A Global Report Card
On Peter's Uncommon Knowledge interview with George W. Bush, Peter makes note of the George W. Bush Presidential Center's "Global Report Card," which ranks each U.S. school district in math and reading and shows how the district's performance compares to overall performance in that district's state, to the country, to other first world countries, and to the rest of the developed world.
Today I'm visiting my fiancé's family in Watsonville, California. The local school district here is the Pajaro Valley school district (which is where my fiancé and his siblings would have gone to school, had their parents not sacrificed to send them to a nearby private, Christian school). According to the Global Report Card, Pajaro Valley is in the 37th percentile in math and 36% in reading when compared to the rest of California; 27% in math and 26% in reading when compared to the U.S.; and 18% in math and 24% in reading when compared to the developed world. Absolutely abysmal.
How does the school district where you live stack up?
Photo of "disruptive class" via Shutterstock
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Comments:
Nov '10
Re: A Global Report Card
I'm in Lynden, WA. 50% in math and 58% in reading. It's all the corn and dairy...
Jun '10
Re: A Global Report Card
New Mexico rates 49th out of 50 nationally. The reasons are largely cultural and historical, but to suggest the hard truth at a public meeting would make me a racist. My local district probably rates close to your Pajaro District.
And will somebody tell the kid in the back of the room to get her feet off the desk!
May '10
Re: A Global Report Card
I wonder if the international schools are really comparable. In the US, for reasons unfathomable to me, our school system seems oriented only toward a college prep curriculum. So we get everyone from slow to brilliant, slacker to motivated, all in the same pool. I have heard that other countries do a "sorting" process that begins early and steers high academic potential kids toward college, lower academic potential kids toward trades. If that is the case, that sort of system would produce a better "product" whether college prep or tradesman. But it would mean that the results of a test like this would not be comparable.
That is not an apology for our system. The system is utterly messed up with a lot of money wasted and a poor end product. It is only a comment on the possibility that the statistics may not really measure what they purport to measure.
Mar '12
Re: A Global Report Card
Did the teachers get worse, or the students and parents? As we have 41% born to single parents, do we really expect comparable results as for countries with much higher rates of intact families? Would a "great" teacher from the 50s public school system really make all the difference? (What if her class was mostly English as second language?)
"The statistics speak for themselves," but what do they really tell us? Don't we need other underlying statistics about different population characteristics of the states and districts being compared, to make sense about the problems being confronted: is it a problem with teachers, with schools, or is it something else, something we aren't allowed to talk about?
Aug '10
Re: A Global Report Card
When we survey achievement at the same ages where countries like Singapore and Japan track students out of the college track, it's not surprising you see differences in statistical performance. Our pool is filled with all students.
Tom seems to think this is a bad thing, but I think it is a paean to the democratic spirit. We believe that anyone can achieve through hard work, even if they lack inherited brilliance. This may be an incorrect belief, but it is a belief in the individual's ability to overcome obstacles through hard work. A school system should require all students to work hard. It should allow even challenged students to strive to better themselves.
The problem with our education system is we've allowed it to become too bureaucratic. Teachers and administrators select which students will achieve through tracking and AP programs. Tracking like the Swiss, Germans with their Abiteur, or the Japanese is progressive in the utmost.
We aren't measuring apples to apples. We're measuring their apples to our farm.
Dec '11
Re: A Global Report Card
Nathaniel Wright: When we survey achievement at the same ages where countries like Singapore and Japan track students out of the college track, it's not surprising you see differences in statistical performance. Our pool is filled with all students.
Tom seems to think this is a bad thing, but I think it is a paean to the democratic spirit. We believe that anyone can achieve through hard work, even if they lack inherited brilliance. This may be an incorrect belief, but it is a belief in the individual's ability to overcome obstacles through hard work. A school system should require all students to work hard. It should allow even challenged students to strive to better themselves.
On the contrary, many schools abandoned tracking a long time ago. I think the bigger problem is the need to force all students into a college track, no matter their interest and aptitutude. At least at the high school level we need to offer students more graduation paths, rather than adopt a 1 size fits all policy in the name of equality.
Mar '12
Re: A Global Report Card
Nathaniel Wright: "We aren't measuring apples to apples. We're measuring their apples to our farm." Yes, on many different levels. We are processing an immigration surge that many of the other countries in the comparison haven't experienced. Even if it ends up (as it did with Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants) with comparable or better results in 40 years, in the short run, our average scores will suffer, even assuming teachers of the same quality.
Of greater concern is the trend toward single parent families. That is unprecedented, and there is no historic basis to conclude that that progressive social experiment will end as happily as the mass immigrations of the 19th century. But even there, focussing on the test scores may lead to wrong diagnosis of causation--our schools may lack the ability to make up for the parental disinvestment, but looking to the schools as the solution may be a dead end.
Aug '10
Re: A Global Report Card
Robert,
I didn't respond to your comment because I agree with so much of it. The single family home has been devastating.
As for all kids being "on the college track," I'm of two minds. First, good. Any kid who wants to be on the college track should be allowed to be. We aren't a socialist state that "knows" what each kid "should" study. That doesn't mean that I think students shouldn't be offered trade classes. I think they should. We forget how many jobs, noble jobs indeed, that exist and don't require a college education.
Second, I think you need to spend time in the land of "I have a 4.6 GPA" before you start thinking that tracking is gone. The AP grade inflation in California is ridiculous, even if the classes aren't more difficult -- which is often the case.
Apr '12
Re: A Global Report Card
Before or after book-cooking? (Not even counting the "classroom participation" crock. I was marked down for both being obnoxious about raising my hand and not participating enough. There's a reason I loved Hermione.)
The point about comparing our farm to their apples is accurate; we don't remove folks from the school system.
Heaven knows I'd be glad if they'd recognize that not everyone needs to be forced into a four year school. Or would at least stop assigning fifth grade comprehension with first grade English to to the same group as the college level everything but math kid, then giving A's to the free riding moron and a B- to the person who did all the work for not turning them into standard-grade-level material.
No, the kids these days aren't the same as they were three decades ago; neither are the schools.
Jan '11
Re: A Global Report Card
You just knew that its scores were going to be for the birds with a district name like that.
Nov '10
Re: A Global Report Card
LowcountryJoe: You just knew that its scores were going to be for the birds with a district name like that. · 10 minutes ago
Beat me to it...
BTW, just looked up my own school district in the year I graduated high school. 43rd percentile math, 51st percentile reading. I expected worse, honestly.
Oct '10
Re: A Global Report Card
Only if achievement is measured purely in terms of getting something called a degree from something called a university. And the results of adopting such a yard-stick include renaming any sort of post-High School institution a 'University', and granting degrees in media appreciation and gendered basketweaving. No cheers for this democratic spirit.
Surely it is better to provide youngsters with the skills that are going to be useful for them in their transition to what they are actually going to be doing as adults. For those destined for the manual trades, that will be reinforcing basic literacy and numeracy, and traits like punctuality, concentration and perseverance. For those destined for the commercial trades, some language skills and applied mathematics. For the university-bound, more esoteric subjects. But even here there are early choices to be made: languages or science?
None of this implies any sort of judgment about the human worth of the individuals in the various streams. (contd)
Oct '10
Re: A Global Report Card
(contd) After all, we don't measure the worth a man by the certificates framed on his wall, do we?
Nor do we measure his worth by his income. We live in a system famous for the fabulous rewards afforded to people who can throw a ball through a hoop, play a guitar or fake sincerity while reading from a teleprompter.
I fear that lumping everyone together on a college-prep track doesn't help anyone become what they can be -- acknowledging that what you do with your academic gifts is usually the least of what you can and should become as a person. To put things another way -- pretending that Bob is going to benefit from university when he is manifestly better suited to being a panel beater isn't going to help him be a good husband and father, and I rather suspect the reverse.
Mar '11
Re: A Global Report Card
Dunlap, Illinois -- Math 70%, Reading 80%.
I'm thinking you need to plant more soybeans.
Peoria, just over the hill -- Math 23%, Reading 32%
They need a lot more soybeans.
Actually, there are a lot of people working here who are temporarily relocated from all over the world. A high percentage of those are from India, a culture that puts high stock in educational achievement.
Apr '12
Re: A Global Report Card
Math and reading scores...so Eurocentric elitist. Setting school standards and measuring schools and even teachers, that is for other countries. What were your districts' scores on their Glee clubs?
Apr '11
Re: A Global Report Card
Great website! A bookmark keeper.
May '12
Re: A Global Report Card
I think too much emphasis is placed on single parents. Mine split when I was 2 and she never re-married and according to some government statistics we moved back and forth across the poverty line depending on how it was calculated in a year. I don't think I am exceptional, but managed two degrees from Big 12 Universities with some fancy Latin at the end of the description.
When the federal gov't got involved with education matters got worse. As incarnated today the DOE is a product of the Carter Era. I don't know if the statistic sampling changed, there is some good discussion here about that, but the fact is the US changed. We surrendered a lot of education accountability, responsibility, and performance to a centralized gov't.
We don't have any control over how the statitistics are measured and compared internationally, but we do control who is responsible for our education system. Get the fed gov't out of it completely and accountability and performance will instantly increase.
Mar '11
Re: A Global Report Card
Two points, one when we are talking about single parents we are really referring to Wedlock births. We are for the most part not talking divorced or widowed single parents, although these don’t have as good of outcomes as two parent families, the social contrast is minor compared to wedlock children. Secondly, one of my best friends was born out of wedlock and although she is poor, she did well in school (1 class from a B.S. degree but could not pay the tuition, so never finished) and refused to go on any sort of Welfare even though she easily qualified for years.
So it is a principle not a law when we say wedlock children destroy societies. There are always exception and it is not an excuses for bad behavior.
Sep '10
Re: A Global Report Card
My school district (Mequon-Thiensville, WI) scores 72% Math and 77% Reading against the international benchmark. I promise it isn't because of the teachers. It is because the district is in a wealthy suburban community with intact families that place an extremely high value on education.
A few miles down the road in Milwaukee Public Schools, they score 16% in Math and 26% in Reading against international benchmarks. For what it's worth, the average compensation (wages+benefits) for a teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools is over $100k per year.
Aug '10
Re: A Global Report Card
Within an artillery shell of VDH too !
Artichokes and well paid teachers, guess it's not a total loss. Any chance of them getting a stop on the high speed train ?
California beggars the imagination.
Will those kids be able to get into City College in SF ? oops..that might not work out either !
So what are the chances they could get nice cushy jobs in San Quentin with the hard guys ? People here in Missouri would kill for a $200,000/yr job like that with pensions paying 75% and healthcare for life ? I know some boys who can shoot real straight ----->
Edited on July 19, 2012 at 10:46pm