The U.S. Department of Education has just released it’s latest ranking of international education systems (Program for International Student Assessment – “PISA”) and performance of U.S. students just continues to deteriorate on both absolute and relative terms.
Perhaps it’s time to have a real conversation about the complete failure of “Common Core” and the idiocy of allowing teachers’ unions to hold our children hostage while hiding behind ridiculous contracts that grant tenure after 6 months and make it impossible to fire underperformers. Just a thought for the incoming Trump administration.
The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss summed up the problems nicely:
There are many reasons children aren’t learning anything during the long hours they spend in government schools. Sometimes, their teachers don’t show up to work because they’re out on the teachers union picket line demanding taxpayers pick up the tab for their plastic surgery. Other times, students are forced to sit in classes led by totally unqualified teachers who will never leave because they’re protected by tenure.
For every disgraceful teacher, though, there are tons of good ones who are doing their best. The problem often isn’t teachers’ incompetence, it’s that they’re forced to instruct kids using rubbish. Look at the Common Core State Standards, which were adopted initially by 46 states because their federal education funding depended on it. The math is backwards, confusing, and, as the National Review so suitably dubbed it, “dumb.” The reading standards fill students’ minds with filth in the form of raunchy books and with yawn-inducing “informational texts.”
Our schools no longer teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Rather than be taught how to think and problem-solve, children are thought what to think and how to feel. All these money-making and money-spending schemes tend to sound nice, of course, but they inevitably fall flat.
Now the results….in math, the U.S. ranked 40th in the world and 31st out of the 35 developed countries that provide data to the study…somewhat less than ideal.
Meanwhile, nearly 30% of the 15-year-olds in the U.S. were found to rank in the bottom two (of 5) proficiency tiers.
Unfortunately the story isn’t much better with reading and science proficiency. The U.S. ranked 24th in the world on the study’s “reading literacy scale”…
…and 25th in science.
And, of course, performance has been deteriorating for the past decade.
In conclusion, this about sums it up:
Here is the full study from the U.S. Department of Education:
My feelings are hurt; gubbermint must do something – a gold star would help.
Forward!!——->with The Great Regression!
Maff is hard.
Have computers ruined our ability to think?
No, “U.S. kids” are not getting dumber. The number of dumb Third World immigrants is growing, along with the number of home-grown morons of certain demographics. Case closed. White kids are as smart as they ever were but thanks to this influx of sludge they are not reaching their potential.
Segment them by demograghic groups: white, black, hispanic, south asian and east asian then compare the scores to countries in which these demographics are dominate. Also Math may compare well but reading using latinized alphabet vs pictographs and other such as Russian seems a sttetch too far.
With the Muslim invasion of European countries well under way, it will be interesting to watch what happens to their scholastic scores as their as their schools adapt to them (at least the former white or predominantly white ones).
@SouthernRafe The very thing you just said, shows that apart from racist you are actually really really clueless about science. There is no such thing as race for the human animal. Moreover, the US education often relies on immigrants whose knowledge of math is far better than those in the country (white or nonwhite matters little). Even you must have heard of the stereotype that Asians are good at math. Singapore is top and the people there are hardly “white”.
Our schools used to be the best, the envy of the world.
Then the Federal government took over supervising them.
Trump’s pick for Education Secretary has her own private army. I’m sure you have heard of it (Blackwater) ,yes THAT Blackwater which is run by her brother (VT believes he is just a empty hat). A complete whack job, heavens to Betsy.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/11/25/trumps-betsy-will-stun-you-maybe-to-death/
Gee I am so impressed with this logic and reasoning. After seeing the Left arm every government agency and Obama using the government as his private gestapo this is suposed to worry Americans?
After Obama and his abuses nothing scares me but Mooochelle.
My wife and I are 67 years old. We suffered through government schools back in the 50’s and 60’s. We home schooled because we didn’t want our children to suffer as we did. It’s not difficult, and really takes only a few hours a day.
From my experience, the government schools have always been bad. But I do think they have reached a new level of incompetence. They are so nearsighted, they can’t see the obvious: Human beings have been doing math/arithmetic for centuries – we don’t need another ‘system’ to teach them (Common Core). The reason they don’t seem to learn as well is because the curriculum is filled with crap like transgender sensitivity, and sports.
Then too there is the problem of ‘dilution’ by Blacks:
http://www.truthjustice.net/politics/blacks-and-whites-with-equal-educational-attainment-differ-in-cognitive-ability/
To quote the above article: “As can be seen, using this method Blacks with a graduate degree have a level of verbal intelligence indistinguishable from that of Whites with a junior college degree. Blacks with a four-year degree are roughly on par with Whites who never went to college at all.”
What’s even worse are the Somali’s and sub-Saharan who have 80 IQ’s – and we’re importing them by the boat load. Hell, the only shoe shine jobs left are at airports.
Interesting that Israel ranks about equal to the US on those charts.
Israel is loaded with Arabs, among other things.
bw says:
December 15, 2016 at 10:18 am
Israel is loaded with Arabs, among other things.
___________________
I knew someone was going to say that. Okay, so Israel has 20% arabs. The US has 17% blacks. Arabs are much smarter than blacks. The US also has lots of asians that Israel lacks. I bet Israel’s school system is better than the US’s too. I guess those jews aren’t so smart after all.
It’s the Ashkenazi Jews that have high intelligence. The Jews inhabiting Israel are mostly Mizrachim and Sephardic. Average IQ in Israel is 95.
FWIW
“The United States IQ average worldwide is ranked at number 24 with an average IQ of 98.”
http://brandongaille.com/list-average-iq-by-country-and-american-states/
Arabs are so smart that they screw goats when they can’t matty their first cousins like they do in Portland or Seattle.
Common Core math really is dreadful. My son is in the 4th grade, and I help him with his math homework every day. They teach the “old” methods along with the CC methods in parallel; the kids have to know both.
He can breeze straight through the tried and true algorithms for solving multiplication and division; it’s the Common Core shit he has trouble with. Hell, I’m an engineer and I have to study the examples for a minute to figure out what they’re trying to do. It’s really way too convoluted and unnecessary.
The “old” way built this civilization, why couldn’t we just leave it at that?
It’s sort of likes Phonics vs Whole Language for teaching reading.
Phonics works for everyone, Whole language works for some.
I taught my children to read using phonics before they entered kindergarten, the same as my parents did for me.
I think where teachers really fall down is applying the concept to reality.
One of the reasons I went into the “alternative math” program, is that I wanted and NEEDED to know how to balance the check book and calculate interest payments. Standard math classes did not offer that. Advanced math concepts such as quadratic equations, need real life applications to solidify the concept. Otherwise it becomes boring and useless, unless you want to become an engineer.
Academia is always seeking “new” methods rather than improve them. I went through the “new” math in the 60s. My parents had to correct the damages the teachers did.
Anyone who was skilled at math ignored the teachers and their “new” methods and learned through the same methods that had been employed for decades.
The education system no longer works and hasn’t since the 60s. But the snowflakes get participation trophies.
Math is never useless, even if you don’t have an immediate application for a given method. Rather, you might consider how to apply a given procedure to your problems. Or even invent something useful using math you don’t need to balance a checkbook.
Statistics are really useful in daily life, although most people don’t use or even understand them. Do you consider probabilities before buying insurance? That is, have you insured your old clunker car for collision, replacement value and comprehensive damages? You might be overpaying for coverage. Do you have all your money in one bank? You might be running a risk of failure / confiscation (“bail-in”) that you would avoid otherwise.
Just today we got a small windfall. I asked my wife to put it in the credit union rather than WF, to spread out the risk that it might “disappear” overnight with no warning. She’s doing it today, so that we might retain it tomorrow.
Dumbing down with commie core ,vaccines,and Clinton news network cnn