The Amazing Truth about PISA Scores

USA beats Western Europe, ties Asia

An interesting discussion on demography and America's international standing in education...

This from SuperEconomy:

...once we correct (even crudely) for demography in the 2009 PISA scores, American students outperform Western Europe by significant margins and tie with Asian students...

...We all know that Asian students beat Americans students, which "proves" that they must have a better education system. This inference is considered common sense among public intellectuals. Well, [except] for the fact that Asian kids in the American school system actually score slightly better than Asian kids in North-East-Asia!

So maybe it’s not that there is something magical about Asian schools, and has more to do with the extraordinary focus on education in Asian culture, with their self-discipline and with their favorable home environment...

The simplest thing to do in order to get an apples-to-apples comparison is to at least correct for demography and cultural background.

SuperEconomy takes issue with Libertarian claims that the United States public school system (which has more than 90% of all US students) is a disaster. They blame this on government control and on teachers unions. However...top scoring Finland has government schools and strong teacher unions, just like California. He takes shots at on Euro-minded Liberals too.

New Demographic Racial Gap Emerges

With the number of nonwhite Americans above 100 million for the first time, demographers are identifying an emerging racial generation gap.

That development may portend a nation split between an older, whiter electorate and a younger overall population that is more Hispanic, black and Asian and that presses sometimes competing agendas and priorities.

This from the New York Times.