Our PISA Scores in Math

This week’s article summary from The Hechinger Report is U.S. Ranks Near the Bottom in Math.

Some of you may have heard that PISA scores (an international test administered every three years to 10th graders) for the U.S. dropped in math this year.

Although the drop is troubling, there is optimism in that some schools in the U.S.—like Trinity—have begun to teach math differently, and perhaps we’ll see the PISA scores rise in the coming years.

The article talks about how high performing PISA countries teach math, e.g., focusing on fewer topics but studying them in greater depth, ensuring mastery of one topic at a time before moving to the next topic.

As the work of Jo Boaler at Stanford attests (and many of you have become familiar with her research and subsequent recommendations), math requires flexible thinking—something that many American kids struggle in, which is especially evident on PISA questions requiring multi-steps and creative thinking and problem solving.

American kids are often proficient in one-step computation because this has been the prevailing pedagogy of math for decades. However, research is showing that true conceptual understanding and the ability to approach and solve a problem in multiple ways leads to better confidence and performance in math. Hence the reason we have begin having ‘math talks’ with our kids.

I’m optimistic that this new pedagogical approach will lead to better quantitative results for American students. 

Joe

------------

The math achievement of American high school students in 2015 fell for the second time in a row on a major international benchmark, pushing the United States down to the bottom half of 72 nations around the world who participate in the international test, known as the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA.  

Among the 35 industrialized nations that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. now ranks 31st.

Both reading and science scores were steady, with U.S. students scoring near the international average in both subjects.

The 2015 PISA results showed that students across the board, from bottom to middle to top performers, were doing worse in math. It wasn’t just one segment of students who brought the national average down.

The weak math performance echoed the results of a second national exam, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), on which 4th and 8th graders also posted lower math scores on the 2015 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. 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.

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.

Higher performing nations structure their math curriculum differently, teaching fewer topics, but in greater depth. They also teach math topics in a sequential order, asking students to master one topic at a time, rather than cycling back to the same concept year after year.

Students are often good at answering the first layer of a problem in the United States, but as soon as students have to go deeper and answer the more complex parts of a problem, they have difficulties.

The timing of these results comes just a few years after the Common Core standards were adopted in most U.S. states. It’s still “too early to judge” if they’re working.

The Common Core concept is quite well aligned with many high performing education systems.

There are two silver linings for the United States. In science, the achievement gap between rich and poor is closing, albeit not by enough yet to raise the overall score of the whole nation.

And second, even though only a small portion of U.S. students hit the most advanced level on the science test, the country is large enough that it still produces 300,000 high-performing 15-year olds in the subject. Among the four regions in China that currently participate in the PISA test (Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu and Guangdong), a higher percentage of test-takers hit the advanced level, but that still produces fewer top science students — roughly 180,000.

The U.S. actually improved its rankings in reading and science, because other nations did worse and slipped in status. Among the 60 nations and regions that took the PISA test in both 2012 and 2015, the U.S. ranked 15th in reading and 18th in science, up three notches in each subject.One of the nations that slipped considerably was Finland, which had been a beacon to education reformers for its strong results in previous years.

Singapore regained its top slot. It had been temporarily dethroned by Shanghai, an elite, wealthy region in China, where the scores were extraordinarily high during the previous testing cycle. But now that Shanghai’s scores are combined with three other Chinese regions, mainland China has slipped to sixth place.