[Culturechat] PISA

[Vance Roy]

http://www.pisa.oecd.org

  will take you to a lot of information about the test.

For Irv:


  1) Jane & I live in a very diverse area of suburban Houston Texas.  We 
continue to be amazed when an immigrant's child wins the Spelling Bee 
after arriving in USA knowing no English only a few years earlier.

My last two high schoolers went to a city school in Albany, GA. There 
were Oriental twin boys (wife says that this PI, but guess how worried 
I am about that?). The only contest in Latin, Math, etc. was for which 
Caucasian kid could win third place. Then, I found out one of the twins 
had to go to summer school because he had made a "B" in a course. "B"s 
were not allowed in his home, only "A"s.

  2) In the same vein, Asian names are disproportionally found in the 
lists of high-school juniors named "National Merit Semifinalists."  
You're prescient, Vance, about the future role of Indian and Chinese 
students in these comparisons, although voluntary immigrant families 
(i.e., from the now-less-developed nations) may be more driven to 
succeed than are those content to remain in their homelands

I always told my two kids to remain friends with the twins, because 
they might work for them some day.

  3) In the USA as I understand it, "Social promotion" is the norm and 
few students are retained in the same grade again in elementary schools 
even if they can't perform to grade-level standards.  Thereafter some 
are hampered severely academically and in the working world because 
they lack, for example, basic reading skills.  Is this also the 
practice in CH?

Not on your life! Before a student is held back, the teachers and the 
parents work together with the student. A life's work here is too 
important for a student or anyone else to take it casually.

  4) I hear conflicting things about homework.  Some say that USA 
students don't do enough.  Others say that, especially at secondary 
level and particularly for the AP students, too much homework is 
assigned.  Any comments for CH students?

They have homework, I know. How much, I don't know. Most of the 
learning occurs in class by repetition, I think.

  5) At the secondary levels in the USA, it seems as if too much 
emphasis is placed on varsity sports.  What is practice in CH?  How 
about even intramural sports?  How much PE is required?  otoh, 
certainly the Swiss and other European adults do more walking for sport 
or exercise whereas in the USA we are too prone to jump into the car 
for a two-block journey.

There are no school sports or PE. Sports are separate and run on a 
community basis. Participation is largely a peer acceptance thing. 
Swiss children are raised from toddlers to view a walk as a treat, not 
a chore.

  6) The interesting demographic study "Bowling Alone" by Robert D. 
Putnam (www.bowlingalone.com) draws negative conclusions on the role of 
television on American society.  (One graph shows that the more hours 
one spends watching TV, the more likely one is to give a one-finger 
salute to another motorist!) People of all ages in the USA do spend a 
lot of time in front of the TV set.  What about in CH?  Maybe the 
students would perform better if they didn't watch so much TV.

My experience with the people that I know, is that TV is rarely on in 
the daytime. I know mothers who place the set in the attic when school 
is out and return it to the living room in the fall.

  7) Re elementary students, if they don't do homework, what in the 
world are they carrying in those backpacks?  I go to Europe for two 
weeks with less stuff than some of them lug to school each day.

Frequently, they have school materials, music, and/or sports equipment 
in there too.

  8) Off topic, but one place where USA is ahead of much of the world is 
in smoking, however. It always distresses me to see so much smoking 
among adults outside the USA -- and it also distresses me to see kids 
here in the USA smoking while waiting for the school bus.  (Maybe those 
backpacks are full of cigarettes.)

Smokers now make up only 19% of the USA population.  CH youth, 
particularly girls, are certainly more than that.
***********************************************
 From Virginia:

  the fact that in Finland teachers
are given the same respect (and salaries!) as other professionals --
doctors, lawyers, etc. -- and regarded by both the public and students 
as
the authorities in their classrooms. As a result, graduate schools for
educators are very difficult to get into because of the high number of
applicants.

Used to be that a girl had few choices. Be a teacher or a nurse. Now, 
both those professions are short because of many other opportunities 
open to women. The days of treating nursing and teaching as second tier 
professions should be long gone. Seems that they are not viewed as such 
in the USA.

I'm sure there are many reasons for the poor showing of the USA in this
test, and that solutions are in the "both/and" category. But my personal
opinion is that the current track of testing, testing, testing makes
political rather than academic good sense. I'm a retired teacher.

I'll take the teacher's word for that.

*********************************************************************

A couple of other factors may be involved when trying to compare 
students from widely differing systems:  1) Is this test a "biggie" in 
their system, so that teachers are liable to "teach to the test" or 
students take courses aimed at helping them perform well (such as SAT 
prep courses)?  2) How is the sample chosen?  Is it totally random, or 
does it tend to pick testees from college-prep high schools (lycées, 
gymnasiums), which are virtually unknown in some countries outside the 
large cities?  Is there a demographic bias that would favor some 
countries over others?

Good questions as to the validity and reliability of such tests. The 
web site may help. This going to be a next topic for Herr Britschgi and 
I to hash around. Maybe he can shed some light.




Vance Roy
gigli.saw@dplanet.ch
http://homepage.mac.com/fredch

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

Winston Churchill

Said to be a marginal comment by Churchill against a sentence that 
clumsily avoided ending with a preposition.