An economics blog analyzing education spending, test scores, IQ, income, and productivity, often with demographic adjustments to international comparisons.
HN commenters cite its PISA post to argue that US schools look weaker mainly because of demographics, and that they rank mid-pack among Western countries.
That article made me wince because it was apparently written by someone who had never heard of Simpson's Paradox[1].
Just because Texas as a whole tends to support Romney, and just because Texas as a whole has a lot of people who pay no income tax does not give you the data needed to conclude that people who do not pay income tax tend to support Romney, or even that they are more likely to do so.
And in fact, the exact opposite is true. It's been a staple of American political analysis for decades that although poor states tend to vote Republican, poor people tend vote Democratic. If you take Mississippi, you will find that it is poor and thus (as expected) it votes Republican. But within Mississippi the poorest groups overwhelmingly vote Democratic (regardless of skin colour, in case you think racism plays a role), while the richest groups vote Republican. Look at a rich state and the same trends hold - the poorest groups within that state will vote Democratic, while the richest will vote Republican. (A ton of research exists on this; this blog post seems to sumarrise it well[2].)
To quote from the article: "So Romney appears to be wrong about these voters. But if calling for a less progressive taxation system was enough to alienate poor voters in the Deep South, the Republican Party would have already lost its stronghold there." This is something that could only be written by someone who has no grasp of American politics.
You only have to glance at an exit poll -…
Good essay, but one small nitpick:
The problems with education are well-documented—teachers make far too little, it’s too
difficult to fire bad teachers, some cultures don’t value education, etc. Many of these
are easy to fix—pay teachers a lot more in exchange for a change in the tenure rules, for
example—and some issues (like cultural ones) are probably going to be very difficult to fix.
As another HN'er has pointed out, teacher pay or funding is absolutely not the issue. Per rayiner:
Judge Posner on such comparisons: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/01/the-pisa-rankings-and-the-role-of-schools-in-student-performance-on-standardized-testsposner.html
More numbers: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html?m=1
The solution is not to pay teachers more or have better teachers. I'm not convinced test scores are even all that sensitive to teacher quality within a wide range. The solution is to figure out a way to deal with inner city Chicago and places like it. The legacy of slavery, segregation, and white flight. A place where kids come from generations of uneducated parents and go to school fearing for their physical safety in the face of gangs, drugs, etc.
> Sometimes the government people ask “Would you ever move YC out of the US?” with nervous laughter? I really like it here and I sure hope we don’t, but never say never.
Hah. :) No you won't. Or, not that you won't, rather, it seems beneath you guys…
In America, we need to start making structural changes to the system like eliminating bad teachers: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16606
Doing so could produce $100 trillion dollars in gain for the U.S. (according to the paper above from HN yesterday).
Here's a positive view on U.S education standing: "The amazing truth about PISA scores: USA beats Western Europe, ties with Asia." http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html
I agree and am happy with the growth and flourishing of the entrepreneurial communities in foreign nations. But the picture is sometimes too rosy. I'm no expert, but this article poses some useful questions about China and India's future: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-28/advanced-economies-losing-ground-to-emerging-asia-census-shows.html
The bearish view from the article:
"Some demographers say China and India are decades away from becoming advanced economies. “Both countries are still very, very poor,” said Jane De Lung, president of the Princeton, New Jersey-based Population Resource Center. “China is growing by leaps and bounds, but the majority of the Chinese still live in very poor and poverty- stricken areas. You don’t have widespread economic growth outside the cities in either country.”"
Ultimately, the U.S., China, and India each have their own strengths and can hopefully cooperate in a way where it's not one versus the other, but rather, together helping move innovation and the world economy…
Personally, I don't think the situation is nearly as gloomy in the US as a lot of my fellows seem to. It's a characteristic of nation citizens to be over hard on certain aspects of their community.
As a matter of fact, if the US school system is partly or significantly responsible for the productivity and creativity of adult residents, I'm pretty satisfied with it on the whole. I'm not sure studying to tests produces the best outcomes. I'm more interested in novel problem solving, invention, and innovation, and typical international standardized tests don't suss that out especially well, do they?
Moreover, it's hard to know what to infer when comparing a giant, multicultural country with a small, much more homogeneous one such as Singapore. It makes sense that some small countries might outperform the US at testing in the same way that you expect some small countries to have a higher per capita gdp. Unless I miss my guess, we could cherry pick some communities in the US that do better on either than Singapore.
This article about US test scores, after adjusting for demographics, was discussed on HN before, although I can't find the link just now:
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html
It's extremely interesting, and I haven't seen anything that impeaches it.
That's not to say that I think the US school system does not have huge room for improvement. That's clear, and I'm hopeful that continued technological development and…
It's interesting that the PISA scores are always used to declare that the school system of X is vastly superior to Y, (usually some other country in comparison to America), a conclusion that ignores the fact that test scores are affected by variables other than the educational system of a country.
If you correct for ethnic background, America holds up very well. Asian-Americans (including Asian-Americans from developing nations like Vietnam and Cambodia) score as high as Asians in the wealthy countries of Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. European-descended Americans score in the upper third of the pack when compared to other White Europeans (ahead of Australia, Denmark, France, and the EU average, below Finland, Switzerland, Canada, Germany) [1]. In this comparison, Finland does stand above the rest, admittedly. But what drags down our scores? Disadvantaged ethnic minorities. The same applies to European countries: "In almost all European countries, immigrants from third world countries score lower than native born kids."
Even immigrants to Finland score poorly compared to native Finns; it's just that only 4% of Finns are immigrants. In fact, the gap between immigrant and native PISA scores is greater in Finland than the USA.
With all the institutional and socioeconomic baggage that comes with being Hispanic or black in America, you cannot seriously compare the raw PISA scores of a nation of immigrants that is 13% black and 16% Hispanic (America) with a…
>> An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf
Looking at the US-flattering 4th grade scores, it appears that the Singapore average is 599, whereas the US Asian average is a pitiful 582. 8th grade sees the US suffer: Singapore declines to 593, and US Asians to 549. I don't know how to get a breakdown of US distributional information by race, but your language is, at best, highly misleading. The US 8th grade average all-included is 508, far below Singapore, but I think Singapore (and Taiwan!) are a little closer to 100% Asian.
On the 2009 PISA, US students tended to outscore students of the same race in "native" countries.
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html
http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is-destiny-in-education-too-but-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-k
I've heard nothing but great things about Singapore math, and on a gut level I'm shocked too that US 8th graders were barely able to approximate "almost one plus almost one", but in the big picture it's hard to conclude that our education is failing.