As a student who attends one of the top schools in the state, I’ve always wondered how our school would compare to other schools across the U.S., and other schools around the world.
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| U.S.News |
After looking at the data Julia Ryan, a writer for The Atlantic showed on their website, I noticed that New England was one of the best areas in terms of good education. On the PISA test, the Programme for International Student Assessment, the top scoring states in the U.S. were Florida, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Although Florida is not a New England state, Connecticut and Massachusetts are were shows how good the education is in the New England area.
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| Edify |
Although these high scores can be exciting for people from New England, when we look at how the U.S. test scores compare to test scores of other countries, it’s not as good.
Out of the 34 countries that took the PISA, the U.S. was ranked 17th. That may seem not too bad at first, but when we look closer at it the test scores are rather disappointing.
There were three portions of the test that the students took; reading, science, and math. In reading the U.S. scores 17th out of 34, in science the U.S. scores 21st out of 34, and in math the U.S. scored 26th out of 34. All of these scores were below average, especially the math score.
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| Brookings |
There were many countries that did better than the U.S. but the top countries were Shanghai-China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, and Korea, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, Lithuania, Sweden, and Hungary. Do we know what these countries are doing better than us that have students achieving higher test scores?
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| theguardian |
Lorna Collier, a writer for the APA, interviewed a Harris Plucker, a psychologist and asked why he thought some students do better than others. Plucker states to Collier, “It has to be about living standards and quality of life. You start changing those and then it’s fair to expect the scores to keep slowly increasing.” What he is trying to say here is that if a student’s quality of life both inside and outside of school is not good, then their test scores aren’t going to be good either.
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| MS |
I think that if we want our students to start improving, we need to start improving their, like Plucker said, quality of life. Some ways their lives could be improved can be with just simple things can could end up affecting the person in a major way. For example, helping students who don’t have as much money as other students. If schools provided lunch for students who needed help, this may affect how the student will act in class.
As a student who attends one of the top schools in the state, I want to see our individual states and our country as a whole grow so we have the ability to do well on these tests.
American Schools vs. the World: Expensive, Unequal, Bad at Math. The Atlantic, 3
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american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/.
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Kennedy, Louise. U.S. 2015 PISA Results is an International Context. Decent PISA
Numbers, But Can Mass. Students Really Do The Math?, Edify, 9 Dec. 2016,
www.wbur.org/edify/2016/12/09/pisa-2015-mass-analysis. Accessed 4 Dec.
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Serino, Louis. U.S. scores on PISA. What international test scores reveal about
American education, Brookings, 7 Apr. 2017, What international test scores
reveal about American education. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.
Seven principles to improve quality of life. What influences quality of life
with MS and how can we improve it?, MS, 29 May 2018, www.msif.org/
living-with-ms/what-influences-quality-of-life/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.
Top PISA Country Scores. Pisa 2012 results: which country does best at reading,
maths and science?, theguardian, 2016, www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/
2013/dec/03/pisa-results-country-best-reading-maths-science. Accessed 4
Dec. 2019.
"Top 10 Highschools in New Hampshire." Best High Schools in New Hampshire,
U.S.News, www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-hampshire.
Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.
Why are student test scores down? APA, Mar. 2016, www.apa.org/monitor/2016/03/
upfront-scores. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.
Good comparison between other countries' schools and American ones. Besides wealth inequalities, what else are other countries in the world doing differently than the US?
ReplyDeleteIn other countries, schools are more strict. Many schools start teaching their students at a younger age and will use discipline as a source of training. Our schools are more lenient with our students which can be one of the reasons why the U.S.'s test scores are as high as some other countries.
DeleteDo you have any ideas for ways that American schools could improve to help with students' lives? I like the idea about helping students who are struggling financially and helping out with their school lunches.
ReplyDelete