Educators and pundits all over the country are abuzz over the latest results of an international test that shows students in the United States have made little progress in the past three years.
Every three years, randomly chosen 15-year-old students in 65 countries take a survey that scores their knowledge in math, reading and science. The Program for International Student Assessment is unique because it's not tied to any curriculum. In other words, it's aimed at finding out what children really know and how they can apply their knowledge to the real world.
Students in the United States were 26th in math among the 34 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the survey. Americans ranked 17th in reading and 21st in science.
Students in Shanghai-China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea scored the highest in all three subjects. Switzerland and the Netherlands also ranked near the top.
According to the organization's report, students in the U.S. "have particular weaknesses in performing mathematics tasks with higher cognitive demands, such as taking real-world situations, translating them into mathematical terms, and interpreting mathematical aspects in real-world problems."
The report suggests the Common Core Standards, which are in the process of being implemented in more than 40 states, could help U.S. students improve their performance in math.
The report also says poor students show "less engagement, drive, motivation and self-belief."
And generally, U.S. students are not interested in learning math: Only 50 percent report being interested in learning the subject, below the organization average of 53 percent.
The results have already prompted a wave of commentaries and hand-wringing from education experts.
"The PISA results are both disappointing and reflect a troubling complacency with low levels of mathematical understanding and achievement at a national level," said Ruben Zepeda, assistant superintendent of secondary education at the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District. "The mediocre results will hopefully encourage educators and policymakers to take decisive action to better prepare all students' math abilities."
Zepeda proposed earlier this year that MPUSD require three years of math for high school graduation, but the idea met resistance from educators who believe a push for higher achievement in math needs to start in earlier grades.
"The move to Common Core Standards will help students focus on math reasoning and modeling, but educators at school sites, along with community leaders, business and higher education, have to change their belief system that obtaining higher levels of math proficiency is only for future engineers and scientists," Zepeda said.
Some believe The Common Core Standards are designed to prepare students for college and career. Some education experts believe the standards will improve the country's international test rankings.
"These results are a powerful reminder that we must do more to challenge and prepare our students in order to remain globally competitive," said Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, a Washington-based organization dedicated to reforming the educational system in the U.S. Achieve helped develop the Common Core Standards.
"One of the reasons governors and state education chiefs came together to develop new standards was to have one set of educational benchmarks for K-12 that would resemble some of the highest achieving nations' standards," Cohen said, adding that inspiration was drawn from China, England, Finland, Japan, Korea and Singapore.
Marc Tucker, chief executive officer for the National Center on Education and the Economy, said there are few things to glean from the test results, but U.S. policymakers should analyze their strategies and learn from them.
Higher performing nations "provide more resources to the students who are harder to educate than to the students who are easier to educate," Tucker said.
He added: "All the top performers have invested heavily in the skills of their teachers."
Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 753-6755 or email@example.com.
To learn more about the Program for International Student Assessment, see www.oecd.org/pisa