Read "U.S. Students from Educated Families Lag in International Tests" by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann from the Fall 2014 issue of EducationNext:
"U.S. Students from Educated Families Lag in International Tests" - http://educationnext.org/us-students-educated-families-lag-international-tests/
Based on the results of this study and this week's lecture, are you surprised to discover that the United States has two large gaps in its education -- the gap within the country and the gap internationally?
I was not surprised to (re)learn about the two gaps - I'm familiar with both of them. What was surprising to me was the first two charts - Massachusetts and Minnesota are highest for all students, but then when you look at students with low parental education, those two states are further down the list. And Texas jumps to the top (from being 14th on the total list). To me, that seems to indicate that Massachusetts and Minnesota schools may not actually be all that good - they just have good students to start with, students who have supportive learning structures elsewhere in their lives. I would be much more interested in looking at the Texas school system to see how they're raising scores for students who come from less educated backgrounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment