american dumbasses

[sys]

also:

Our crosswalk from NAEP to PISA aims to identify the relative performance
of students in the Class of 2015. NAEP examinations are given to 8th graders,
in January through March, when most students are 13 or 14 years of age. PISA
examinations are given to a random sample of public and private school students
at the age of 15. To construct the achievement comparisons for the Class of
2015, we rely upon the 2011 NAEP test and the 2012 PISA test. In comparing
the performance of the Class of 2015 on the NAEP and PISA tests at these two
different points in time, we assume that no event happened between 8th and 9th
or 10th grade that significantly altered the performance of American students
relative to that of students in other countries.

huh?

they can only use the data they have, michigancat.  those data do not include the same tests being given to students in different countries at the same age.  if you want more comparable data, make the us give students the pisa test at age 15.

[michigancat]

What makes it inane? Wouldn't a comparison of adults be a more accurate assessment of how well an education system performs? Tests at different ages could help pinpoint the ages we are most and least effective at teaching.

I guess nothing significant happens after 8th grade anyway.
wouldn't a complete census of the mathematic skills and knowledge of every person on the planet be a more accurate assessment still?  i wonder why they didn't do that?

[michigancat]

I really enjoy this topic.

With most U.S. states having adopted the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) as
their state mathematics standard, a relevant question is: how does performance measured by PISA relate to
the CCSSM? and is faithful implementation of CCSSM likely to improve U.S. performance in PISA?
The analysis suggests that a successful implementation of the Common Core Standards would yield
significant performance gains also in PISA. The prominence of modeling in U.S. high school standards has
already influenced developers of large-scale assessments in the United States. If more students work on
more and better modeling tasks than they do today, then one could reasonably expect PISA performance to
improve.
It may be that U.S. students seldom work on well-crafted tasks that situate algebra, proportional
relationships and rational numbers within authentic contexts. More generally, perhaps the application
problems that most students encounter today are the worst of all worlds: fake applications that strive to
make the mathematics curriculum more palatable, yet do no justice either to modeling or to the pure
mathematics involved. Providing students with the necessary “opportunity to learn” will therefore be necessary in order to develop the skills in students that allow them to make frequent and productive use of
mathematics in their work and life.

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf

Also:

The students
 
• Around 510 000 students completed the assessment in 2012, representing about 28 million 15-
year-olds in the schools of the 65 participating countries and economies.
• In the United States, just over 6,000 randomly selected 15-year-old students from 161
randomly selected schools participated.

How statistically significant would a random sample of 6000 students be? Random seems like a bad idea for such a relatively small sample. (compared to the rest of the world.)

[sys]

How statistically significant would a random sample of 6000 students be? Random seems like a bad idea for such a relatively small sample. (compared to the rest of the world.)

if it's a true random sample, it should be perfectly good.  it might be too small to subdivide into all of the subsamples that they want to evaluate (high-income, well-educated puerto ricans in new jersey, etc.) but as an overall sample it should be more than sufficient.  nothing is more powerful than random.  (it almost certainly isn't a truly random sample, but perhaps it's close enough).

goddamnit, mcat, now you have me curious why they didn't use pisa results from the us, if those data are available.

[hemmy]

Sounds like we've got a bunch of dummies in the south, meanwhile the rest of the US states are pretty much equal to the rest of the world.

I could have told you that without performing a study.

[michigancat]

How statistically significant would a random sample of 6000 students be? Random seems like a bad idea for such a relatively small sample. (compared to the rest of the world.)

if it's a true random sample, it should be perfectly good.  it might be too small to subdivide into all of the subsamples that they want to evaluate (high-income, well-educated puerto ricans in new jersey, etc.) but as an overall sample it should be more than sufficient.  nothing is more powerful than random.  (it almost certainly isn't a truly random sample, but perhaps it's close enough).

Yeah, I was questioning how random it could really be. Interestingly, not every country lists the participants as "random":

Around 510 000 students completed the assessment in 2012, representing about 28 million 15-
year-olds in the schools of the 65 participating countries and economies.
? In Japan, 6 351 15-year-old students in 191 responding schools participated in PISA 2012. The
participation rate is 96%, which is above the OECD average (89%).

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-japan.pdf

Around 510 000 students completed the assessment in 2012, representing about 28 million 15-
year-olds in the schools of the 65 participating countries and economies.
• In Norway, 4 686 15-year-old students in 197 schools participated in PISA 2012.

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-norway.pdf

goddamnit, mcat, now you have me curious why they didn't use pisa results from the us, if those data are available.

I think they did for the overall country score, but the NAEP was used for the state-by-state breakdown.

[sys]

I think they did for the overall country score, but the NAEP was used for the state-by-state breakdown.

oh, good.  curiosity satiated.