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U.S. quietly drops out of math test

1prophet

1prophet

Diamond Member
Dropouts

The United States has quietly withdrawn from an international study comparing math and science students.

Aug. 9, 2007 - Americans took note when Bill Gates said last spring that American schools needed to beef up science and math standards if the country was going to maintain a competitive edge in the new century. So did Congress, which last week approved legislation called the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science) Act, which carves out a whopping $43.6 billion for science education and research.

So why did the federal government quietly decide last year to drop out of an international study that would compare U.S. high-school students who take advanced science and math courses with their international counterparts?

The study, called TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) Advanced 2008, measures how high-school seniors are doing in algebra, geometry, calculus and physics with students taking similar subjects around the globe. In the past, the American results have been shockingly poor. In the last survey, taken in 1995, students from only two countries?Cyprus and South Africa?scored lower than U.S. school kids.

Conspiracy theorists suggest that the U.S. government withdrew from the study without making any announcement because it anticipated another poor showing. ?Maybe they don?t want to hear more bad news,? says John Ewing, executive director of the American Mathematical Society.
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Why do we need math and science as long as we have American Idol, sports stars, Hollywood and Music celebrities that are in and out of rehab as our role models?

After all who wants to be known as the nerd that got picked on in high school?😉

Maybe John Stossel was right all along.
 
Good to see that NCLB is working....I really thought that just throwing money at the problem would fix everything. 😉
 
Originally posted by: magomago
we need to redo the entire school system as a whole - NOT just math and science
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..you really think the hiphop cell phone fashion show in public schools want to learn anything beyond the latest in tattoo scrawling??

 
lol. A study I once perused placed the general US populace just ahead of Cyprus regarding acceptance of evolutionary theory as explaining the diversity of life on Earth. (Sorry, I forget the citation otherwise I'd give it.)

I'm an instructor of a 100-level intro biology class & the first assignment I give is to define what science is. I get some interesting answers.

At least our universities are still the best in the world. The answers I get to the same question in grad seminars are usually a bit better. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: JD50
Good to see that NCLB is working....I really thought that just throwing money at the problem would fix everything. 😉
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You didn't get the memo?

NCLB is "No Country Left Behind".
 
When you have minimum standards for high school that are grade school requirements, what do you expect?

Money is what people like so offer people big money for algebra 2 and trigonometry.

Many of these people from other countries to learn Math in the United States. It is moronic in a way.

With the advance of computers do we really need to know that much math? If you have a tool that can do the math for you why bother? What good is differential equations to most people?
 
Originally posted by: piasabird
When you have minimum standards for high school that are grade school requirements, what do you expect?

Money is what people like so offer people big money for algebra 2 and trigonometry.

Many of these people from other countries to learn Math in the United States. It is moronic in a way.

With the advance of computers do we really need to know that much math? If you have a tool that can do the math for you why bother? What good is differential equations to most people?
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Yes, we need to know that much math. Unless, you want the U.S. to remain an oil dependent, food service, ignorant gangster wannabe nation that hemorrhages money to the middle east.
 
American culture has anti-intellectual current. Studying is not cool.

We even have words for those students, nerds and geeks.

Let's face it, we got more students who don't like to study than study. If you raise your hand in class too frequently in some underachieving school, you'll
get nerd/geek label stick onto you. Uncool.

We have to accept USA is not and will not excel in science or math, it is just not in our cultural DNA make up.

 
When some schools have gone to the extreme of paying off students with ipods and cash just to get them interested in graduating, it seems a lost cause 🙁
 
the culture of laziness and drugs and the lure of instant fame and fortune or nothing is abetted by those who wish to prey upon those who live in that culture.

it keeps them neatly and profitably separated. for the rich to get richer, there must be the multitudes of those that they can extract their riches from, which does include the national treasury that everyone who makes at least a dollar a day must pay into.
 
So our kids are dumb. And other country's kids are smart. Where do those country's smart students travel to get research grants, phd's and high paying jobs? Why, the US!

But of course immigrants are destroying our country so we should keep them out.
 
Originally posted by: sirjonk
So our kids are dumb. And other country's kids are smart. Where do those country's smart students travel to get research grants, phd's and high paying jobs? Why, the US!

But of course immigrants are destroying our country so we should keep them out.
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QFF (Quoted for Fun)
 
Originally posted by: sirjonk
So our kids are dumb. And other country's kids are smart. Where do those country's smart students travel to get research grants, phd's and high paying jobs? Why, the US!

But of course immigrants are destroying our country so we should keep them out.
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Wow, and all this time I thought everyone was complaining about the horde of uneducated, low skill, illegal immigrants from South America coming over our southern border.......😕
 
Originally posted by: piasabird
When you have minimum standards for high school that are grade school requirements, what do you expect?

Money is what people like so offer people big money for algebra 2 and trigonometry.

Many of these people from other countries to learn Math in the United States. It is moronic in a way.

With the advance of computers do we really need to know that much math? If you have a tool that can do the math for you why bother? What good is differential equations to most people?
Click to expand...

You think computers just advanced by themselves? Technology isn't magic, it didn't just spring out of the ground because we were all tired of living in caves and eating our food raw...very smart people who knew a lot came up with new ways to do things, and we expanded our base of knowledge and built on it and the smart people had more and more to work with, and built better and bigger things. I suppose if you just want to slide through life you can just trust the magic technology fairy to do all your thinking for you, but I'd like it if we weren't exactly where we are now in 50 years. Computers know differential equations because someone taught them how to do it, but computers aren't going to spontaneously figure out the next big breakthrough in math...and nobody else is going to either unless they understand the building blocks we have today. Just being able to type numbers into a computer and get the answer back is pretty worthless when it comes to moving the field forward. So we teach math, and we teach it to everyone, because who knows who's going to become "most people" and who's going to be the next brilliant mathematician. Maybe your goal in life was brain dead mediocrity, but I think we'd like our children to aim a little higher than that.

Of course there is another argument...outside of the specific knowledge you gain, there is something to be said for stretching and working your brain learning new and complicated things and applying them to solve problems. Experts in scientific and engineering fields tend to be pretty universally capable when it comes to similar kinds of knowledge and tasks. A mathematician will be a much quicker study at computer science than will an English major, and not just because computers use math...the amount of real math needed to understand computer programming is pretty minimal. It's about expanding your mind and improving how you think, not about becoming a reference book for just the things you NEED to know to get through the day.

I'm not sure it's funding either, I think the real problem might be this anti-intellectual attitude adopted by so many people in the United States and expertly highlighted by your ridiculous rejection of math for everyone because you don't use differential equations on a daily basis.
 
This isnt a government or a public school issue so much as it is a parenting issue. But of course it's easier to blame the government.
 
Originally posted by: piasabird
When you have minimum standards for high school that are grade school requirements, what do you expect?

Money is what people like so offer people big money for algebra 2 and trigonometry.

Many of these people from other countries to learn Math in the United States. It is moronic in a way.

With the advance of computers do we really need to know that much math? If you have a tool that can do the math for you why bother? What good is differential equations to most people?
Click to expand...
Because the computational tools that "automatically" solve math problems for you require a high degree of understanding of the methods used by the tool to achieve accurate results. I do a considerable amount of work with finite element analysis, which essentially uses standardized software to approximate the solution of some pretty gnarly differential equations. However, if I don't understand the mathematical underpinnings of the software, then my results will be invalid. The software will still give me a "solution," but it is up to me - the user - to determine the validity of the solution based on what I know about how this stuff works.

As far as the US sucking in math and science in high school goes, I'm actually not terribly concerned. I didn't give a rat's about science or math in high school and attended one of the worst high schools in the country. However, when I went to college, I picked up the slack without much trouble and now compare favorably to classmates from India, China, and Europe. I almost think that I am better off not having learned these things in high school because of the methods usually used in high school, which emphasize memorization rather than understanding. Now, I really understand this stuff and can pick up new topics relatively quickly and easily. Sure, it made the first year of college pretty tough, but grad school has been a relative breeze despite the fact that I'm competing directly with those students coming from "superior" academic backgrounds from around the world.

As I've said before, I think the biggest problem in this country is trying to squeeze everyone through a one-size-fits-all mold. Not everyone is going to be an engineer/scientist. Some will be auto mechanics who need a completely different skill set, so it is an exercise in futility trying to teach them all the same stuff. Sure, history and whatever should be the common ground, but there is no reason to take someone who wants to be a mechanic and teach them anything above algebra 1.
 
Originally posted by: babylon5
American culture has anti-intellectual current. Studying is not cool.

We even have words for those students, nerds and geeks.
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The US has ALWAYS had an anti intellectual view in our culture dating back to the first and second great awakening.

And for your vernacular - geek is bad - that is the stereotypical idea of a guy with pimples, zits, knows it all, and has a pen pocket protector. Nerd is cool - come and meet some engineering students who have high GPAs and can bench 310.
 
Originally posted by: blackangst1
This isnt a government or a public school issue so much as it is a parenting issue. But of course it's easier to blame the government.
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It's also a cultural issue.

In fact, I blame the cultural and social condition of the US more than I do the school system.

The school systems that are beating the US in most of these countries are also bureaucratic government run school systems just like in the US. In fact, in most countries, school systems are federally run, not locally run like in the US. So they're often actually even more "government" than our system. Despite this fact, people constantly blame only the government and schools for failing our kids. It's really our culture and our parents (especially deadbeat parents) that are failing our kids.
 
Originally posted by: JD50
Good to see that NCLB is working....I really thought that just throwing money at the problem would fix everything. 😉
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Adopt the "Texas Solution" their schools learned to use under Governor Bush, cook the books until the numbers match the expectations. Or is that the "Bush Solution"?😕
 
Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Originally posted by: piasabird
When you have minimum standards for high school that are grade school requirements, what do you expect?

Money is what people like so offer people big money for algebra 2 and trigonometry.

Many of these people from other countries to learn Math in the United States. It is moronic in a way.

With the advance of computers do we really need to know that much math? If you have a tool that can do the math for you why bother? What good is differential equations to most people?
Click to expand...
Because the computational tools that "automatically" solve math problems for you require a high degree of understanding of the methods used by the tool to achieve accurate results. I do a considerable amount of work with finite element analysis, which essentially uses standardized software to approximate the solution of some pretty gnarly differential equations. However, if I don't understand the mathematical underpinnings of the software, then my results will be invalid. The software will still give me a "solution," but it is up to me - the user - to determine the validity of the solution based on what I know about how this stuff works.
Click to expand...
You're definitely right cyclo. Anyone who doesn't understand the underlying math has no hope of using these arcane mathematical software packages. Honestly, have people that made claims that you don't need to know math due to software ever tried to use stuff like mathcad or even excel? Even excel is beyond the ken of sooo many Americans.
 
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