Obama also delivered this dismal news: "Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world."
Bill Gates Sr., co-chairman and trustee of his son's Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, used similar figures in a National Public Radio interview last month when he said, "The condition of our public education is very, very poor."
At issue is the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is given to 15-year-olds in 30 developed countries.
Obama's numbers are correct, but perhaps misleading. PISA is not designed to measure what children have learned in school. Instead, it measures how well kids apply math to real-world problems, which could be learned in school, but also at home or elsewhere.
Link to quoted article
This is not about politics. This is about the fact that someone thinks it is more important to measure what was learned in school than it is to measure whether kids can actually use what they learned and actually *think.*
Currently feeling:
more and more terrified for my child
It just means that education should occur at home even when a child attends public school. It's up to the parents to verify that kids know how to apply the info the teachers give them.
ReplyDeleteAsk me again why I homeschool.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean Erin. I'm forever trying to get both my kids to apply what they learned in school in "real world" situations. Alex just rolls his eyes at me at the grocery store when I try to get him to figure out how much we're paying for each pack of soda when they are 3/9.99 and is that price really better than the regular price of the other brand that is 3.25? Of course if you give him the actual math problem he can do it no problem!
ReplyDelete