China Achieved Top Education Rankings by Cherry-Picking Students: Report

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It says China selects participants from its wealthier and higher academically performing areas.

With the next round of global standardized testing planned for next year, education leaders anxiously await improvements by U.S. students and which version of China will participate in the assessments.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will roll out its 2025 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) in the coming months.

These exams take place every three years and highlight the math, science, and reading proficiency of 15-year-olds worldwide.

About 80 nations participated, many of them developed or democratic countries. The rankings are viewed as a measure of the quality of a country’s public education system.

In the last PISA exams in 2022, the United States was ranked No. 18 overall, behind Denmark and ahead of Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. By subject area, U.S. students ranked ninth in reading, 16th in science, and 34th in math.

Asian countries have held the top rankings in recent years, and Canada, Australia, Estonia, and some Western or Northern European nations consistently finish ahead of the United States.

Chinese provinces and territories have participated in PISA since 2009, but never the nation as a whole, Spencer Wilson, speaking for the OECD, told The Epoch Times.

No Chinese provinces participated in the 2022 tests; Macao and Hong Kong, both considered “special administrative” regions of China, took part three years ago and ranked No. 2 and No. 6, respectively.

In 2018, a collective of four Chinese cities and provinces—Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang—finished in the No. 1 spot overall and in each of the three major subject areas.

In 2015, the Chinese collective included Guangdong instead of Zhejiang and finished 10th overall, behind Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, Estonia, Canada, Taiwan, Finland, and South Korea, according to results listed on the PISA website.

The United States came in 22nd overall in 2018 and 31st in 2015.

A recent investigation by the American Enterprise Institute public policy think tank criticized China for cherry-picking students from its wealthier and higher academically performing areas to improve test scores to the point where that nation’s sample size appears to be two years ahead of the world in math and science.

AEI’s Nov. 26 report estimates that the 2018 results were based on the performance of about 12,000 students across 361 schools, as opposed to a larger random sample of all 15-year-olds in a nation of 1.4 billion people, 180 million of which are under the age of 15.

“We find them [the results] implausible—clearly unrepresentative of the true level of knowledge and achievement of pupils in China,” the report says.

AEI researchers cited past data from the World Bank Learning Poverty Rate survey report that noted the average 10-year-old in China in 2016 could not read a basic text, compared to 4.9 percent in the United States and 2.8 percent in Singapore.

They also noted that the China Family Panel Studies test results for 2010 (the most recent data available) of 20,000 Chinese students in grades 7 and 9 showed an average math score of 11.72 out of 24 and an average reading score of 21.8.

In addition, AEI’s report said, the average national college entrance exam score across 31 provinces in China in 2021 was 371 out of 750 points, with students in Shanghai averaging 466 points.

That test, known as “Gaokao,” has been taken by 200 million Chinese 12th graders in the past two decades.

About 40 percent of the nation’s graduating high school seniors complete the two-day exam annually, and the pass rate is about 85 percent, according to AEI’s report.

Based on the comparisons of those three indicators, AEI researchers estimate that China’s ranking in the PISA assessments would be about mid-table of the 80 nations if scores from all provinces were considered.

“Suffice to say, there would appear to be plenty of scope in this mysterious process for non-random results,” the report says.

The United States has made gains in overall rankings, but math performance remains a concern.

Suzy Koontz, a founding board member of the nonprofit National Math Foundation in Syracuse, N.Y., and chief executive officer of the Math & Movement curriculum and tutoring business said students from other countries consistently outperform their U.S. peers because they are subject to so much more repetition at younger ages.

In the United States, states and school districts regularly change the way math is taught based on conflicting bodies of research and to improve engagement, behavior management, and attendance even though performance declines.

“We lack the foundational skills in math,” Koontz told The Epoch Times.

English and Language Arts instruction and performance are improving because schools across the United States are embracing the Science of Reading, a body of research that proves sounding out letters and using the left side of the brain to decode words is the best method, Koontz said.

But as a nation, she added, we lack that same vigilance and political will for championing best practices in math.

If a student isn’t proficient in multiplication by middle school, “You’re closing the door on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers.”

As an alternative to math repetition in early grades, Koontz promotes kinesthetic learning, where elementary school students use cross-body movements and both sides of the brain to learn multiplication and division quickly and build muscle memory to retain information better.

She has worked with school districts in 46 states to accelerate math learning, largely for 5th graders.

In many instances, she sets up numbered grids where students recite multiplication tables as they jump between squares or hop on a number to identify the answer to a problem.

It’s just one approach, Koontz said, “but it is like Miracle Grow for the brain.”

“If schools just add movement, scores will catapult.”

National Council on Teacher Quality President Heather Peske said improved teacher preparation with a solid footing in math principles and concepts, such as a deeper understanding of numbers and operations, algebraic thinking, geometry and measurement, and data analysis and probability, is at the heart of improving the global performance of U.S. students. Those standards should be mandated at the state level.

“Our children are competing for jobs on a world stage,” Peske told The Epoch Times. “For them to succeed, we need preparation programs to do a better job of preparing and supporting effective math teachers as well as state policy that sets the conditions for teachers’ math teaching success.”