PISA Response Paper

Countries around the world take a world exam to see their students’ scores and to see where they rank globally. Finland has done a great job in their testing by being of the few countries to be on top. Parthanen says “Finland national education system has been receiving praise … Finnish students have … highest test scores in the world” (969). It shows that Finland has an effective method to help their students to reach to the top. The author primary audience is mainly the world to notice the achievements that Finland accomplished and try to follow their steps on education

Ever since standardized testing started being used as a way to evaluate the intelligence of students and the teachers’ ability to educate, the standard of actual education has been diminished immensely. Standardized testing is used in most public and private schools to analyze students’ knowledge. It has affected the way in which students learn and has corrupted the methods teachers use to educate. In some cases, English-Learning and disabled students face discrimination from teachers since teachers have more responsibility to have a high number of passing students. Some countries around the world don’t use standardized tests to rank their students or schools and yet they have been successful. Standardized tests are not efficient on making students learn, they should not be used to evaluate students’ knowledge.

In addition, the high standards are constantly checked by tests that can reveal students’ future prospects. Tom is an exchange student from Pennsylvania who studies in Poland. In Tom’s Polish math class, unlike the American math class, no Polish students are allowed to use calculators to do math. Polish students are trained to be good at calculating just like it is mentioned in the book: “Tom could tell the kids were doing a lot of the math in their minds… their brains were freed up to do the harder work. It was the difference between being fluent in a language and not”(Page 92). After every test, teachers publically announce students’ grades from a 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Tom expected to see someone getting a 5 for a year but no one ever did. “ ‘Success,’ as Winston Churchill once said, ‘is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.’ ”(Page 92) Kids in Poland have gotten used to failing, but instead of giving up; Polish kids give themselves a boost in academic performance. In 2000, “Polish fifteen-year-olds ranked twenty-first in reading and twentieth in math, below the United States and below average for the developed world.” But after some reforms that included raising the educational standards, Poland “ranked thirteenth in reading and eighteenth in math, just above the United States in both subjects. In the space of three years, Poland had caught up with the developed world”(Page 165).

No under 30 of the 56 different nations that took an interest in the Program for Worldwide Understudy Appraisal (PISA) math test had a bigger level of understudies who scored at what might as well be called the propelled level on our National Evaluation of Instructive Advance (NAEP) tests. While 6 percent of U.S. public and private school understudies evaluated as cutting edge in eighth grade arithmetic, 28 percent of Taiwanese understudies did (Hanushek, 2010). This is revealing to me that different nations are using something we are not that is enabling their understudies to exceed expectations pass the U. S. No less than 20 percent of understudies in Hong Kong, Korea, and Finland were exceptionally expert, and 12 different nations had no less than double the level of very proficient understudies as the U.S. also, different nations (Hanushek,2010). This proof demonstrates that only 8 years prior U.S. understudies were failing to meet expectations in math and

With this information, a region of schools can compare their results and figure out how well a region is doing in comparison to other regions. However, this is not completely valid due to the difference in assessment in each region. Therefore, they cannot be accurately compared to other regions because of this difference. (Costa and Kallick, 1995)

In an intelligence-based economy, education is important to national prosperity and individual success. Huge achievement gaps and opportunities must shrink to non-existence, and every student must receive a well education that prepares them for college and careers in the world as it is today. Comparing the United States education system to other countries shows that the United States scored lower than nineteen other counties and education systems in reading in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment. Germany and Poland in particular are two countries that have now surpassed the United States. During the same study, scores showed that twenty-nine nations outperformed the United States by a large amount in mathematics, and in science, there have been twenty-two education systems that scored higher than the United States (Heitin).

Over the course of the last 35 years, traditional public school student achievement in the United States has been stagnant, despite the reform efforts and the doubling

The American education system needs to change techniques in order to successfully prepare students for success in today’s world. American students are reportedly averaging some of the lowest test scores on the PISA test. This is mentioned in Amanda Ripley’s book the Smartest Kids in the World when it’s stated “Failure in American schools was demoralizing…American kids could not handle routine failure” (pg.72 par.4). This statement is a clear sign that the techniques used in the American education system to promote academic success in students need amending. There is definitely a change that needs to happen within the American educational system this is the only way to ensure that American students will be equipped with the tools they require

In earlier years of 2008 through 2013, student performance was below national average. Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah author of “CPS test scores show gains in the grades 2 through 8” explains that student performance was measured with the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT); although, the school district has recently adapted a new management by objective of Northwest Evaluation Association NWEA. Ahmed writes that after transferring to this new assessment there have been improvements in the test score. For the school year of 2013-2014 51.5 percent of students were above the national average compared to a year before where only 45.8 were in reading. In math the students improved by 3.3 percent at 48.6 percent.

One of the biggest problems Americans face today is a US student’s underwhelming academic performance. When compared to other countries, the United States comes in 18th place in math literacy and 25th place in reading literacy. The problem is not just a standard problem throughout the country, as there is much variation between graduation and subject literacy rates, with huge differences also between schools alone. These statistics are disappointing because the US is considered one of the largest world powers. The disparities in American students academic achievement is also detrimental because they are less able to compete in the global market place. Many things have been used to explain this disparity but race has often led as the main

After reading chapter 5 from Reign Error I learned that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a terrible way to measure students academic performance because people don’t understand the scores. NAEP is a way of determining if American students are doing well or badly, it is administered to samples of students; no one knows who will take it and no one can prepare for it. The results of these scores confuse the public to what expectations are appropriate for the students. NAEP grade students using advanced, proficient, and basic, but these grades don’t represent students grades. The NAEP test score show that students have improved in reading and mathematics over the last 20 years. The book shows some graphs of fourth graders

In the society of today, there are various educators who believe in assessment as proper method to measure the performance of a child in school as well as the overall achievement of a specific school system. The assessment may be presented in the form of verbal, written, or multiple choice, and it usually pertains to certain academic subjects in the school curriculum. Recently, many educators began to issue standardized tests to measure the intelligence of a common student body. (Rudner, 1989) These standardized tests were initially created to reveal the success in institutional school programs, and exhibit the abilities of students today. The standardized tests can reveal the strengths and weaknesses

“Our educational goal [is] the production of caring, competent, loving, lovable people” . The students found in the schools across the United State are the future of America. They are the doctors, teachers, business people, lawyers and many other roles, that will be out in the workforce in the years to come. What they learn in school will impact them immensely; it is the responsibility of a teacher to give students the best education in order to ensure the common good of the future. It is essential for students to not only learn content matter, but also the skills to enable them to participate in a democracy. Due to standardized testing, the emphasis of education has become on score and rankings rather than learning. A standardized test does not look at the whole student, the scores provided are on a very narrow aspect of education. In the classroom, there are countless ways for teachers to assess the student as a whole person not as just a score. Standardized tests scores should not be the sole criteria for determining a student’s academic achievement.

As a result of this, the system is constantly receiving criticism concerning the quality of the American system. (U.S.D.E. The Educational System in the U.S…) In fact, a recent study done by the National Institute on Student Achievement, Curriculum, and Assessment, states that in fourth grade math, Japan ranks third out of twenty-six countries while the U.S. ranks only twelfth, and that in eighth grade math, Japan keeps the ranking of third out of forty-one, while the U.S. drops to twenty-eighth. As result of these criticisms, sets of voluntary guidelines and standard achievement tests have recently been introduced as an effort to “catch up” to the other

Visualize a standardized test taken annually by millions of students in the U.S.A. that directly affects teaching methods, school budgets, and grade promotion. Presently, millions of schools are utilizing high-stakes tests to determine these major factors. The United States expects students to perform well on standardized testing, or school districts will suffer financial consequences under the No Child Left Behind Act (Au 502). This places pressure on everyone from administrators to students in a school district. Schools worldwide are stressed to succeed on these standardized tests when they only measure a fraction of a student’s intelligence. Standardized testing must be discontinued because it negatively affects school curricula,