OECD: Reading performance inequality is high in the USA, but decreasing

[muriel_volestrangler]

A report measuring the difference in performance in the PISA reading tests between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students in various countries, and the changes (between 2000 and 2009).

Ideally, school systems provide high-quality educational opportunities for all students, irrespective of the students’ backgrounds. Students from socio-economically advantaged families and those from disadvantaged families should be equally likely to succeed in school. That is the ideal, anyway. In most countries, the reality looks a lot different. PISA results have consistently shown that socio-economic disadvantage is linked to poor performance in school. In fact, on average across OECD countries, disadvantaged students are twice as likely to be among the poorest performers in reading compared to advantaged students. On average, a socio-economically advantaged student scores 88 points higher on the PISA reading test than a socio-economically disadvantaged student, a difference that is equivalent to more than two years of schooling.

Yet the fact that countries and economies vary in the degree to which learning outcomes are linked to socio-economic background demonstrates that social background is not destiny, and that policy and practice can make a difference. Moreover, countries can pursue equitable learning outcomes while also moving towards high student performance. In the PISA 2009 survey, many of the countries and economies with the greatest equity in student outcomes are also top performers. Students in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Iceland, Korea, Liechtenstein and Norway score above the OECD average in reading, and the difference in performance between advantaged and disadvantaged students is less than 70 score points. Other countries and economies also achieve equitable learning outcomes, but their students do not perform as well.

Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Jordan, Macao-China, Qatar, Serbia, Thailand and Tunisia are as equitable as the preceding group of countries, but their students score below the OECD average in reading. The difference in reading performance between advantaged and disadvantaged students is highest – more than 100 score points – in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Dubai (UAE), France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, the United States and Uruguay.
...
Other countries and economies, namely Canada, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong-China, Mexico and the United States, also improved their equity levels without a concurrent improvement in overall performance.

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisainfocus/pisa%20in%20focus%20n25%20%28eng%29--FINAL.pdf

[LWolf]

1. Providing high-quality educational opportunities for all students

doesn't mean that all students are prepared to take advantage of those opportunities. The idea that everyone should be equally likely to succeed in school regardless of where they are coming from isn't just ideal, it's ludicrous.

Schools can't control the environment that early brain development occurs in. Schools can't make every child equally ready for academic learning at the age they begin school. People are not standardized when they are born or when they start school, and schools can't, despite what the greedy and ignorant might think, produced standardized, sanitized learning results.

Schools can't even redesign the system to better serve those coming in without the advantages that some enjoy. That would take the power, and the funding, to do so. The power and funding that politicians, not schools, have and control.

[iemitsu]

2. Growing up poor holds many disadvantages for students

that children from wealthier families don't have to deal with. Unpaid bills, cold or unlit houses or apartments, little food on the table, having to stay home from school to care for sick siblings or grandparents, having no books in the home or never seeing an adult reading, and seeing no evidence that investment in our system leads to any improvement in life are just a few of the burdens that poor kids carry to school that their better off peers don't need to worry about.
It is true that teachers and schools cannot equalize educational outcome when students come from such different circumstances. Only social and legislative changes can address the issues that largely dictate student success.