Why Are Chinese Students Walloping US Kids on Test?

(Dec. 7) -- China has dropped an educational bomb on the United States, according to the results of an international test of 15-year-olds from more than 65 countries and educational systems.

The exam, called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tracks student performance in reading, mathematics and science. Students in Shanghai outperformed all other students in all three subjects on the 2009 test. Students in Hong Kong scored third highest in mathematics and science, and fourth highest in reading. China was participating in the test for the first time.

Meanwhile, test scores for American students were about average for all participating countries. The scores showed some improvement in science from earlier tests and small comfort in math, where the U.S. caught up to nine countries that previously outperformed it.

But compared with the other 33 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries that participated in the exam, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and a below-average 25th in math, leading Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to say that Americans are being "out-educated."

Others had a more dismal view.

"On Pearl Harbor Day 2010, the United States (and much of the rest of the world) was attacked by China," education expert Chester E. Finn Jr. wrote on the blog Flypaper.

Finn referred to the PISA results as a Chinese "Sputnik," one day after President Barack Obama warned that the United States needed to have a "Sputnik moment" to refocus the country on its future.

"Right now the hard truth is this," Obama told an audience at Forsyth Technical Community College in North Carolina. "In the race for the future, America is in danger of falling behind. That's just the truth. And if you hear a politician say it's not, they're just not paying attention."

This most recent PISA, which has been given every three years since 2000, marked mainland China's first entrance into the exam. (Hong Kong has participated before.)

The OECD report that accompanied the results credited Chinese educational reforms with Shanghai's incredible success. Those reforms include abandoning a system of small, elite schools for a wider, inclusive system that expects high performance from all students; increasing teacher pay and standards and improving teacher education; and emphasizing deeper understanding of material and concepts rather than rote learning.

"This shows that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly educated countries is now out of date," OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said in a statement.

The 2009 PISA also revealed stark gender differences in students' learning. Girls did better on reading tests in every single country, and girls were more likely than boys in every country to say that they read for pleasure. On average in OECD countries, boys did better than girls in math; the gender gap in science was small.