Why do American students suck?

[Lemons]

Even Canadian students are superior to American students along with the majority of industrialized nations. It's so funny to read everyone's posts about their "gifted" children and their superior IQ's but test results aren't showing a whole lot of this. American schools are climbing to the bottom of the pack at a pretty fast pace. Why can't our country keep up educationally?

https://hechingerreport.org/u-s-now-ran ... ions-math/

U.S. now ranks near the bottom among 35 industrialized nations in math
Math performance of American 15-year-olds declined significantly on international PISA test

The PISA test is administered every three years around the world to measure what 15-year-old students know in math, reading and science before the end of compulsory schooling. In the United States, it’s primarily taken by 10th graders. The U.S. has never been a strong performer globally, but has generally scored near the average since the test began in 2000. In 2012 math scores deteriorated a few points. Now, with the 2015 results in, it’s a clear downward trend.

Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD, which administers the PISA exam, said that math has always been the most difficult subject for American students. Even students in Massachusetts, one of the top performing states in the nation, do no better than average globally, Schleicher noted.

[Deleted User 276]

I would be curious how the mainstreaming of special ed students (something that I am totally for) weighs on the testing results. There are many industrialized nations who still warehouse children with special needs outside of their regular educational institutions. Because of this I'm a little skeptical of comparing testing scores. I think it's more important to look at improvement within individual schools rather than general testing scores.

[Pjmm]

Don't want to pay teachers what they're worth... and we're focusing too much on testing scores not enough on real curriculum. Idk but that's a place to start.

[Poietes]

I think a lot of it begins with the lack of ability to discipline students. It creates students who don't care, which creates teachers who don't care. I have also noticed that with a lot of school they are so worried about the ones who are struggling and trying to get them to catch up that the ones who are ahead get left by the wayside and in return lose their love of learning. As for individual subjects like math, well kids learn to hate it from their parents. I have heard so many parents say, "It's not how I learned it, this is stupid", "I don't know, I hate math any way", "You won't need this in real life anyway". What do we think the kids take away from comments like that.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, I have many family members and friends who are in the school system and I myself was going to teach until I came to my senses. There are so many problems but quite a few of them start at home.

[Aletheia]

When interpreting a rank system like PISA, you should bear in mind that just a 2% difference in scores can mean a drop in 10 rankings, if several countries are grouped closely together.

Note the truncated scale on the bottom axis:

[libbylu]

Parents are no longer insisting that their children behave, listen, obey and show respect to their teachers and value education.

[morgan]

2 words:

Safe spaces

[Lemons]

I would be curious how the mainstreaming of special ed students (something that I am totally for) weighs on the testing results. There are many industrialized nations who still warehouse children with special needs outside of their regular educational institutions. Because of this I'm a little skeptical of comparing testing scores. I think it's more important to look at improvement within individual schools rather than general testing scores.

I thought kids with special ed plans were opted out of testing. I mean the ones with significant disabilities not ADD or learning differences. Those students are capable of testing just as well as kids without.

My husband is in high tech and he works with so many foreign workers with H-1B visas I sometimes wonder where are all the young Americans. These workers aren’t cheap either. The corporations pay for their families to relocate, pay city rents driving up rental rates. These young men and women speak 2-4 languages, they are remarkable.

The cities produce a lot of valedictorians who came here from other countries. Kids who are highly motivated. I’m wondering what it would take to motivate American students as a whole. A poorly educated country is a downfall of democracy.

[Lemons]

When interpreting a rank system like PISA, you should bear in mind that just a 2% difference in scores can mean a drop in 10 rankings, if several countries are grouped closely together.

Note the truncated scale on the bottom axis:

That’s true but you can take any study of students around the world and the results will be the same. America is slipping in overall education. Canada is climbing up the list for some reason.

[Aletheia]

When interpreting a rank system like PISA, you should bear in mind that just a 2% difference in scores can mean a drop in 10 rankings, if several countries are grouped closely together.

That’s true but you can take any study of students around the world and the results will be the same. America is slipping in overall education. Canada is climbing up the list for some reason.

And, unfortunately, there's more than 2% in it. There are 10 countries that scored 1520 +/- 15. America is more than 3% below that.

There's a grouping of states that do particularly badly (Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama) - without them, America's average would be somewhat higher.