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Lessons From Shanghai’s Top Scores on International Test

January 16th, 2011 at 06:48am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is a two-hour test that compares the performance of fifteen-year-olds. In the latest test, the countries with the best readers were South Korea and Finland. But students in Shanghai, China, scored the highest of all in reading, mathematics and science.

The next strongest results were in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.

In all, around half a million students in more than seventy economies took the test last year. The test has been given every three years since two thousand. Last year was the first time Shanghai took part.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development just released the results. Andreas Schleicher is director of the Education Indicators and Analysis Division at the OECD.

ANDREAS SCHLEICHER: “Asian countries value education more than other countries. They have given education a priority. Every child, every teacher, every parent knows that education is the gateway to success.”

Mr. Schleicher says other education systems can learn from Shanghai. For example, he says education spending in the province has increased, including teacher pay and training. And administrators are putting teachers into challenging classroom situations to make them better at their jobs.

ANDREAS SCHLEICHER: “They are pairing great with poorer schools in a way that is very systematic and very much focused on improving results.”

In the PISA scoring system, Shanghai scored six hundred in math. By comparison, the United States scored four hundred eighty-seven.

Shanghai’s reading average was five hundred fifty-six. American fifteen-year-olds scored five hundred, the same as in Iceland and Poland.

In science, Finland was second behind Shanghai. The United States was twenty-third.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the results show an urgent need for Americans to do more to remain competitive in the world economy. He points out that the United States has fallen from first to ninth place in college graduation rates because of gains by other countries.

Mr. Schleicher says international testing experts have investigated and confirmed the Shanghai scores. He says the PISA results are not representative of all of China. But he also says they dispute the common belief that Chinese education is centered on repetition and memorization.

Twenty-five percent of the Shanghai students showed advanced thinking skills to solve difficult math problems. The OECD average was three percent.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, by Lawan Davis and Ira Mellman. For a link to the results, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

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Stanley Kaplan: Remembering a Test Prep Pioneer

February 24th, 2010 at 09:08am Under Education report

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Here is a question for a college admissions test. Who was Stanley Kaplan? Did he A) start a test preparation company, B) start the test preparation industry, or C) die last month at age ninety? The correct answer is D) all of the above.

Stanley Kaplan

Stanley Kaplan was an educator and private tutor. In the nineteen forties, he began preparing students for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now just called the SAT.

His parents were European immigrants who did not go to college, and he himself was rejected from medical school. He thought all Americans should have an equal chance at the best colleges, not just children of wealthy families.

These days, more students go to college. Yet wealthier families are the ones best able to pay for test preparation. Many programs cost up to one thousand dollars or more, though some are available for poor families.

Parents may hate the whole idea, but they feel nervous seeing others doing it. Then, after college, there are graduate admissions tests to prepare for.

How much do American spend on this largely unsupervised industry? At least one billion dollars a year, estimates David Hawkins at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The research company Outsell puts the amount at two and a half billion.

The two biggest providers in the United States — Kaplan and Princeton Review — both operate in more than twenty countries.

Thirty years ago, the Federal Trade Commission found that Stanley Kaplan’s program could raise SAT scores — but only by about twenty-five points. The association for college admission counseling recently found a thirty-point increase with Kaplan and other programs.

Still, the group says this is not enough to make a difference for most students. It might help some get into a top college, but only if they have above-average scores in the first place. The report suggested saving money by considering “less costly forms” of test preparation.

Now, more about our story last week on President Obama’s nationally broadcast speech to students. We noted that many conservatives raised objections before the speech. But in nineteen ninety-one, Democrats accused President George H.W. Bush of using the last such speech for political purposes.

Then as now, Democrats led Congress. They demanded an investigation. It found no misuse of public money to support the speech.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I’m Steve Ember.

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