Student Math Scores Broken Down By Demographic Tell a Different Story

Over the years we've sure heard a lot about how American schools are falling down in math and science. There's been quite a lot of critique, and it's not that we shouldn't always be striving to do better, it's that I feel the condemnation is unwarranted. Indeed, I'd like to discuss this with you if you have a moment, and then I'd like you to consider my points of contention and make your own conclusion. MSNBC had an interesting story on August 17, 2011 titled "Can US compete if only 32 percent of students are proficient in math? - Massachusetts is a bright spot, but other states lag behind in the world," by Stacy Teicher Kjadaroo which stated; "What do Massachusetts, Switzerland, and Singapore have in common? Their students are among the top performers in the world when it comes to mathematical proficiency. As for the rest of the US, the comparison is more bleak, according to a new report: The US ranked 32nd out of 65 countries (or cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong) that participated in the latest international PISA, an exam administered to representative samples of 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development." Okay so, let me tell you why all these figures may indeed be less than perfect and not tell the whole story in our ultra-politically correct world. Did you know if we separate out all of the Asian students in our schools and pit their mouth scores against those in Japan, China, and other Asian countries that we immediately find is they are within one or 2%. In other words, our Asian students here the United States our Asian-American students can compete just fine with the Asian students in those other countries across the Pacific. Did you know our white student's their test scores are within 1 to 2% of all of the test scores for math in Germany, and the Nordic countries? I bet you never knew that, because no one is making that information available, but there are some serious research reports on this topic which have been squashed, and not made available to the public. Did you know our Mexican-American students scored just as high or higher than the industrialized nations of South America? You see, when you break down our math scores in our high schools by Demographic and ethnic origin, what we find is the United States is not 32nd out of 65 countries, rather it is right up there with all of these other countries, each and every one of them. Now then, I'm not satisfied with being able to equal those other nations, I live in the United States of America, I know that this is a great country, and I think our math scores should surpass all other nations no matter what. Therefore if we break down our math scores by demographic, I'd like to see US students at 5 to 10% plus the math scores of those other nations where the ethnic origin and demographic would accurately correspond. I am not down on American schools of mathematics, yes we can do better, and we should do better, because this is a great country, we have great people living here, and we can do better so we should. But let's not condemn the progress we've made, let's just set the goal higher, and go for it. Please consider all this and think on it.