Two myths of international assessments are debunked—the first, that the United States once led the world on international tests of achievement. It never has. The second myth is that Finland leads the world in education, with China and India coming on fast. Finland has a superb school system, but, significantly, it scores at the very top only on PISA, not on other international assessments. Finland also has a national curriculum more in sync with a “literacy” thrust, making PISA a friendly judge in comparing Finnish students with students from other countries. And what about India and China? Neither country has ever participated in an international assessment. How they would fare is unknown. -- Brown Center Report
> it scores at the very top only on PISA, not on other international assessments.
ReplyDeleteWhat other international assessments? TIMSS, in which it does not participate? http://nces.ed.gov/timss/countries.asp
1964's FIMS, in which Finland came 4th out of 12, and the U.S. 11thÉ http://www.iea.nl/fims.html
No, they base this statement on the one time Finland participated in TIMSS, when it came 5th of the 12, and 14th overall, despite testees averaging 13.8 years old compared with an inter-
national mean of 14.4 years.
That's hardly sufficient to lable something a 'myth'.