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xchrom

(108,903 posts) Fri Oct 25, 2013, 09:20 AM Oct 2013

Report: American Education Isn't Mediocre—It's Deeply Unequal

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/report-american-education-isnt-mediocre-its-deeply-unequal/280827/

It’s so common to see studies about the United States’s lackluster academic performance compared to other countries, it’s barely newsworthy anymore. The American education system, the story goes, is mediocre. A new report from the National Center for Educational Statistics complicates that picture a bit. It attempts to rank how individual states compare internationally, and ends up showing a wide gap between the highest-performing states and the lowest: Massachusetts does quite well against other countries, while Mississippi, Alabama, and the District of Columbia do poorly.

The report evaluates 2011 math and science scores from two sources: the National Assessment of Educational Process, which was administered to eighth graders in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense schools; and from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which evaluated eighth graders in 38 different countries and 9 “subnational entities” (for example, Quebec and Dubai).

Only some states took the TIMMS to create the U.S. score, so for the U.S. states that did not take the TIMSS in 2011, the report used NAEP scores to predict the what the state’s TIMSS scores would have been. The researchers then used these predictions to rank the states against the other educational systems tested by TIMSS.

The average TIMSS score is a 500, and the test uses four benchmarks—low, intermediate, high, and advanced—to describe student scores. In math, two-thirds of U.S. states scored above the TIMSS average.

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Report: American Education Isn't Mediocre—It's Deeply Unequal (Original Post) xchrom Oct 2013 OP

got that right gopiscrap Oct 2013 #1

I just had our first parent teacher conference for the year. Very enlightening. liberal_at_heart Oct 2013 #2

gopiscrap

(23,761 posts)

1. got that right

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Fri Oct 25, 2013, 10:50 AM

Oct 2013

my wife has taught for 30 years in both very poor schools and very wealthy schools and she could tell you the same thing

liberal_at_heart

(12,081 posts)

2. I just had our first parent teacher conference for the year. Very enlightening.

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Fri Oct 25, 2013, 02:10 PM

Oct 2013

I have been assured by the teachers at my son's new school that Common Core Curriculum does not dictate what happens in the classroom. My son's resource English class is expected to follow Common Core. The teacher has noticed none of the students are able to keep up with the curriculum so they are backing off and slowing down. I can't tell you how good that makes me feel. And his math class is actually going back and filling in the gaps created by our previous school district. Academically this school is looking so much better than our last one and our last one was in a much more well to do neighborhood than this one. I think that may have been part of the problem. The rich schools don't want to lose funding, so they are pushing Common Core pretty hard. Schools that are used to getting by on less don't seem to covet that funding as hard. They all deserve proper funding of course. They shouldn't have to beg or push Common Core to get funding. This lack of proper funding at our new school means my son does not have an EA in general education classrooms. That sucks. Also this new school is in a more rural area so I'm not sure how serious they take bullying. My son's science teacher informed us that a couple of students have been picking on our son. He hasn't seen it first hand but has an idea of who is doing it. One thing he said that really concerned me was that he said he doesn't expect his students to rat each other out. That was a red flag for me. That kind of attitude only makes it easier for bullies to get away with what they do and makes it harder for those being bullied to go to their teachers and tell them what is happening. We desperately need more funding for our public school system, and we need a new approach for evaluating teachers and students. Get rid of Common Core and Race to the Top, and start looking at the whole child not just a sate standardized test score. Until these things happen we will continue to see a mediocre and unequal public school system.

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