Walking in Place

Two reports on our K-12 education performance have come out in the last few days. The first was the report on the latest round of TIMSS testing. That is, the Trends in International Math and Science Study test assesses the performance of students in 4th and 8th grades providing an international comparison allowing us to compare how American children are doing against their peers in 35 other countries that participate. TIMSS classifies student into four categories: advanced, high, intermediate, and low. On the surface the results look good; for 4th grade 10% of our kids scored advanced which is twice the rate for the median, for 8th grade 6 percent of our kids were advanced, our scores were significantly higher than in the last test cycle. Sounds pretty good, right? The other international test of significance is the PISA which includes the OECD countries who are our biggest trading partners and also our biggest competitors. The TIMSS testing includes other countries both at the high end and at the low end. On the high side; Chinese Taipei, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR, but also includes less developed countries like Jordan, Romania, Morocco, and South Africa and only about a dozen of the 30 OECD countries.

What difference do we see between the tests? Our 8th graders scored 508 on TIMSS math versus the average of 500. On the PISA, though, our 15 year-olds were 24 points below the OECD average math score. Thus, the overall competition in the OECD countries (those that matter most if we are to compete effectively) is tougher. A couple more stats to round out the picture include that the 90th percentile of 23 of the 30 countries is higher than for our kids. Also, only 1.3% of U.S. students were in the highest proficiency level in 2006 PISA math (the last time it was given). This was half the OECD average, in the same range as Greece, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey.

Mark Schneider of the American Institute for Research computed effect sizes for some of the education performance of different entities. Effect size as he uses it is the “standardized difference” between the means of the distributions of different groups. It is expressed in standard deviation terms. Thus, when he reports an effect size of 1.1 for U.S. versus Hong Kong for 4th grade math he means that the mean of Hong Kong 4th grade math scores is 1.1 standard deviations above the mean of the U.S. students. This is a huge difference meaning that 86.4% of Hong Kong students score above the mean U.S. score. Other comparisons for 4th grade he gives are the effect size for Massachusetts vs. Mississippi of 0.8 based on the NAEP, effect size for U.S. public schools with lowest levels of poverty vs. U.S. schools with the highest levels of poverty is 1.5 based on TIMSS data. This means that in the lowest poverty schools 93.3% of kids would score above the mean score for those in the highest poverty schools. He gives other examples for 4th and 8th grade students but you get the picture. We have a huge amount of improvement to make to prepare our kids to compete with their global peers.

The second big report coming out this week was the college remediation report from The Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The title of the press release, “College remediation rates stuck at 30 percent” well summarizes the report's finding that remediation levels are not improving. This report gives lots of data from both 2 year and 4 year colleges. “At two-year schools, 53 percent of students had to take at least one remedial course. The overall rate was about 21 percent at four-year schools. The biggest remediation required is for math although reading and writing have significant levels as well. The report also tabulates remediation rates by where students went to high school. The lowest rate was 5.6 percent at Jefferson County’s D’Evelyn High School; the highest was 80.8 percent at Denver’s West High. Also, remember that the report probably doesn’t capture the full extent of the remediation problem. The document notes “the data do not include recent graduates who enrolled in an out-of-state college, delayed entry into higher education for at least one year after completing high school, were not assessed [for remedial needs],” or for whom data was missing.”

For more data on your own school district and high schools you can download the full report “2008 LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON REMEDIAL EDUCATION December 11, 2008” The best performing high schools in the Pikes Peak Region appear to be in the 15% range for remediation while the rest range significantly higher.

Should we be satisfied with either the international testing results or the remediation results? NO! It is difficult to sort through the School Accountability Report "excellent" ratings for some local schools and realize that the criteria are weak compared to the "real world" that our kids face when they get out of school. But it is clear that until the public demands better the huge inertia in the education establishment will make any improvements at a walking pace which might barely maintain our poor place in the global education comparisons. We will need to make our pace of change much faster if we hope to gain on the competition. The current ostrich mentality of “maybe if we ignore it, the problem will go away” isn’t working.