From Todd C. Frankel at the Washington Post, via a contributor to Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor.
U.S. millennials post ‘abysmal’ scores in tech skills test
“There was this test. And it was daunting… This exam, given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society.”
“And U.S. millennials performed horribly.”
How horribly?
Horribly horrible. But better than Poland. In one category.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) as an international survey of 33 countries. It measured key cognitive and workplace skills seen as contributing to individual success and effective participation in modern societies. The first results from the Survey were released on 8th October 2013.
A recent review by ETS http://www.ets.org/s/research/30079/millennials.htmlrevealed that
“Scores for U.S. millennials are below the OECD average across all three skill domains: literacy, numeracy and problem-solving… Across all three scales, the scores for U.S. millennials are disappointing.”
Here’s a summary ranking:
LITERACY –-U.S. millenials ranked 18th, beating out Ireland, the U.K., Spain, and Italy.
MATH –- U.S. millenials ranked dead last in 22nd place.
PS-TRE (problem solving in technology-rich environments) –- U.S. millenials ranked 18th, beating out Poland.
All good, though disturbing, reading. Please share, realizing you may have to read this to our younger citizens and explain the math and diagrams and charts; will probably be the best education many of them have had in a while.
How tough are the PIAAC questions? Try them for yourself.
Why do I pose the question about NGSS in the headline? I’ll answer that with more questions, such as:
Will teaching Kindergarteners in Life Science that
Us(ing) observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive. [Clarification Statement: Examples of patterns could include that animals need to take in food but plants do not; (K-LS-1)
make them more employable? Will teaching high schoolers in Earth System Science that
“the far-reaching impacts human activity is how an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide results in an increase in photosynthetic biomass on land and an increase in ocean acidification, with resulting impacts on sea organism health and marine populations” (HS-ESS3-6)
improve scores and ultimately make them better citizens?
No.
How can we ever reduce the junk science in our lives if junk science education flourishes?
Our nation is still at risk even after the warning in 1983 – “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform“.
This education commission under President Reagan exposed the crisis in math and science education programs. From report co-author (and discover-er of plutonium) Glenn Seaborg (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/530808/Glenn-T-Seaborg ):
“Our Nation is at risk… the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and as a people.”“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Thanks to Jerry Pournelle for making me aware of the quote and always being an inspiration.
http://junkscience.com/2015/03/11/will-the-junk-science-of-the-next-generation-science-standards-fix-this-problem/
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