PISA Results Scoured for Secrets to Better Science Scores
When results from the latest international science and math exams were unveiled last month, American media attention focused on how U.S. teenagers stacked up in those subjects against their counterparts elsewhere in the world. And the news wasn’t pretty.
But the report on the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment , or PISA, contains a wealth of other data that offer clues to what educators and policymakers might do to improve U.S. students’ middling test scores.
Launched seven years ago, PISA is unusual in its attempts to assess 15-year-olds’ ability to apply and analyze information, rather than their formal knowledge of the subjects tested. Out of the 30 industrialized countries taking part in the program’s 2006 science exams, U.S. students ranked lower, on average, than their counterparts in 16 other countries. In math, which was tested in less depth in 2006, American teenagers fared even worse. ( "Poverty’s Effect on U.S. Scores Greater Than for Other Nations," ...
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