Are you curious about how the US did on the latest international TIMSS test of mathematics? Here it is:
I had to leave some countries out to make everything fit. All the Asian countries topped the charts, so you can take that as read. I also removed some tiny countries that don't test their entire populations, as well as half a dozen countries at the bottom. Click the link above if you want to see the whole list.
There's nothing especially new this year. American white and Asian kids are among the best in the world, while Black and Hispanic kids do poorly. It's your call whether you think this means our educational system is great or horrible.
Hmm. Since I’m pretty sure Iranians and Gulf Arabs do well enough here in the U.S. I’m still leaning towards educational and social inhibitors vs racial or “genetic” ones.
While there are robust reasons why, the racial differences on this, and many other similar tests, within the US are a proximate driver of income inequality within the United States.
Tragically, American black students must compete in advanced economy but, on many measures of math and reading, too many have subpar skills.
When supposed "anti-racists" push garbage like this - https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 - why are you surprised when whites and Asians (the exemplars of multi-racial whiteness) do better on tests than blacks and Hispanics?
I clicked on link. "Rational Thinking and Hard Work Are White Values". So ridiculous. It's like it came from an SNL skit.
It's also rather racist since this implies that non-whites don't value rational thinking and hard work.
Agreed. But this is being pushed by "anti-racists" and taught to educators in DEI training.
For example, see https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/characteristics.html with its list of White supremacy behaviors.
The first one is "perfectionism". Another is "sense of urgency".
Good luck succeeding on math tests without either of those.
I remember when that one was mentioned somewhere. Certain academic/liberals can be kind of clueless at times even if their hearts are in the right place.
I think when someone claims that urgency and perfectionism are white traits it is very hard to argue that their heart is in the right place.
Next up: slave owners' hearts were in the right place because they genuinely believed that blacks needed owners to protect and civilize them. I'm waiting.
Is there any way to break things out by race in the same way for our most-similar peer countries? I wonder if this racial score pattern is unique to the US or something that is reflected in our peer countries?
Great question.
So, at the end of the day, if you take "America (overall)" where would that be on the chart?
I looked it up at link. 487. Same is Israel and better than France.
Why not break down other countries' scores by race, too? Or better still, by income?
They break down the USA by income. The results are unsurprising.
Well, I for one wanted to see where Asian-American kids were, relative to other Asians.
Singapore -- 605
Chinese Taipei -- 602
South Korea -- 596
Japan -- 595
USA Asians -- 580
Hong Kong -- 575
Also note the top scoring countries are in east Asia. "USA Asians" include US students from all parts of Asia. So it would be interesting to know how Japanese-American students, for example, do compared to students in Japan.
I live in a half-Asian neighborhood. I haven't looked anything up but I doubt that there is a significant number of Japanese immigrants in the US compared to those from China plus SE Asian countries and India.
Major immigration needs a push and a pull. Not a lot of push in Japan.
Lots of variation I bet WITHIN the Asian American category because they come from very different countries/cultures in Asia.
A lot of those "Other" Asians are Indian immigrants who probably did better than anyone because of selective migration patterns --- we get a lot of their academic elite. On the other hand, we also have a lot of Vietnamese and Filipino Americans, who are generally not as affluent and for the Filipino part, do not share much in the Confucian cultural heritage that make East Asian such excellent test takers,
I was struck by the chart showing the disparities between male and female students. In most of the western world, including the US, boys seem to test better than girls in math. On the other hand, there's mostly parity for girls in a lot of the the Middle East. I'd be curious to know what's in the water in places like Morocco, Oman, or Jordan to produce that. In South Africa, interestingly, girls massively outperform boys -- the only country where that seems to be the case.
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2024/12/sunday-theres-something-you-didnt-see.html
It would be more interesting to see scores by socio-economic status than race.
In any event, I'm surprised that the scores in the UK were higher than ours. Must be all those kids of Indian and Hong Kong origin.
There are certainly enough members of those immigrant/kids of immigrant groups in the UK to break down the numbers and find out, assuming that factor was recorded. In Japan for example not so much.
"All the Asian countries topped the charts, so you can take that as read."
In my own mind, this situation brings up obvious questions of culture. And quite interesting questions too.
And yet, as best as I understand the issue (and please feel free to politely educate me on this), the perspective provided by culture is viewed negatively, if not outright condemned, by the Left.
Here's one example from a quick Google search, an article by the Economic Policy Institute: "Don't Blame Black Culture" And a quote:
"The cultural argument of the Cosby consensus succeeds because conservatives and liberals both tend to exaggerate the cultural differences between white and black Americans ... The record is clear: When economic opportunities are available to black Americans, they take them. When opportunities are scarce, they fall behind, and culture has very little to do with it."
The Left seems to fear, as best as I can tell, that a cultural perspective is perhaps little more than an expression of anti-black racism and pro-Asian bias.
So, let's just grant, for the sake of argument, that there very well may be some Conservatives who use terms like "culture" as a euphemistic way to veil their racism. I would, nevertheless, still assert that the cultural argument should not therefore be abandoned simply because it is sometimes put to poor use.
Simply refusing to consider a valuable and potentially insightful perspective, largely because it has been employed by one's political adversaries, limits the potential knowledge of our own side.
And I would go so far as to say that the influence of culture in various life outcomes strikes me as patently obvious. And it is of great explanatory help in addressing the facts presented by Kevin (with Asian countries topping the list in math).
Speaking very broadly, Asian cultures lean away from the individual and towards the collective. And, to be clear, this is both good and bad. The emphasis on individuality, creativity, and experimentation in western societies does help explain why so much of the world's innovation takes place here. And the emphasis on rote learning and obedience does seem to help explain why Asians (both here and abroad) score better on subjects that benefit less from spontaneity and more from discipline (like math).
Granting that much, could we not consider the idea that there might actually be some issues to address, not just in black culture, but in all cultures? And that maybe this perspective could help us highlight some strengths while addressing some weaknesses? Would that be so bad? Let's not throw the cultural baby out with the Conservative bathwater.
As long as schools are funded by local property taxes, people who live in poor areas will inevitably have seriously underfunded schools. My wife retired a few years ago from K-5 teaching in Title I schools. She was friends with the art teacher. Kids took art once a week so that single art teacher taught all 600 students in the school. Her budget for an entire year of art for 600 students was $100. So what are you going to do with a kid for 17 cents a year?