Wednesday, December 04, 2013

The American English teacher's PISA 2013 Takeaway

Massachusetts outscored everyone outside of the Pacific Rim. If you want to increase reading scores for high school students, the our model is what Massachusetts used to do.

Unlike math, there are significant cultural differences embedded in Language Arts instruction between the US and Asia -- different language, different... letter systems? I don't even know the correct term offhand. Completely different literary traditions. I don't know where one would start. That leaves no better model than Massachusetts a few years ago.

This all assumes your goal is raising test scores, of course, a premise I don't actually share.

When this push for national standards started, I figured it was a non-starter because no way The South would agree to use Massachusetts' standards. The idea that they could just pull something out of the air that Massachusetts would agree to never occurred to me.

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