Title:
Lessons From Shanghai's Top Scores on International
Test
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
The Program for International Student Assessment, or
PISA, is a two-hour test that compares the
performance of fifteen-year-olds. In the latest
test, the countries with the best readers were South
Korea and Finland. But students in Shanghai, China,
scored the highest of all in reading, mathematics
and science. The next strongest results were in Hong
Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. In
all, around half a million students in more than
seventy economies took the test in two thousand
nine. The test has been given every three years
since two thousand. Shanghai took part for the first
time in two thousand nine. The Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development released the
results. Andreas Schleicher is director of the
Education Indicators and Analysis Division at the
OECD. He says: "Asian countries value education more
than other countries. They have given education a
priority. Every child, every teacher, every parent
knows that education is the gateway to success." Mr.
Schleicher says other education systems can learn
from Shanghai. For example, he says education
spending in the province has increased, including
teacher pay and training. And administrators are
putting teachers into challenging classroom
situations to make them better at their jobs.In the
PISA scoring system, Shanghai scored six hundred in
math. By comparison, the United States scored four
hundred eighty-seven. Shanghai's reading average was
five hundred fifty-six. American fifteen-year-olds
scored five hundred, the same as in Iceland and
Poland.In science, Finland was second behind
Shanghai. The United States was twenty-third.Education
Secretary Arne Duncan says the results show an
urgent need for Americans to do more to remain
competitive in the world economy. He points out that
the United States has fallen from first to ninth
place in college graduation rates because of gains
by other countries. Mr. Schleicher says
international testing experts have investigated and
confirmed the Shanghai scores. He says the PISA
results are not representative of all of China. But
he also says they dispute the common belief that
Chinese education is centered on repetition and
memorization. Twenty-five percent of the Shanghai
students showed advanced thinking skills to solve
difficult math problems. The OECD average was three
percent. For VOA Special English I'm Alex
Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
