Calculus of innovation (US science scores and what they mean for the country)

[RandomGuy]

Good article.

(Posted here in its entirety to let people pick out the parts they want for quotes)


WHAT is it that American policymakers do not get about proficiency in mathematics and science at high school being one of the most important predictors of economic success—both for individuals themselves and for the country as a whole? The Chinese get it, whether in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore or Taiwan. So do the South Koreans and the Japanese. Likewise, the Swiss, the Dutch and the Finns take great pains to ensure their high schools teach mathematics and science rigorously, so that they can continue to keep their research lights burning brightly and their industrial batteries fully charged.

Nations now realise that any slowdown in the supply of technical talent can cause their industries to become less innovative and compe ive. And as innovation supplies half or more of economic growth these days, that could quickly lead to national hardship.

Of the 65 countries and economic regions that participated in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 15-year-olds from the Shanghai were top of the class in mathematics, science and reading—the three subjects tested in the triennial study that has become the yardstick for evaluating the quality, fairness and efficiency of school systems around the world.

All told, some 510,000 high-school students participated in the latest PISA test, administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Pupils take a two-hour standardised test, and then spend up to an hour filling out a questionnaire on their learning habits, background and family. The results of the 2012 test were published in December 2013. After Shanghai, four tiger economies plus South Korea and Japan occupied the next half a dozen places. Meanwhile, America continued its downward slide in the rankings, this time coming a lowly 36th in mathematics, 28th in science and 24th in reading

It is not as though America does not spend enough on high-school education. In the recent PISA test, the United States and Slovakia got roughly equal marks (481 and 482 respectively) in mathematics, but America spent more than twice as much per head ($115,000 versus $53,000) in purchasing-power-parity terms to achieve its score. The Czech Republic, with broadly similar rankings as America, spent a third as much per pupil. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland spent proportionately more.

In America’s case, the extra money did not buy better results. One in four of the country’s 15-year-olds failed to reach PISA’s baseline Level 2 of mathematical proficiency (the level at which pupils begin to demonstrate skills needed to participate in the workforce). Among the high-performing countries, only one pupil in ten failed to reach Level 2. Meanwhile, just 2% of American 15-year-olds achieved Level 6 in mathematics, the highest level of proficiency, compared with 31% in Shanghai.

Apologists say that comparing America with Shanghai is like comparing apples with oranges. A sample of high-school pupils drawn from such a diverse nation as the United States will inevitably contain a greater proportion of pupils from poorer districts with dismal schools than a sample selected from just the wealthiest part of China.

Others note that education systems based on Confucian values—such as those of South Korea and Japan as well as Hong Kong, Singapore and China itself—have long used private tutoring and crammer schools to supplement lessons learned in public classrooms. Such cultures, they say, excel at preparing students to pass tough government tests, rather than solve real-world problems.

And yet, one of the biggest weaknesses American 15-year-olds have consistently displayed in PISA tests over the years has been establishing mathematical models of real-world problems and interpreting the results. On more routine matters, such as applying formulae or extracting data from tables and charts, their mathematical competence has been better than average.

Also, China is rapidly becoming more like America than many realise or care to admit. Shanghai, for instance, is no longer an elite enclave for professional families with smart kids and dragon mothers. Home to 23.5m people, it is not only the largest city in China, but also the biggest in the world. According to the OECD, the Shanghai education authority has successfully jettisoned its traditional focus on educating a minority of high performers for top jobs in government, business and academia, and is nowadays far more inclusive. High-school enrollment exceeds 98%, with 80% of the relevant age group going on to college.

Moreover, tests carried out in a dozen rural regions of China produced results close to the PISA average. The implication is that the educational reforms pioneered in Shanghai and elsewhere are now spreading rapidly across the country. Inevitably, such reforms will make the Chinese people even more productive.

What, then, should America do to slow the dumbing down of its workforce and shore up its position as the sixth wealthiest nation in GDP per capita?

It is not easy to say. Many of the measures that work in other countries are culturally specific, and thus difficult to emulate. Finland, for instance, has achieved its consistently high PISA ranking over the years by ensuring that only the country’s best and brightest become teachers. As such, those who do so have high social status, though not necessarily high pay. As a measure of how prestigious teaching is in Finland, the New York Times reported recently that 6,600 applicants competed in 2010 for 660 primary-school preparation places in the eight Finnish universities licensed to educate teachers. In Finland, school teachers are clearly the pick of the graduate crop.

That is not the case in the United States. With its free labour market, America over-produces teachers for elementary schools, where the qualifications required to enter teacher-training school are minimal. But the country seriously under-produces teachers for more rigorous STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Unable to offer compe ive salaries and short on prestige, teaching is shunned by the best and the brightest of America's STEM graduates for careers in business, finance and research. Only 10% of the 1,200 teacher-training programmes examined recently by a government advisory body were rated high quality, with the rest requiring low or no qualifications for entry.

The obvious answer is to make teacher-training more selective. The teaching profession might then become more prestigious and effective. How to do that, though, is the difficult part. Providing teachers with better working conditions, more opportunities for professional development, and granting them greater freedom to chose what and how to teach their coursework could do much to make the profession more appealing to top-notch graduates.

Increasing pay for teachers with STEM qualifications would also help, though remuneration has never been the main attraction that has drawn talented people to teaching—as Finland's experience so amply demonstrates. Yet more market-related pay for STEM teachers would certainly increase the pool of applicants, allowing the teacher-training schools to become more selective. But when it comes to awarding merit pay, vested interests have a way of thwarting the best of intentions. In a new merit-pay system introduced recently in Florida, 99% of the teaching staff in one county got top marks—prompting one local citizen to wonder whether all the children were above average, too.

Joking aside, ensuring that all the children, not just the gifted, can participate to the best of their abilities at school is the key to raising education standards across the board. Countries that perform best on the PISA tests are ones that allocate resources more equitably between good schools and bad ones.

Canada has been particularly successful at doing this. In the most recent PISA test, it ranked 13th in mathematics, 8th in science and 7th in reading. The trick has been to move funding from the local school districts to the provinces, which then allocate resources according to a formula that takes into account a school district’s size, needs and local demographics.

That is harder to do in America, where school districts rely to a far greater extent on local property taxes. As a consequence, schools in wealthy areas tend to be well funded and those in hard-scrabble places a lot less so. Meanwhile, supplementary money from state taxes is rarely enough to make up the difference. Overall, the wealthiest school districts spend twice as much per pupil as the poorest. In Massachusetts and California, the ratio is more like three to one. This lop-sided allocation of resources traps 40% of high-school kids in districts that offer them little chance to shine.

It is not just the distorted allocation of resources that hobbles American education. An outdated curriculum, especially in mathematics, shares much of the blame for the country's poor performance on PISA tests. In numerous surveys, nine out of ten high-school students admit they are not interested in studying STEM subjects, because classes are dull, the subject matter irrelevant, and the teachers ill-prepared. Great hopes are therefore being placed by education authorities in the new “Common Core” curriculum for high-school mathematics and English language instruction. This is currently being implemented in 45 of America’s 50 states.

No question, the Common Core learning initiative embraces all the right buzz words—like “deeper learning” and “critical thinking” being taught to “fewer, clearer and higher standards”. But insiders worry that the necessary text books for the new curriculum do not as yet exist, while existing ones are wholly inappropriate. Another concern is that the teachers, lacking guidance, are likely to struggle as much as their pupils when it comes to comprehending the new material.

The anxieties do not end there. It has recently come to light that the basic aim of the new mathematics curriculum is not to raise standards all round, but to provide high-school pupils with just enough maths to meet the needs of a “non-selective college”—ie, one without courses in science, engineering or mathematics. “The Common Core deliberately leaves out major topics in trigonometry and pre-calculus,” says Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at the University of Arkansas and a former member of Common Core’s validation committee.

Students needing calculus in their first year at university—a prerequisite for studying any of the major STEM disciplines—will therefore have to take extra courses in mathematics beforehand. That is going to be a challenge for those who cannot afford private tuition. In other words, rather than increase the number of future scientists and engineers, America's new high-school curriculum will more than likely throttle the supply. Sad to say, the Common Core is an admission of defeat, not the innovative inspiration for higher achievement that many parents had hoped for.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babba...ference-engine
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I realize that this is a recurring theme with a lot of previous threads and that a lot of the usual things from the usual people will be said here.

Hopefully we can move beyond that a bit.

[boutons_deux]

"Another concern is that the teachers, lacking guidance, are likely to struggle as much as their pupils when it comes to comprehending the new material."

That's CORE problem.

The teaching profession and teachers, along with the entire public school system, have been denigrated by the VRWC/ALEC in their long-term strategy to transfer taxpayer $Bs to for-profit charter schools, aka, privatization of public utility. VRWC/ALEC campaigns to trash teachers discourages teachers and those considering teaching, so standards are lowered to attract uneducated warm bodies to teaching.

In Finland, where educational outcomes are top of the heap, only 30% of applicants to be teachers is accepted. Compare with USA, where, in my experience, Southwest Texas State Teachers College, was a well-known joke of educational establishment.

Improving education is hard enough, but when such a well-funded, secretive, pervasive, long-term anti-education strategy is destroying education, improvement will be extremely difficult.

And the Christian Taleban are in league with the VRWC to teach their fantasies as facts, further dumbing down students, esp in red states.