Kygyz Students Not Good Spellers: PISA Scores Show Demography Is Destiny

[roo_ster]

If you have any interest in quantitative analysis of social factors, Steve Sailer's article in VDARE on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) exam results is chock full of data & analysis.  Sailer is also forthright about limitations & assumptions of the PISA.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm

What is PISA?  It is the annual 2-hour exam given to 15YO students by most of the industrialized world & some not-so-industrialized.  As is usual, the USA's performance comes in for wailing & gnashing of teeth.

Wave That Foam Finger!
Sailer shows that there is some reason for the USA to wave the "We're #1!" foam finger in that all our ethnic groups, if compared to their countries/monocultures of origin, blow their co-ethnics out of the waters in the reading portion for 2009.  IOW, Our northeast asians do better than the NEA countries, our latin Americans do better than LA countries, our blacks do better than black countries, our whites do better than other countries' whites, etc.

With the exception of some hand-picked Shanghai schools in the PRC, Americans of NEA ancestry look to be the smartest group of people on the face of the Earth.



"By the way, wouldn’t you think that Kyrgyz students would at least be good at spelling?"

So, here's to America's ethic groups' thrashing their co-ethnics left in their benighted countries of origin:


A good bit of the article concerns caveats of the testing.  One of the very interesting points is that PISA and the US gov't conspire to keep the ethnic breakdown in the USA a secret, except for the test focus for that year.


"Where's Wikileaks when you need it?"

Some good China vs India comparisons, even though India did not take hte PISA

"Rich, bustling Shanghai is not likely to be representative of China as a whole. Yet, Shanghai might not be the highest scoring part of China, either. Traditionally, the top scorers on the Imperial mandarin exams as well as on the current national college admission test tend to come from farther to the southeast, especially from Fujian province on the coast across from Taiwan. The Fujianese are the central component of the Overseas Chinese who dominate the economies of Southeast Asia."

FTR, my wife taught English to a bunch of Fujianese teenagers in China before we were married.

"But we need to keep in mind the central paradox of testing: In all forms of well-run testing, the most trustworthy results are the ones covering the largest scale … and thus of the least interest to the media." Meaning, the MSM obsesses over trivialities and ignores the elephants in the room.




(There is a bit of a joke in the title.)

[Chuck Dye]

Some good China vs India comparisons...

At a diplomatic cocktail party there was good natured banter between a Chinese admiral and an Indian admiral over which of their five thousand year old civilizations is superior.  The Chinese admiral had the last word:  "Huh, in five thousand years, they haven't even learned to use chopsticks!"

[MicroBalrog]

PISA is horribly, painfully fake.

[roo_ster]

PISA is horribly, painfully fake.

Care to elaborate? 

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

These scores seem to compare separate ethnic groups in the US versus whole countries with non-homogeneous populations. Not exactly a fair comparison.

Pretty sad that American blacks score worse than Serbia.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Pretty sad that American blacks score worse than Serbia.

I've known a few Serbs over the years.  Each one I've known has been highly intelligent and educable.

I've found that in most cases where people aren't educable, it stems more from their unwillingness to participate in the learning process than from any innate inability to learn.  In other words, it's usually a choice.  

In my observation, these choices have a strong cultural aspect to them.  It's interesting that you can see it so clearly in the data.

[MicroBalrog]

Care to elaborate? 

Even in many democratic nations, teachers' unions are known to manipulate the testing process to improve results. For example, the premise of PISA is - or was, several years ago - that it tests unprepared, average children. Instead of this, school classes are devoted to rehearsing for PISA, or specially-groomed wonder-children are chosen for the enterprise. I have no doubt that more elaborate scams also exist.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

FWIW, I've never even heard of an American school or teacher caring how we look to the OECD, much less putting forth any real effort to change our image/scoring.

[HankB]

How long has this PISA test been instituted? It's been . . . a while . . . since I was 15, but I don't remember it.

. . . PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) exam results . . .

They presume to test student achievement, and yet they don't even spell "Program" correctly? Durn furriners . . .

The graphic used illustrates one of my pet peeves: the graph doesn't start at zero, but rather at 300. This tends to exaggerate relatively minor differences.

(Interesting how places with more madrassas tend to cluster near the bottom . . . )

[vaskidmark]

FWIW, I've never even heard of an American school or teacher caring how we look to the OECD, much less putting forth any real effort to change our image/scoring.

Pretty much teachers are "encouraged" by their school systems to teach to the test, whatever test t may be.  Between No Cilld Left Unmolested Sodomized Behind and the various state standards that control both accredidation and funding, it is more important for the perpetuation of the public education monopoly to score well on tests than it is for the students subjects sitting in the seats to become educated.

stay safe.