PISA 2012 Results

[Foucaulf]

I have to fight back against some of the leftist responses in this thread. The annual PISA report comprises of a thousand or two pages, with hundreds of tables and graphs - and it is the chattering classes' fault that they focus on the rankings, not the report's in principle.

Perhaps there are several methodological issues screwing up the results (and these affect math word problems more than you think). Maybe then we have to look at tiers of countries instead of well-ordered rankings, though I think it's still valuable to have the information.

A goal of PISA, I think, is to motivate countries to try methods in best performing countries. Of course people like Gove aren't interested in that - his only frame of reference is with the grammar schools. You can claim, by consequence, that his policies are the very opposite of what the report advocates.

[Foucaulf]

I don't know how the report is done exactly, because all the media is publishing is "France is 25th" or "Finland is 1st" or bullsh**t like this. It's this desire to quantify and classify everything by the media that's obnoxious. The report in itself probably has some worth, but it shouldn't be skrunk to just "said country is 14th", which doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

That makes more sense, I suppose. But I've seen reports in the Monde and Libération that focuses more on the system's inequalities, a move that makes them better than any North American publication.

This brings me to my view on the USA results.  All responses I read to the PISA 2012 results all had the view that the USA results are not good. I claim the USA results are actually very good.  One just has to look at it the right way to realize it.  The way to look at it is to break down the USA results by ethnic group [...]

Considering the correlation between race and socioeconomic status in the U.S., I don't see how this analysis holds.