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Terrific: America Lags Behind 31 Other Countries in Mathematics
Townhall.com ^ | September 22, 2012 | Daniel Doherty

Posted on 09/23/2012 12:43:28 AM PDT by Kaslin

I understand that we are more than $16 Trillion in debt and unemployment has been above eight percent for 43 straight months, but education reform is a moral imperative that cannot wait:

We have a crisis in our schools. This is not a new revelation, but it needs to be stated regardless, particularly at the start of another academic year and at a time when America is struggling to compete in the very fields — math, science, technology — that are defining the global economy. Consider that U.S. high school students graduate with just a 32 percent proficiency rate in math, according to a Harvard study — a figure that puts America behind 31 other countries, including Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Canada.

Wow. The United States spends more on education per pupil than other country on earth, except for Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway. And yet, according to the Harvard study cited above, “U.S. high school students graduate with just a 32 percent proficiency rate in math.” This is disgraceful. Sadly, however, it gets worse:

The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.

So how is it possible we are spending massive sums of money on education yet student achievement remains stagnant? Perhaps one reason is because taxpayer dollars are increasingly going to fund teachers’ pension funds -- not educating children. Case in point: As Katie reported last week, the city of Chicago might be a microcosm of all that is wrong with the US public education system. Indeed, according to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, “by 2016 the state will spend more on pension contributions than education funding.” Every thoughtful citizen with an ounce of moral fiber in their bones should be outraged by that statement. Even worse, the average teacher salary in the Windy City is $76,000 – and yet, somehow, the high school graduation rate barely exceeds fifty percent. In short, how can America compete in a global economy if the greatest, most prosperous nation in the world can’t even educate its own citizens?

There is a solution to this crisis. We must increase competition. Period. For instance, even in Chicago -- a city controlled by the teachers unions -- charter schools have created real hope for thousands of American children. The graduation rate in these kinds of schools (which are non-union, by the way), is 76 percent. And these teachers make substantially less money than their unionized counterparts. Do people actually believe this is just a coincidence? When families are given more options -- and teachers are held to higher standards -- everybody benefits. We need to wake up.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: math; mathranking; mathscores; ranking
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1 posted on 09/23/2012 12:43:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

I believe if you broke the US statistics up...into states...we’d have twenty states very high up in the competition level with various countries. This attitude of continuing to act like it’s a national problem is a joke. Let’s see the state numbers.


2 posted on 09/23/2012 12:46:48 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: Kaslin
If they could do math would the USA be 16 Trillion in debt?

It is a matter of basic grade 5 math that two exponents (debt to GDP) that diverge cannot work.

3 posted on 09/23/2012 12:47:46 AM PDT by verklaring (Pyrite is not gold))
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To: Kaslin

Has the US ever been a leader in high school math?


4 posted on 09/23/2012 12:49:13 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: pepsionice

you can not go by states against other countries, unless the other countries go by regions in their countries


5 posted on 09/23/2012 12:52:35 AM PDT by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Kaslin

The American Left needs stupid voters. And the Teacher Unions provide them.


6 posted on 09/23/2012 1:03:09 AM PDT by UnwashedPeasant
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To: Kaslin
Terrific: America Lags Behind 31 Other Countries in Mathematics

I bet half them countries got bad grammar and the other 80% are so bad at geology they couldn't find Finland on a map of South America.

7 posted on 09/23/2012 1:08:44 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: Kaslin

Not really true. Some of those countries might be more comparable to states based on their size. And some may have complete national control of their schools, vs. our more state-by-state model here.

There are several different kind of rankings of graduation rates at this page about halfway down. I’ll post the high school graduation rates. They appear to be all over the map by liberal/conservative standards. Both California and Texas are almost dead last. None of this is measuring what the kids actually knew when they graduated though.

http://voices.yahoo.com/state-education-rankings-graduation-rates-high-6357074.html

State Education Rankings: High School Graduate or Higher

1. Minnesota (91.2%)
2. Wyoming (90.9%)
3. (tie) Alaska (90.6%); Montana (90.6%)
5. New Hampshire (90.4%)
6. Utah (90.3%)
7. Vermont (90.3%)
8. Iowa (89.7%)
10. Hawaii (89.5%)
11. Washington (89.4%)
12. Maine (89.3%)
13. (tie) Kansas (89.0%); South Dakota (89.0%)
15. (tie) North Dakota (88.9%); Wisconsin (88.9%)
17. Colorado (88.6%)
18. Massachusetts (88.3%)
19. Connecticut (88.2%)
20. Oregon (88.0%)
21. Idaho (87.8%)
22. (tie) Maryland (87.6%); Michigan (87.6%)
24. (te) New Jersey (86.9%); Ohio (86.9%); Pennsylvania (86.9%)
27. Delaware (86.7%)
28. Virginia (85.8%)
29. (tie) Illinois (85.7%); Missouri (85.7%); Indiana(85.7%)
32. Oklahoma (85.0%)
33. Florida (84.9%)
34. New York (84.2%)
35. Nevada (83.8%)
36. Arizona (83.6%)
37. Georgia (83.1%)
38. Rhode Island (83.0%)
39. North Carolina (82.9%)
40. Tennessee (82.4%)
41. South Carolina (82.3%)
42. New Mexico (82.0%)
43. West Virginia (81.4%)
44. Arkansas (81.3%)
45. Alabama (80.9%)
46. Kentucky (80.4%)
47. Louisiana (80.3%)
48. California (80.2%)
49. Texas (79.1%)
50. Mississippi (78.7%)


8 posted on 09/23/2012 1:12:14 AM PDT by JediJones (KARL ROVE: "And remember, this year, no one is seriously talking about ending abortion.")
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To: pepsionice
I believe if you broke the US statistics up...into states...we’d have twenty states very high up in the competition level with various countries. This attitude of continuing to act like it’s a national problem is a joke. Let’s see the state numbers.

Better yet, extract the concentrated Democrat parasite nests ("cities") and see what the numbers look like.

9 posted on 09/23/2012 1:14:09 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: Lancey Howard

” I bet half them countries got bad grammar and the other 80% are so bad at geology they couldn’t find Finland on a map of South America. “

Grammar ? THEM countries ???


10 posted on 09/23/2012 1:28:02 AM PDT by sushiman
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To: Lancey Howard

Pardon moi ...Just woke up ...Ddidn’t get it first time around ...Got it now .


11 posted on 09/23/2012 1:29:53 AM PDT by sushiman
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To: Kaslin

My gosh, this puts us in thirtyith place or is it
twentyninth, well somewhere near there....


12 posted on 09/23/2012 1:31:10 AM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Kaslin
I did some work in Indonesia at a mine. The American that had been there for awhile said the Indonesian engineers had lots of book smarts, and could recite equations, etc. all day long.

Putting it to use in the real world was a problem for them. They couldn't figure out solutions to problems but could do the math once they were told what to do and how to do it. He called them “automatons”. I thought he might have been exaggerating.

Until I saw a 30-something year-old, mid-level engineer go around to the front of his overheating Toyota. The steam of course caught my attention as I was working on something else. Him spending a long time figuring out how to pop the hood kept me watching to see what would unfold.

Luckily one of the first words I learned was “Bahaya” - means “Danger”. I shouted that at him as he went, with his bare hands, to unscrew the radiator cap where the steam was billowing out!

13 posted on 09/23/2012 1:47:52 AM PDT by 21twelve (So I [God] gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. Psalm 81:12)
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To: pepsionice
A solution to that problem is well underway; various school districts have already noted that the disparity between white and Asian students vs. Black and Hispanic ones is an indicator of a subtle racism, and are defunding extracurricular activities, standardized tests, and program tracking that make Blacks and Latinos feel inferior.

Soon enough, everyone is going to be stupid.

14 posted on 09/23/2012 1:55:30 AM PDT by FredZarguna (Romney is paying 15% tax on money he's already paid taxes on at least once before.)
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To: Kaslin

Now this is just a matter of perspective. We can’t have students proficient in math (or any critical thinking) in the new America based upon feelings, hope and change, and an economy based on handing out “free things.”


15 posted on 09/23/2012 2:34:04 AM PDT by Truth29
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To: Kaslin

If you break these numbers down by demographics, you find something very interesting.

Students of Swedish descent in America outperform Swedes in Sweden.

Students of African descent in America drastically outperform Africans in Africa.

Students of Chinese and Japanese descent in America outperform their counterparts in Asia.

Students of Mexican descent in America outperform their amigos in Mexico.

Notice a pattern?

Much of our performance is related to our large admixture of groups that don’t perform well anywhere on earth.


16 posted on 09/23/2012 3:55:53 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Perception wins all the battles. Reality wins all the wars.)
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To: UnwashedPeasant

You said it


17 posted on 09/23/2012 3:56:21 AM PDT by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: verklaring

bttp


18 posted on 09/23/2012 4:12:18 AM PDT by HapaxLegamenon
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To: Kaslin

The world of Hope & Change & Redistribution ain’t got no numbers!


19 posted on 09/23/2012 4:58:00 AM PDT by TRY ONE (Obummer: The economy sucks......might as well go play golf)
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To: pepsionice

Unfortunately, the issue is better correlated with racial demographics. You don’t see nations or states with significant black or Hispanic populations at the top of the rankings.

Going by like-demographic comparisons—American Asian kids to other Asian kids, etc.—there’s not a big difference worldwide.


20 posted on 09/23/2012 5:00:43 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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