SUNDAY: There's something you didn't see in the Times!

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024

Plus, the Fox News Channel: There's something you didn't see in yesterday's New York Times. 

More specifically, you didn't see it in the paper's news report about the results from a major international math and science test. 

Dana Goldstein's name appears on the news report. Her editor's name does not. 

Familiar language quickly appears. We're quickly offered such troubling words as "dire," "alarming" and "grim:"

U.S. Students Posted Dire Math Declines on an International Test

American students turned in grim results on the latest international test of math skills—adding to a large body of research showing significant academic declines since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

The exam, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, known as TIMSS, was given last year to fourth and eighth graders from dozens of education systems across the globe. The results, released on Wednesday, found that since 2019, American fourth graders have declined 18 points in math, while eighth graders have declined 27 points.

[...]

“This is alarming,” Dr. Carr said. “These are sharp, steep declines.”

As usual, the Times is pretending to care about our public schools. For the record, Dr. Carr is identified as "Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the federal Department of Education."

Are American students producing grim results in math? We'll provide more detail below. For now, we'll counter with this:

In our view, American journalists are sometimes producing dim results in basic statistical reporting. That's already true in this Times report, where the reader is given no way of know if a decline of 18 points on this particular fourth-grade test is a very large decline or perhaps just a blip on the screen.

Is 18 points a lot or a little? Dr. Carr is cited as the expert; she describes the decline as sharp and steep and alarming. 

That may be true, or it could always be false. As we've often noted, our educational experts have often failed to notice the most obvious facts about the way these matters work.

Back to the New York Times! Along the way, it does tell readers this, doing so in a somewhat ambiguous manner:

Despite the disappointing results, the United States performed slightly above average in math compared with all of its international peers.

That statement strikes us as perhaps a bit fuzzy. With some actual numbers included, here's what it actually means:

Average scores, Grade 4 math, 2023 TIMSS
United States: 517
All participating countries: 503

Even that needs a bit of explication. As we understand it, that lower score (503) is the average of all the average scores compiled by all 63 participating countries—actually, by all 63 participating "educational systems." 

(Fewer nations participate in the TIMSS on the Grade 8 level. For that reason, we'll focus on Grade 4.)

Some of those countries involved in the TIMSS are from the underdeveloped world. Their students often score quite poorly. 

Below, you see the way that U.S. score looks when compared to some comparable nations. We're including Finland because it's long been heralded as a magical land:

Average scores, Grade 4 math, 2023 TIMSS
South Korea: 594
Japan: 591
Great Britain: 552
Finland: 529
Australia: 526
Germany: 524
United States: 517
Canada: 504
France: 484

To see the scores from every nation, you can just click here. Meanwhile, fuller disclosure:

According to the official NCES report, Germany's average score "is not measurably different from the U.S. average score." All the other scores we've listed are said to be "measurably different from the U.S. average score."

In short, Great Britain and Australia outscored our fourth graders. Our fourth graders outscored Canada and France. 

That said, our average score did go down by 18 points as compared to 2019, the last time the TIMSS was given. That's probably a reflection, at least in part, of school closings due to Covid, as the Times report suggests.

That said, consider this:

Along the way, the Times report engages in two acts of "disaggregation." It tells us that U.S. boys scored better than U.S. girls on the TIMSS math tests. It also tells us that scores of U.S. "fourth graders in the 75th percentile and above did not decline since 2019," while scores of "those in the 25th percentile and below declined significantly."

The Times lets us know about our boys as opposed to our girls. It lets us know about our higher-scoring students as opposed to their lower-scoring counterparts.

Below, we'll show you something which goes completely unmentioned.

The additional data included below are in the official NCES report, though you may have to hunt a bit. But the New York Times doesn't mention these embarrassing numbers. As we've noted in the past, it never does:

Average scores, Grade 4 math, 2023 TIMSS
South Korea: 594
Japan: 591
U.S., Asian American kids: 571
Great Britain: 552
U.S., white kids: 543
Finland: 529
Australia: 526
Germany: 524
Canada: 504
U.S., Hispanic kids: 491
France: 484
U.S., black kids: 468
Qatar: 464

Very large gaps exist between those four groups of American kids. To wit:

In Grade 4, our Asian American kids outperformed every European nation. Our white kids outscored magical Finland, but also Sweden and Norway, along with such countries as Australia, Germany, Canada and France.

Our Hispanic kids appear much farther down the scale. Our black kids scored a few points better than Qatar and Bahrain, a few points below North Macedonia.

What can we possibly learn from those disaggregated scores? Also, what can we learn from their exclusion from the New York Times news report?

We'll answer the second question. We can learn that no one actually cares about what happens to black kids in this country. This is a fairly obvious point, a point we've been making at this site for more than twenty years

Why doesn't the New York Times include those scoring patterns in its news report? We'll offer a two-part guess:

The New York Times finds such data embarrassing. Presumably, it thinks its readers will be embarrassed and disconcerted by such data too.

Also, the New York Times may not actually give a flying fig about the lives and the interests of this nation's black and Hispanic kids. And of course, MSNBC's beloved stars aren't likely to be telling you about those data either! 

We Blues! In the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, and then in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, we went fully performative for a brief time, displaying our moral greatness.

For a while, we poured it on pretty good! We staged a similar brief performative blast in the short-lived MeToo movement.

We need to get to know ourselves better! For better or worse, that simply isn't what we're like, as we see in the various ways the New York Times (and other orgs) work to avoid discussing the actual state of play within our public schools.

When that Times report was composed, the data were sifted for subscribers' comfort. In fairness, the sifting is utterly clownish at the utterly ludicrous Fox News Channel, whose viewers weren't even permitted to see the actual violent footage from January 6.

We're living inside our Red and Blue bubbles; this widespread practice has produced our modern American Babel. On the level of the corporate owners of our major American orgs, this is the nation we've chosen!

"Dire," the New York Times headline said. Also, "grim" and "alarming!"

Fuller disclosure: To be fair, demographic complexities are often involved in the average scores of other nations too. 

(Sometimes, possibly not. Also, demographic complexities may sometimes affect average scores in ways you might not expect.)

What isn't complex, in any way, are the very large gaps between those different American scores. You'll never read about such things in the Times. Nor are you likely to see this matter talked about anywhere else.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? It's how our world tends to work!