THE LETTERS: Defining the actual shape of our problem!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2020

American kids punk the world: The letters strike us as a major embarrassment—but they're also highly instructive.

The letters appeared in the New York Times on Sunday, December 22. Did we mention the fact that we think they should be seen as a major embarrassment?

The newspaper published nine letters in all. They explored the reason, or the reasons, for the massive failure of our floundering public schools.

How bad are things in our public schools? Once again, we quote from Letter 4:

"The stagnant results of the international PISA exam have spoken: An extensive overhaul in the American education system is desperately needed."

What was the cause of the stagnant results which signaled the need for this vast overhaul? As we noted yesterday, the letters published by the Times offered a wide array of ideas.

As we noted yesterday, many things were said to be wrong! But no one disputed the basic premise which had emerged from two recent reports in the Times. No one disputed the idea that something is vastly wrong with our public schools, extending across the board.

Are we testing our students too much? Have we foolishly stopped teaching phonics?

Have we failed to listen to teachers as we craft our ballyhooed reforms? Are our drooling kids a mess because we've stopped reading for pleasure?

No one disputed the overall claim—the claim that something is, or seems to be, badly wrong across the board.

But what if we told you that those Pisa scores actually say something quite different? What if large segments of our student population actually punked the entire world on these most recent Pisa tests?

We now return to Letter 4, which recited one treasured script. According to Letter 4, our hapless kids performed so poorly because we aren't like miraculous Finland:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (12/22/19): The stagnant results of the international PISA exam have spoken: An extensive overhaul in the American education system is desperately needed. Although myriad troubles plague American schools—from lack of support for immigrant students to inequalities between schools—part of the solution may lie in one of the countries that outperformed us on the PISA exam: Finland.

Our country has sought to boost test scores by introducing a multitude of standardized tests, essentially forcing teachers to center their class around preparing for these tests rather than teaching their students foundational skills. In Finnish schools, students are subject to almost no standardized tests, yet Finnish students surpassed American students in the PISA exam.

In our desperation to improve academic achievement, our country has fostered a culture obsessed with test results, yet, ironically, this fixation only serves as a detriment to America’s academic performance on the international stage.

Credit where due! This writer said there may be many factors which explain why our kids are so hapless. But she focused on our alleged overtesting—and as is required by Hard Pundit Law, she cited miraculous Finland.

("Where the children are all above average?")

Nothing which follows is meant to be a criticism of Finland—a small, middle-class, single-culture nation which we understand to be extremely well run. How well-run is middle-class Finland? For one example, consider these OECD health care statistics:

Per capita spending, health care, 2018
United States: $10,586
Finland: $4,228

Somehow, Finland provides universal health care while spending roughly 40 percent as much as we do, per person. For reasons the Times will never explore or attempt to explain, we spend well more than twice as much as Finland does, even as many people still don't have coverage, and many more can't afford to receive actual care.

As far as we know, Finland—total population, 5.5 million—is a very well-run nation. That said, it isn't a "peer nation" of ours.

It's a small, middle-class nation with much less demographic complexity. You can assess that demographic fact any way you wish, but Finland is not the U.S.

Still and all, there it was, the mandated praise for Finland's fantastic test scores@! This silly, dimwitted international script took wing roughly twenty years ago, after the very first Pisa tests. On the Sunday morning in question, the Times once again gave it wing.

That said, how dumb are our American kids as compared to the giants of Finland? To what extent do these latest Pisa scores show that we need "an extensive overhaul" of our educational system?

The Pisa tests 15-year-old students; the 2018 Pisa focused on reading while also testing science and math. An initial glance at the data gives us such shame as this:

Average scores, Reading Literacy, 2018 Pisa
Finland: 520
United States: 505

Should those scores be cause for embarrassment? Also, should that 15-point gap in average score be seen as a lot or a little?

We have no rule of thumb which lets us know how large that gap really is. That said, our national shame may be reduced if we include some other average scores:

Average scores, Reading Literacy, 2018 Pisa
Finland: 520
Sweden: 506
United States: 505
United Kingdom: 504
Japan: 504
Denmark: 501
Norway: 499
Germany: 498
France: 493

For all such data, just start here. Then execute one more click.

Say what? Our dunderheads actually outperformed such peer nations as Japan, the U.K., Germany and France? And as compared to Finland's small Nordic neighbors, we scored just one point below Sweden, six points ahead of Norway? With Denmark thrown in for good measure?

Do those numbers make it obvious that we need "an extensive overhaul" of some kind? Offhand, we would say they do not.

That said, the actual shape of our actual problem actually swims into view if we examine a different set of data. Below, you see another way of pondering Finland's performance on the Pisa as compared to our own.

We include the score of tiny Estonia (population, 1.3 million), the world's highest-scoring nation:

Average scores, Reading Literacy, 2018 Pisa
United States, Asian-American kids: 556
United States, white kids: 531
Estonia: 523
Finland: 520

Say what? Can those statistics really be accurate? Did white kids in our floundering public schools punk every nation in the world on the Pisa reading test?

Yes, that's what actually happened! Meanwhile, our nation's Asian-American kids performed as if they go to school on some planet in a galaxy far far away!

There are many different ways to crunch these Pisa data. We'll post one last set of numbers below—numbers which may let us consider the shape of our actual problem.

There are many different ways to crunch these Pisa data. For example:

American kids performed slightly less well well on the Pisa science test, but the basic pattern holds up. American kids performed quite a bit less well on the Pisa math test, which is somewhat unconventional in its design.

Our kids tend to do better on the other major international test in math, the Timss. Perhaps for that reason, upper-class newspapers like the Times have tended to deep-six data from the Timss.

(In 2013, Amanda Ripley's widely-praised and deceptive book, The Smartest Kids in the World, took this disappearing trick to a truly remarkable level.)

Let's return to the scores from the Pisa reading test. For starters, let's make sure we understand what we're talking about.

That rather high score for our "white" kids includes all such kids nationwide. It includes low-income white kids from Appalachia, even from the Deep South. It includes white kids from the Rust Belt who are living with their grandparents because their parents have died from opioids.

That rather high score for our "white" kids isn't a score from Westchester County or Exeter, Miss Porter's and Hotchkiss. It's a score for the whole ragtag band of kids from our nation's dominant demographic group.

Question: When you see their average score—when you see the corresponding score for the Asian-American kids—do you still feel that over-testing has made it impossible for American kids to succeed?

Does it still make sense to wring our hands about the way we no longer read for pleasure? About the way we've (allegedly) stopped teaching phonics?

Does it still make sense to say that our scores reflect the fact that our kids didn't try to do their best when they took the Pisa? Does it make sense to say that our scores are low because we didn't get enough input from teachers in formulating recent plans for "education reform?"

The people whose letters appeared in the Times all seemed to accept the idea that something is grossly wrong across the board in our public schools. But does it make sense to advance that claim when you see that last set of Pisa scores?

For ourselves, we're amazed that those "disaggregated" scores are as high as they are. In our view, it's a minor indictment of Finland and its miracle schools that our nation's ragtag collection of white kids can actually outperform their kids on a major reading test, even as our Asian kids left Finland in the dust.

That's the way those scores strike us, but the scores are what they are. Unless you read the New York Times, which will never report such data to its badly misused readers. Nor will this hapless, upper-class newspaper ever publish this set of scores:

Average scores, Reading Literacy, 2018 Pisa
United States, Asian-American kids: 556
United States, white kids: 531
Estonia: 523
Finland: 520
United States: 505
United States, Hispanic kids: 481
United States, black kids: 448

Our nation's giant "achievement gaps" come into stark relief in those horrible data. Simply put, the New York Times (and the Washington Post) refuse to report or discuss such scores.

Just a guess—people at the New York Times find such data embarrassing. These terrible, useless upper-class people are committed to phantasmagoric tales about the actual size of our gaps and about the best ways to address the gaps, tiny as they are.

Do people at the New York Times even know that those horrible data exist? Given the paper's spectacular incompetence, we wouldn't assume that they do.

That said, we'll guess that people at the Times find those data embarrassing. At any rate, they refuse to report those horrible scores, and they then publish embarrassing letters which help keep script alive.

Tomorrow: Astounding journalistic incompetence (the ninth letter-writers's tale)