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Re: Excessive Equality
Posted:
Sep 11, 2012 1:03 PM
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On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Haim <hpipik@netzero.com> wrote:
> The rest of the article is almost embarrassing to me. It is as if I wrote it myself,
>
Well, of course, since the one you cite and the think tank in question
> Jacob L. Vigdor | American Enterprise Institute
are just more conservative ideologues promoting the same old myths hatched in the conservative mind to try to prove true the claims of conservatism.
What I wrote recently in reply to another myth spewed in the name of conservatism bears repeating:
Fact: The US public school system has not collapsed, not even close. In fact, we see the opposite when we dig beneath the surface to see what is going on:
(1) For instance, when we correct for demographics, we see that US white students score as well or better on international tests like TIMSS and PISA than the white students of just about every other country on the planet, US black students score as well or better on international tests like TIMSS and PISA than the black students of just about every other country on the planet, and so on. The reason the overall scores are not as high on these tests as they could be in comparison to some other countries is because in all countries, the scores by each segment of non-East-Asian non-white students are significantly lower and because the percentage of the US student population of this much lower scoring overall population segment is much higher than it is in those countries that have overall higher scores than the US.
(2) And because of the success of advanced math education in the US public school system, the US now has roughly 5% of its entire high school senior aged population (and this includes all those not in school or in vocational schools or whatever) take *and* pass a national calculus exam covering an entire year of high school calculus. Very few countries on the entire planet - regardless of the ethnic demographic of the country's student population - could say that they have an advanced math education system that yields this high a percentage of the its entire high school senior aged population that could take *and* pass a national calculus exam covering an entire year of high school calculus. And when we look at only those US high school students that actually completed calculus classes that actually were certified by the AP Calculus testing body to follow the AP Calculus guidelines, we see these students scoring very much higher on advanced international tests than those advanced students of all other countries taking the tests.
Here is a post I gave recently outlining some of all these facts above - this post contains many citations and links to these citations:
"Re: Discussion: Do US Math Teachers Suck?"
http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7752982
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