Countries Struggle to Help Low-Performing Math Students
Many teenagers in developed countries are struggling with math studies, according to a report released this week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The report, which analyzed data from the 65 countries that administered the latest international education assessment, known as the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, estimated that about 4.9 million 15-year-olds in OECD countries and economies are not proficient in math. While the analysis touched on low-preforming students in science and reading, it focused primarily on struggling math students.
The report, entitled "Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed," found that between 2003 and 2012, only nine countries reduced their share of low performers in mathematics: Brazil, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Tunisia and Turkey.
The success of these countries, which are culturally and socioeconomically diverse, offers a lesson to the rest of the world, says Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's director for education and skills: All countries can improve education, as long as they have the right policies and the will to implement them.
Poland, which saw an 8 percentage point decrease in low performers from 2003, and Germany, which saw a 4 percentage point decrease, were successful in raising math scores among low performers due in part to their efforts to "invest in teaching capacity and deliberately attract the most talented teachers to the most challenging schools," says Schleicher, who wrote the foreword to the report. Germany also saw progress as a result of investing in early childhood education.
The East Asian regions – which include cities and territories – that have the highest overall math scores didn't make the list of most improved, but they also didn't have much room to grow, says Schleicher. "Certainly the Asians are ahead. The 10 percent of the most disadvantaged in Shanghai tend to do better than the 10 percent most advantaged children in the U.S."
Sweden had the highest increase in the rate of struggling math students, with an increase of almost 10 percentage points from 2003 to 2012.
"It's a very sad story," Schleicher says. "The school system there has a lot of privatization going on but in a bad way."
Schleicher says Sweden had devolved decision-making to schools and local communities without building oversight capacity and accountability. "This has induced new school providers to compete on services that did not relate to student learning outcomes."
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