ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************

Before we start rejoicing at the dramatic improvement in US student
performance rankings as calculated by Stanford researchers, consider
carefully what the researchers have done.  They revised the PISA data so
that "differences in countries' social class compositions are adequately
taken into account."  I think everyone agrees that socio-economic
disadvantage is strongly correlated with lower performance on all the
major assessments.  The US has a larger percentage of students with lower
socio-economic status than many developed countries.  So the researchers
have "taken into account" this sad situation by adjusting the scores as if
this situation were not true.  And as a result of this adjustment, the US
rank rises.

If only the disproportionately greater share of US students in
disadvantaged social classes could be fixed so easily.  The hard way would
be to reduce the percentage of the disadvantaged students, for example by
effective, large-scale programs to reduce poverty and discrimination.

PISA, TIMSS, and NAEP are all designed to take representative samples of
the population is it is, rather than how we would like it to be or as it
would be if we leveled out the differences between populations.  The
Stanford researchers have done a valuable service by pointing out when our
disadvantaged populations outperform other disadvantaged populations, and
that we have in fact lowered performance gaps in many (but not all)
instances.  But whether their calculated re-scoring of the PISA test
produces a more accurate and useful ranking is a matter of taste, rather
than of repairing errors in the PISA results.

Alan
________________________________________
Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
29 West 10th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA
T  +1 917 882-6671
E   [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
W www.FriedmanConsults.com <http://www.friedmanconsults.com/>
 
a member of The Museum Group
www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com/>




>

***********************************************************************
For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.

Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html.

To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message  SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
[log in to unmask]