WHETHER a teenager grasps calculus is not obviously an issue of geopolitical importance. Yet since the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000, the poor performance of American pupils in the global test has worried policymakers. Not least since Chinese pupils, or at least residents of Shanghai, are at or near the top of the class.
Some of Shanghai’s prowess is overstated. Children of poorer migrants to the city are not properly sampled, for example. America does a bit better in other international tests. Yet, on average, American teenagers trail their peers (see chart), especially maths whizzes from East Asia. Of the 69 other parts of the world whose 15-year-olds took the PISA maths test in 2015, 36 scored higher than America, 28 lower and five did about the same. “We can quibble,” said Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s first education secretary, after a batch of scores came out in 2010, “or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2i8ZjH5
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