Smart thinking on education

[unixronin]

freetrav came up with what I consider a very smart idea about how to make the US educational system (and the products thereof) competitive again.  Instead of the current navel-gazing of No Child Properly Prepared where schools are basically encouraged to teach to the standardized test and call it done, and if schools aren't meeting the standards, we lower the standards (a strategy the results of which we can all clearly see), he proposes that we treat world educational rankings as the target.  Here's his suggestion, slightly edited for clarity and continuity:

I would set the standards as follows:  Look at the world educational ranking, and require a US student to achieve at a level equivalent to the 80th percentile in the country rated #1.  Exception: for English, limit the examination to those countries where English is either official or the chief lingua franca.  For foreign languages, inspection of countries where the foreign language in question is either official or chief lingua franca.

In other words, if the South Koreans are #1 in math, a US district is deemed failing in math if the average score of its students on the South Korean measure does not come out in the 80th percentile.

I'll even go so far as to allow for 'easing in' to the higher standards - say the educational dictatorship is initiated in 2010:  In 2010, the target is 50th percentile, but rises to the 53rd percentile in 2011, 56th in 2012, and so on until it reaches the 80th in 2020.

I think he has something.

Comments

[otherbill.livejournal.com]

By these standards of measurement, is the U.S. in the 80^th or higher percentile in anything right now? Or even the 50^th, for that matter?

If so, then this approach may be viable. The school system (as a whole) has shown it can be successful in at least one subject area, and the key is just to take those strategies and approaches and apply them towards the other areas.

If not, however, then this approach is just setting an expectation without showing the schools how to meet it.

[bratling.livejournal.com]

It also begs the question of how we test to see if we've achieved the 80th (or whatever) percentile. This proposal doesn't -- at all -- avoid the problem of teaching to meet the needs of standardized tests, rather than the needs of students.

Math is (relatively) easy to test. Analysis, writing, creative interpretation ... not so much.

A significant part of the problem is standardized testing. Testing to international standards instead of local standards won't change that.