the surveyed OECD countries do in helping the least advantaged students in each country's school systems, http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf and the United States is not a conspicuously strong performer by that standard, even though the United States has a level of public school spending. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf For more information on the "race" issue, see the user bibliography "Anthropology, human biology, and race citations" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol... which links to better sources than those considered by most Wikipedians so far.