Curriculum Matters

Last week I wrote about a study that drew some intriguing conclusions about the state of the "pipeline" of students entering math and science studies and fields. The analysis, by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University and Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University, found that the flow of students from K-12 schools to the workforce appears to be quite strong, contrary to the assertions of many policymakers today.

To the extent that students are leaving the pipeline, the authors found, they tend to be high-achieving students. In other words, young people don't seem to be fleeing those fields because of lack of ability, but because of other factors—such as that they don't find those jobs attractive for whatever reason.

Now, an organization that represents businesses, research universities, and foundations, who have a major interest in maintaining the "STEM" pipeline, is offering a critique of the study's methodology and conclusions. The Business-Higher Education Forum, in a paper made available to its members, says the loss of high-performing students in STEM was more likely explained by the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000—not by college or businesses not doing enough to keep them.

"Students rationally voted with their feet as jobs vanished from an imploding sector of the economy," the BHEF says. Recent data, they say, shows an upswing of interest in engineering and computer science studies in recent years.

The BHEF, in examining the data in the Salzman/Lowell study, also asserts that it judges STEM in isolation, and people in other studies/careers tend to abandon those interests at similar rates. But a broader issue the study doesn't address, says BHEF Executive Director Brian Fitzgerald, is that STEM-related talents, particularly in technology, are increasingly demanded by businesses that, strictly speaking, have not been considered "STEM"-oriented in the past. He cites the growing need for STEM talent in the insurance industry, as one example. The business reps the BHEF works with talk often about the shift away from a manufacturing economy, and how important science- and math-related skills are becoming in their workplaces. The study doesn't account for that, he says.

"Across fields, more will be demanded," Fitzgerald told me. "Every major corporate sector is undergoing a shift, with technology at its core."

I contacted Salzman, who responded to BHEF's points. He acknowledges that the dot-com bust may have affected students' career choices, but says that ultimately proves the study's point: that STEM choices are market-driven. "I'm not sure [the pipeline is] 'broken,' if students choose to leave a field that is in decline," he wrote in an e-mail.

Salzman also says that, contrary to the BHEF's critique, the authors are not saying that top-achieving students avoiding STEM simply because companies aren't making those jobs attractive enough. The key point is that students are responding to what they know of job market conditions— and that it's not a matter of them not being academically gifted enough.

For instance, Salzman, who has studied labor markets extensively, says his research has shown that mid-level and senior engineering workers voice satisfaction with their careers, overall, but are concerned it won't be a good or stable a job in the future.

"The decline in retention from college to first job might also be due to loss of interest in STEM careers, but alternatively, top STEM majors may be responding to market forces and incentives," Salzman said by e-mail. "We tried to be very clear that there are number of possible explanations, and that the key point is that enrollments are sensitive to market conditions. This, then, would be entirely consistent with the [BHEF's point about dot-coms]. ... In fact, in terms of IT, we make that very case in a couple of earlier papers."

He also says when he and Lowell have written on this topic in the past on a similar theme, they've asked critics to provide data backing up the claim that demand for STEM jobs outstrips the supply of qualified talent. No such data has emerged, he said.

I'll invite readers to offer their own analysis of this debate, which—no matter what you come down—surely reflects one of the most important education-meets-labor market questions out there today.

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It might not be as opaque as a Kremlin shake-up, but knowing the exact reasons for the ouster of China's education minister is something of a guessing game, with national leaders saying little publicly about the reasons for his removal. Zhou Li was relieved of his post by the standing committee of the National People's Congress and replaced by his deputy, Yuan Guiren, according to news reports.

American leaders, of course, have looked with curiosity and more than a little bit of anxiety in recent years at China's rapid economic expansion and the improvements in its schools. But China Daily, a government-run publication, says that there was widespread dissatisfaction, at least in political circles, with the rate of progress. The article describes Zhou as "unpopular." It also notes that he was the former mayor of the city of Wuhan, where the university has been roiled by a bribery scandal. Zhou, however, has never been implicated in that matter, the story says.

The New York Times notes that Zhou served at a time when demand for education at all levels, including universities, was dramatically increasing in China, and that the nation has struggled to keep up. Low literacy and lack of access to education also remain major problems. At the very least, the removal of Zhou is a reminder of the enormous pressure China faces to meet the needs of its student population and create schools and universities capable of producing more qualified workers.

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One of the voices to weigh in recently on where U.S. schools stand internationally is that of Yong Zhao, a professor at Michigan State University who was born and raised in China. Zhao, in a new book published by the ASCD, draws upon his own experiences in the Chinese education system and argues that much of the U.S. angst over whether we're losing "competitiveness" on the global stage is misplaced. American policymakers, he says, are drawing the wrong lessons from the growing economic might of nations like China—and becoming overly enamored with high-stakes testing, to our peril.

Zhao observes, as others have, that Chinese officials are refashioning their education system to adopt some American-style features, namely less emphasis on high-stakes admissions tests and more promotion of critical-thinking skills and independent projects. One of the more interesting changes he cites is the government's decision in 2008 to give 68 Chinese colleges the freedom to admit or reject students on their own criteria, placing less emphasis on the gaokao, or national college entrance exam.

The author disapproves of what he sees as the United States' growing fixation on testing and the "accountability" measures of the No Child Left Behind era. One of his chapters is titled "Myth, Fear, and the Evolution of Accountability," which should give you a taste of his point of view. Here's an excerpt:

"Clearly, American education has been moving toward authoritarianism," he writes, "letting the government dictate what and how students should learn and what schools should teach. This movement has been fueled mostly through fear—fear of threats from the Soviets, the Germans, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, and the Indians. The public, as any animal under threat would, has sought and accepted the action of a protector—the government."

Pretty strong language. Zhao goes on to praise what he sees as the strengths of the U.S. education system, such as its diversity, which he says breeds innovation and allows it to bring about and respond to changes in the American economy. He also describes American education as a system of "second chances," in which students who struggle initially have many chances to correct their course, seize upon a talent and prosper. (Presumably unlike other nations, where students are directed onto an academic track on the basis of test scores and kept there.) The United States needs to find ways to replicate these strengths, he says.

Zhao is by no means the first scholar to caution that fears of the United States falling behind educationally are overblown. If you've had a chance to read Zhao's work (the ASCD has published some excerpts online), are you persuaded by his reasoning?

Photo of students at Beijing's Fourth Secondary School, April 2007, by sevans for EdWeek.

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I've been backlogged with a couple assignments recently, so I didn't have time to give my impressions of "Two Million Minutes: A 21st Century Solution," a film that debuted in Washington late last week. I attended the premiere. The crowd included a lot of business representatives and education-policy types, though the big-ticket draws were probably the Rev. Al Sharpton and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The unlikely duo have moving through the talk-show and public-appearance circuit, talking about the need to improve American schools, among other things. They came in support of the documentary, which is a sequel to a similarly themed 2007 film.

Both men addressed the audience after the showing, and they directed some good-natured jabs at the other. Said Sharpton, while musing about politics making strange bedfellows: "When you roll over on the bed one morning and Newt's on the other side of you, it can be a little traumatic."

In the spirit of journalistic objectivity (I reported on the film's release last week), I'll refrain from writing a review. I'll just make some general observations, and invite the comments of others who've seen the film, or its predecessor.

Like the first "Two Million Minutes," the film makes the argument that U.S. students are performing at a mediocre level, at best, in math and science, and that this cannot stand, given the growing economic and educational might of nations like China and India. Unlike the earlier film, this one makes that case through a profile of a single school—BASIS Tucson, a charter school in Arizona—and scaffolds out from there. BASIS is depicted as a high-performing, pioneering school that has succeeded despite initial community opposition and relatively meager state financial support, which caused all sorts of problems for the founders in the beginning and creates continued budgetary woes to this day. The kids at BASIS are not math-and-science drones. They're presented as smart and engaged—with interests ranging from dance and roller derby to art and fire-juggling (I kid you not). One key difference in the school's approach appears to be that very advanced concepts in math and science and other subjects are integrated as far back as middle school. (The school serves grades 5-12.) The curriculum is demanding; the filmmakers interview students who struggled to keep up after arriving from lesser schools, but who eventually made it.

The film features interviews with the recently retired chairman of Intel, Craig Barrett, and former Arizona schools superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan, both of whom argue that the current educational system is not cutting it. It also includes some direct and indirect jabs and teachers' unions and teachers' colleges; at one point a narrator refers to the education "bureaucrats" who "keep our children locked in the 20th Century."

In one segment, Barrett, who has a Ph.D. in materials science, and who and taught at Stanford University for 10 years, remarks that he wouldn't be allowed to teach in a California public school without going back and picking up certification. Keegan, who was also an adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, praises Teach for America. One of the BASIS school's founders talks about how she rewards teachers not only with financial incentives for student performance on AP tests, but also with the promise that they'll be given autonomy in the classroom. She praises the College Board for creating a "community of Advanced Placement teachers," held to similarly high standards.

I suspect that reaction to "Two Million Minutes" will depend on viewers' willingness to buy a premise. Actually, two of them: 1) That the United States' education system is falling behind those of high-performing nations (not everyone buys that argument); and 2) that the story of what ails the United States' schools, and the answer to how they can be improved, can be told through the story of a single school. The filmmakers obviously believe it can. Here's a school, as they present it, that through determination and a willingness to fight through the constraints of the public school establishment, produces some of the world's best K-12 students.

Other viewers could be more skeptical. For instance, I wonder about the reaction from principals and teachers at other top-notch public schools, whose curricular approach, teacher corp, and governance is much different than the Arizona charter's. They might read the message in the film's trailer—"The world has outpaced us, and the solution is right here in America"—and respond: "The solution is in America. And not only at BASIS Charter."

There are probably plenty of EdWeek readers who will be sitting through showings of "Two Million Minutes" at schools, colleges, and other settings in the weeks and months ahead. Here's an invitation for them to play film critic, on this blog.

Photo courtesy of NASA.

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Readers of EdWeek will recall the hubbub over a 2007 film that warned of U.S. schools losing their competitive edge to those in China and India. Now a sequel to that documentary, which takes a different approach to the topic, is coming to the big screen.

It's called "Two Million Minutes: A 21st Century Solution." Unlike the first film, which profiled individual students in the United States, China, and India, this documentary singles out a top-notch charter school serving students of modest means, which nonetheless challenges them in math and science. In my story for EdWeek, I interview the film's executive producer, entrepreneur Robert Compton, who describes his motivation for making the film, and its message.

The first film drew criticism from some viewers who said it overhyped China's and India's educational gains, while not giving U.S. schools enough credit. Compton doesn't sound like he's backing away from that premise in his new film, but rather taking it in a new direction.

The film's trailer will give you a taste of what it's about.

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When the title of the article is “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School,” it’s safe to assume that the author is not buying the prevailing line about the United States’ shortcomings in those subjects, and their alleged consequences for society. Mark Slouka, in a piece in published in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, derides the continuous “ritual” of pointing out new crises in math and science, a campaign that he says is being pushed along by corporate America with uncritical assistance from politicians, colleges and universities, and the news media.

Slouka is not arguing that math and science are not important. His point is that business and political leaders have become so intent at revamping those subjects in the name of job creation, economic prosperity, national security and so on, that they ignore that vital role that the humanities play in encouraging students to think critically and function as active, intelligent members of a civic society. “The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what me might call democratic values,” Slouka said. “There is no better that I am aware of.”

About the current wave of interest in improving students’ math and science skills, he writes:

"Typically, the call to arms comes from the business community. We’re losing our competitive edge, sounds the cry. Singapore is pulling ahead. The president swings into action. He orders up a blue-chip commission of high-ranking business executives (the 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education, led by business executive Charles Miller, for example) to study the problem and come up with “real world” solutions.

Thus empowered, the commission crunches the numbers, notes the depths to which we’ve sunk, and emerges into the light to underscore the need for more accountability. To whom? Well, to business, naturally. To whom else would you account? And that’s it, more or less. Cue the curtain. The commission’s president answers all reasonable questions. Eventually, everyone goes home and gets with the program.”

But it’s a shortsighted point of view, Slouka argues:

“The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult—to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization—not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be."

The humanities “complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties,” he says. Grounding students in the humanities moreover, is “value—and cheap at the price,” Slouka adds. “This is utility of a higher order. Considering where the rising arcs of our ignorance and our deference lead, what could represent a better investment?”

Slouka is, of course, hardly the only observer to warn of the downside for U.S. schools focusing on core academic subjects without giving sufficient time to history, literature, social studies, and the arts. I recently reported on the work of some scholars who believe that the roots of innovation and creativity in math and science rise are made stronger by the cultivation of arts and music skill.

Slouka’s point is different: not that the humanities are important because they build a math and science workforce, but because they build the individual, and build a better democratic society. What do you make of his arguments?

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As nations around the globe, including the United States, attempt to crawl out of a deep recession, the evidence suggests they would be wise to invest in education because of the strong economic payoff it brings across their societies and to individual workers, a new report says.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, makes that case in a new report, "Education at a Glance,” which offers comparisons across countries in various educational and economic indicators.

Part of the reason that encouraging students to stick with K-12 education and pursue higher education, the authors say, is that despite some glimmers of an economic rebirth, unemployment is likely to remain high for some time. If recent high school graduates or college students can further their training, rather than seeking out a job that may not be there, that’s a sound investment, according to the report. And OECD’s data show a strong payoff from education: A male worker who obtains a college education, on average, earns $186,000 more in gross earnings benefits over a lifetime than a worker who does not, in the nations studied.

How does the United States compare? For American males who obtain a college education, the difference in the lifetime payoff is $367,000, according to the OECD, the highest gross earnings payoff among the industrialized nations studied. It’s $229,000 for females.

The OECD, which is based in Paris, notes that while governments invest significant public funding in college education, private investment exceeds public spending in this area in most of the nations studied. Students in the United States are asked to pay a greater amount, about $90,000, in direct and indirect costs, such as lost earnings, than students in any other country evaluated. Tuition fees in the United States are also the highest of any country, the report says. In the United States, tuition costs, as opposed to lost earnings, make up a significant chunk of that private investment.

The report is not meant to provide a “policy prescription,” Andreas Schleicher, the head of indicators and analysis for OECD's education division, explained in an e-mail.

“What it shows is that the net present value of the total public economic benefit of higher education is significantly larger than the total public economic costs,” he said. “We infer from this that public investment in higher education bears high returns, particularly in countries where high private costs may be the bottleneck for expanding higher education participation."

That does not mean the OECD is telling these countries that they should spend more on higher education, he added.

On the whole, there has been a strong growth worldwide in the share of people seeking something beyond simply compulsory education, the OECD reports. The growth has been especially “dynamic” in the area of early-childhood education. In 1996, 41 percent of children 4 or younger were enrolled in educational institutions, the report says. In 2001, the proportion had risen to 71 percent. The authors note in that in Sweden, the share went from 40 percent to 98 percent, “virtually universal.” The United States ranks relatively low in its rate of growth in this area, though that is partly the result of the large gains made by other nations that had very little early-childhood education, Schleicher explained in an interview. Early-childhood enrollment rose from 34 percent in the United States in 1996 to 50 percent today, in the age group studied, the OECD says (table C.1.1).

The report also notes the discrepancies in how nations spend money on education. The United States, for instance, spends relatively little on teachers’ salaries, despite its high overall spending on schools. The United States instead spends a lot on capital investments in education and compensation for nonteaching staff, relatively speaking, the OECD says. While below-average teacher salaries and above-average teacher working time push spending down, longer student-learning hours and below-average class sizes bring it up, the report finds.

I've simply touched on a few highlights here. When you've looked at your favorite indicator, give me your read on the data.

(Photo courtesy of NASA)

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I know that you’ve read a lot of accounts, in EdWeek’s pages and elsewhere, of Singapore’s prowess in math and science, not to mention vocational education. But this profile of Singapore's education system in the Miami Herald is definitely worth the time. It's written by Andres Oppenheimer, best known for his coverage of Latin America. His story is a reminder (for journalists as well as education policy types) of the power of a salient detail.

Singapore’s obsession with education “even shows up on its dollar bills,” the author notes. “While U.S. and Latin American currencies portray images of national independence heroes, Singapore's 2-dollar bill—the most widely circulated since there is no smaller denomination —shows students in a classroom listening to a professor, with a university in the background. Underneath, there is just one word, 'Education.'''

Later, the author makes this observation about the heavy pressure in Singapore for students to succeed in education (though whether this feature is something countries should emulate is a matter of opinion): “U.S. expatriates here like to say that while America is a guilt-driven society, Singapore is a shame-driven society: Parents here dread others seeing their children doing poorly in school.”

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One of most common objections that gets lobbed at efforts to create national standards is that they will require state and local officials to give up control over curriculum to a centralized, federal bureaucracy.

Yet that perception is not reality, according to a study from Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

The report released last week, put together for Fordham by researchers from Michigan State University, added some potentially important insight and context to ongoing discussions of national, or common academic standards. The majority of 10 countries with national standards studied "incorporate elements of flexibility and are not based entirely on a top-down approach," the report says, but rather allow for heavy doses of regional and local authority.

We summarized some highlights from the report in this week's issue. A couple other points in the study worth noting:

—As the multistate, "common-core" standards effort rolls ahead, the study offers some of the clearest suggestions I've seen on the potential future role of the nation's premier test of student academic performance, NAEP. It says: "National assessments (including open-ended questions) should be administered at grades 4, 8, and12 every two years. Most countries do not test every year in every grade. Given that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) already tests U.S. students in grades 4, 8, and 12, we suggest retaining that pattern and testing every other calendar year. ... Eventually the 12th grade end-of-high-school assessment could become a high-stakes test with implications for college admissions, course assignment, and employment (as in Singapore, South Korea, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, and India). Such an assessment, of course, would have to be given annually."

As I read that, NAEP retains a very strong role in the scenario described by the authors. They also emphasize the importance of open-ended questions as promoting teaching and learning of reasoning and analytic and communication skills. While some European and Asian countries have shifted toward multiple-choice questions, partly because of cost, the authors also say that other nations they studied place a strong emphasis on open-ended items. Interestingly, in almost all the countries studied, teachers were expected to read and score those test items as part of their work responsibilities and for professional development.

—In a foreword to the report, Chester Finn, Mike Petrilli, and Amber Winkler mostly applaud the current "common core" venture, though they also say it will have to change to succeed. "As yet there’s not a durable organizational structure for the standards-setting and standards-revising process, much less one to operate an ongoing assessment system based on these processes. It’s all ad hoc. And that’s a big problem that needs to be fixed in short order lest the whole effort collapse under its own weight."

They go on: "Someone, or something, must 'own' these standards. That means enlisting first-class content experts, educators, and laypersons to develop them. Keeping them up to date and relevant. Adding other subjects."

How relevant are the experiences of other nations to a U.S.-based "common core"? And are the Fordham officials correct in their breakdown of what's needed in the time to come?

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The United States trails most industrialized nations in the amount of public spending on younger children, according to new data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. This spending increases, however, as children get older, and the U.S. system outpaces other developed countries in resources channeled toward students in the 6-11 and 12-17 age groups.

While overall U.S. public spending on children ranks among the highest across the OECD, child poverty rates in the United States stand at 21.6 percent, nearly twice the OECD average, the report says. Public support for children, as measured in the study, includes cash benefits and tax credits for families, education, and childcare. It does not include public spending on health, according to the OECD report.

Educational attainment in the U.S. compares poorly to the average among those nations, it finds. Additionally, this country has higher rates of infant and child mortality and of low birth weight than the OECD average, the report finds.

To OECD officials, the message from the data is that the U.S. should spend more on young children and disadvantaged teenagers. "Despite the United States' strong research and policy tradition in the area of child well-being, too many American children are still behind," Simon Chapple, the co-author of the OECD report, said in a statement.

It's probably worth noting that, when OECD has released reports in the past, not all researchers have agreed with the Paris-based organization's policy ideas. Some observers, like Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, have said the organization oversteps its bounds and strays into subjectivity when it issues policy recommendations in reports that put forward statistical data.

What's your view—are the OECD's latest findings on the money?

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The academic talents of South Korea's students are well-documented. But a recent story by NPR takes a look at the some of the nation's super-elite teenagers, at the Daewon Foreign Language High School. So lofty are the school's reputation and academic standards that it's sending students to elite American colleges, including Ivy League campuses. The story notes that in South Korea, it's not uncommon for students to move to the United States, attend prep school for a while, and then seek admission at American schools. Daewon allows them to skip one step, apparently.

In the course of reporting past stories on South Korean education, I've also heard of parents in that country moving to the United States to allow a son or daughter to attend high school, on the path to a U.S. college (space is limited in top South Korean universities.) I would guess that many countries have schools that are the equivalent of Daewon, or at least aspire to be that. They push students very hard, and market themselves to parents as preparing their sons and daughters for entry into the American higher education system (though maybe not into the Ivys). Can you think of any other schools outside U.S. borders that fit this model?

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The United States is by no means the only country where battles erupt over how rigidly schools should adhere to the teaching of native languages in the classroom. In Malaysia, the government has decided that from now on, math and science classes will be taught in Malay—with English getting pushed out the classroom door.

The change apparently represents one of a number of reversals of a language policy in Malaysia, a former British Colony. After the nation's independence in 1957, Malaysian officials originally moved to have math, science, and other courses taught in Malay, according to this story in the Associated Press. But in 2003, the government changed course, and decided to teach math and science in English. One reason they did so back then: They were worried about their students keeping up with students from a nearby academic power, Singapore. (Most other subjects in Malaysia continued to be taught in Malay, according to the article.) In Singapore, by the way, the official language is Malay, though English is "the key language of communication," and many residents speak and write a second language—typically Mandarin, Tamil or Malay, according to the government.

The new decision to revert to Malay came about after protests from linguists and residents, including those in rural parts of the country, where the use of English is less common. They argued that students' scores on national tests were suffering because of their lack of familiarity with English. According to the story, ethnic Chinese and Indians in Malaysia also wanted to have math and science taught in their native tongues.

This is one of the first instances I've seen in which language policy in math and science is being treated separately from studies in other subjects. It's probably a reflection of how much attention those subjects are now receiving in the international sphere, and how nations are struggling to balance their desire to gird students for the global job market against issues of national pride and the desire to preserve and promote the use of a native language.

UPDATE: Education officials in nearby Indonesia say they aren't inclined to follow suit and stop using English as the language of instruction in math and science classes. "No way we will drop it," one of them is quoted as telling the Jakarta Globe. A major difference between the two countries appears to be that while Indonesia has moved since 2006 to have more students take classes in English, only a minority do so in math and science, according to the story. So it appears that the use of English in that country will continue to grow.

The official language in Indonesia, you ask? Bahasa Indonesia (a modified form of Malay), with English, Dutch, and local dialects, including Javanese, also spoken.

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When American leaders publicly fret over the challenges posed by international economic and educational competition, few of the United States’ foreign rivals inspire as much consternation as China, with its burgeoning free-market system and, of course, its enormous population—1.3 billion-citizens strong. But in truth, the international community has relatively few hard facts about how China's students measure up, because the Asian power has not had its scores released on major, high-profile international assessments, like PISA and TIMSS, as other nations have, including the United States.

But soon, a fuller picture of China could emerge, albeit incrementally.

Officials who run PISA, or the Program for International Student Assessment, expect at least one major Chinese jurisdiction, Shanghai, population 18 million, to have its test scores on that exam released in December of 2010, the next time country-by-country results on the exam are unveiled, said Andreas Schleicher, a top official with the assessment. Schleicher is the head of the indicators and analysis division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris, which oversees PISA.

That would mean Shanghai's scores would come out as nation-by-nation results in math, science, and reading are unveiled. Schleicher, however, said it was too early to know if the Chinese municipality's scores would be released in all subjects, or just some of them. I caught up with Schleicher at a forum for U.S. business and state leaders on international education, held in Washington, where he made a presentation about PISA trends. (Education officials from a pair of top-performing countries, Finland and Singapore, also delivered remarks, which I wrote about this week.)

In addition to Shanghai, a number of Chinese provinces have had students assessed on PISA, though they haven’t released scores. Three provinces in China have so far completed the PISA 2006 assessment; three provinces from middle China and three provinces from western China are currently undergoing the process, adhering to standard OECD procedures and technical requirements, Schleicher said in a follow-up e-mail. Hong Kong and Macau, special administrative regions of China, have taken part on PISA and released scores; Hong Kong also takes part in, and does very well on, TIMSS.

Schleicher told me he did not believe Chinese authorities' were reluctant to release PISA results because of concerns about low performance; instead, he attributed their stance to concerns about the exam detracting from the attention schools and students place on the nation's internal, high-stakes tests, which determine high school and college admission. In fact, Schleicher predicted that the scores from Shanghai, and, if they’re eventually put forward, Chinese provinces, could prove impressive. "We will all be surprised when the Chinese results are released, by their high performance," Schleicher told me.

Obviously, you could argue that Shanghai is no more representative of China's overall education system than some American behemoth, like New York or Los Angeles, is of the broader U.S. system. Even so, I'll bet many followers of international tests—educators, economists, and the like—will be keen on any insights the PISA results can provide.

Photo: Sevans/Education Week-File

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I sat in on an enlightening forum on international education yesterday over at the National Press Club. Two of the featured speakers were from academic superpowers: Ms. Low Khah Gek, the director of curriculum, planning, and development for the Ministry of Education in Singapore; and Timo Lankinen, director general of the National Board of Education in Finland. They spoke to a crowd of state officials and corporate leaders, who were curious about what we could learn from these high-flying nations.

Ms. Gek and Mr. Lankinen offered interesting details and thoughts about finding, keeping, and rewarding high-quality teachers, and about high-stakes testing. Some aspects of these two systems were already familiar to me, but it was worth hearing these two speakers' firsthand accounts, which you can read more about in my EdWeek story.

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From Guest Blogger Stephen Sawchuk

We had rather an interesting plenary at the CCSSO conference on student testing yesterday on international comparisons, and what the United States can learn from other countries' education systems using exams like the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

Here's one way of slicing the PISA data that to me seems much more illuminating than the "rankings" of countries that seem to pop up everywhere in education debates these days: The PISA data can be broken down to show where a particular country's strengths in a given assessment area are.

So, for instance, French students are good at identifying science issues and using scientific evidence, but their content knowledge of earth and space science and physical systems isn't as strong. The Czech Republic is the exact opposite: Its students possess pretty good knowledge about science content, but they're not as good at identifying science issues or using knowledge about science. The United States wasn't particularly impressive at either.

"In every aspect, the challenge [for the U.S.] is getting deeper to the next level of knowledge," said Andreas Schleicher, the head of the indicators and analysis division of the OECD Directorate for Education, who was presenting.

There was a lot of chatter about Finland, which doesn't really use standardized tests for accountability, has an extremely strong teaching force, and experiences little variation between the best and the worst schools.

But one interesting thing happened when a woman named Sirkku Kupianinen, a researcher with the Center for Education Assessment at the University of Helsinki who was serving on the panel responding to Mr. Schleicher's comments, gave her remarks.

Ms. Kupianinen said she felt awkward at all the attention her country's been given, particularly since Finland's system runs almost entirely on trust and is nearly devoid of the external accountability benchmarks used in other countries "I feel like the whole country has been raised to a miracle based on the results of this one test," she said about PISA.

What's more, despite Finland's strong showing in math on the test, academics in her country have been raising some fairly strong concerns about the level of math education among students. "They say it's going down like the tail of a cow," she said. (Really, she did say that, and man, what a great expression. I'm officially appropriating it.) "Then PISA comes out, and math professors just stopped believing in PISA as ... a measure of what Finnish children can do," she said.

And her concern? That countries will start trying to encourage "teaching to the test" for PISA, by modifying curricula and so forth to resemble that test's tasks, which require students to synthesize knowledge. Publishers in Germany, she said, have already released books of "PISA-like" items.

Hmm, teaching to the test, fear of one test serving as the determinant of quality. Where have I heard this before?

Apparently international benchmarking carries its own set of challenges. Some food for thought for Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the folks working on the common core/common assessment.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Those who can't get enough international school data may be interested in a newly released study that provides comparisons of academic performance, instruction, teacher training, and school spending in the Group of Eight Nations, including the United States. Released by the Institute of Education Sciences, the report pulls together a lot of previously published information collected through three international exams, PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS, as well as other sources.

Those interested in particular content areas, such as reading, math, and science, could find some of the study's data intriguing. Here's a taste:

In reading, the United States had the highest percentage of 4th grade teachers who reported spending more than six hours per week on instruction, higher than England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Scotland. Sixty-eight percent of teachers reported meeting this threshold in the United States, compared with just 6 percent in Germany. (See Figure 14) Anybody out there who's studied this data who can explain these numbers?

In Russia, which scored higher than the United States on the 4th grade international reading test, PIRLS, only 28 percent of teachers reported spending six or more hours on reading instruction—though a large percentage, 60 percent, said they devoted at least 3-6 hours to the subject.

There are also breakdowns of time spent by teachers in math and science professional development; the academic performance of native-born students and immigrants; teacher salaries; and the frequency of behavior problems, by country, along with many other pieces of data. You can read the full study here.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)