Friday, December 12, 2008

TIMMS - mediocrity reigns supreme

I was going to blog on TIMSS and talk about the mediocre performance of our schools in math and science and how we can never be competitive as a nation unless we lead in the area of technological expertise – but most other bloggers already have. So then I thought I could do a great summary of what other bloggers said about the TIMSS results and provide that to our loyal readers – but then I found that Core Knowledge already did that as well.

Based on these results, wouldn’t it be great to test all the teachers in these countries on the math and science content. I would be willing to bet a substantial sum, that the results would pretty much mirror the students. We have now highlighted the problem – now we need to come up with viable solutions and they come down to two core actions as evidenced by the McKinsey study we so often cite.

  • Develop a rigorous standards based curriculum
  • Be highly selective (like ABCTE) on who gets in front of our students

‘Nuff said – now have a great weekend

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