This week’s Carnival of Education is hosted by the stalwart Mamacita at Scheiss Weekly (The Scheissman Cometh?). The usual heady brew. Be sure to click through to Eduwonkette’s exegesis of ed-secretary-in-waiting Arne Duncan’s track record in Chicago, Dave Saba’s Student Success Strategy, Slice ‘em and Dice ‘em, a heartwarming tale of dissecting frogs at Bluebird’s Classroom, and Mamacita herself who hates what we’ve turned into.
Archive for December 10th, 2008
Results of the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were released Tuesday, and the data proves to be a bit of an educational Rorschach Test. The New York Times sees “solid achievement gains” in math by U.S. 4th and 8th graders, and “spectacular progress” by students in Minnesota and Massachsetts, while science performance remained flat nationwide. “The results showed that several Asian countries continued to outperform the United States greatly in science and math,” notes the Times, “subjects that are crucial to economic competitiveness and research.”
USA Today’s Greg Toppo sees American students “consistently better than average,” but notes that “if there were a math-and-science Olympics for elementary and middle schoolers…the USA never quite makes it to the medal podium.”
At Flypaper, the Fordham Foundation finds reasons to be cheerful. “American students have made steady gains in mathematics performance over the past decade. This progress was especially noteworthy at the eighth grade level, where the U.S. made gains since 1995 that were at least as strong as all of our major economic competitors.” Diane Ravitch disagrees however that 8th grade gains are “noteworthy.”
The gains posted by 8th graders are certainly not a vindication of No Child Left Behind’s testing regime. Eighth-graders registered a 12-point gain in math from 1995-2003, before the imposition of NCLB testing. They posted a 4-point gain from 2003-2007. The students who were tested by TIMSS in 2007 had been subject to NCLB annual tests in every year from third grade onward, yet their scores did not show a dramatic improvement. If anything, the gains were no greater (and possibly smaller) than those registered pre-NCLB.
Democratic Congressman George Miller sees “significant gains” in 4th grade math, but tells the Washington Post it’s “troubling that our students are still behind their international peers in both math and science.” Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, tells USA Today that the new TIMSS results belie complaints that U.S. students are lagging behind the rest of the world in math. “It’s just not true,” he says. “It hasn’t been true for a long time.” Meanwhile the National Science Teachers Association pronounces itself “discouraged” by the results, noting science scores for minority students are “dismal.” Many districts simply do not value science education, says a statement released by the NSTA Tuesday. ”Science is being eliminated from many K-6 classrooms.”
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