Subscribe to our Blog
Your Child Left Behind
An article in the December issue of the Atlantic cites state-by-state research by Stanford economist Eric Hanushek to challenge many of the reasons given by educators for the poor showing of American students on international tests. It would be very interesting to see the Canadian results by province on the chart that illustrates the article. Hanushek also investigated how Massachusetts moved into first place among the states—primarily by focusing on measuring and acting on outputs rather than inputs. Although things are better in Canada related to some of the issues mentioned, they all provide food for thought despite the impression left at the end of the article by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty that we have little to learn from the American situation.
One of the sobering parts of the report cited—at least for the researchers—was the fact that when you look just at the percentage of students in each country scoring at the highest levels, the U.S. still comes out very, very poorly. I read the original report (http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/) and I’m not sure that the authors are denying the fact that there are still lots of non-school reasons why some students do poorly in school,(S.E.S, discriminatory practices, poorly educated parents) but they question why so many white students who are well-off, have educated parents, etc. are not doing performing at higher levels in the area of mathematics.
Although specific statistics weren’t available for different provinces in Canada in this report, Canada (as a country) has about 14 percent more students performing at the highest level of mathematics, 3-4% higher than Mass., but 6% lower than Finland. (I’m not sure what Taiwan and Hong Kong are doing to get such high scores, but I intend to find out!)
Interesting report.