Talking with young children is a treat. As Art Linkletter noted in his 1945-1969 radio and television series, “kids say the darndest things.” Bill Cosby later hosted a television special based upon this Linkletter quote. But, unlike Linkletter and Cosby, I don’t listen to the stories children tell but to the words they use. Like sticking a thermometer under a child’s tongue to determine her general health, the words spoken atop the tongue are a very good gauge of her current educational status, potential for future educational success, and later economic potential as an adult. Words – the expulsion of a breath, a manipulation of tongue, lips and jaw, and the momentary expression of thought – weigh nothing, can be packed hundreds to the written page and even more to a minute of speech. Yet, these wisps of sound or scratch of writing are clear bellwethers of the intellectual person.

E. D. Hirsch initiated the educational discussion of cultural literacy in the 1980s pointing to the value of a person’s background knowledge and the personal vocabulary that person possesses as an expression of personal knowledge (Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, 1987). Hirsch and Allan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind, 1987) pointed educators away from the “theme” or teacher-written unit of classroom instruction toward an instruction of meaningful information based upon the child’s social and scientific worlds. Hirsch and Bloom began the argument that education should teach children a “core of knowledge” based upon real cultural and scientific information. Hirsch’s work assisted the Canadian government to restructure its national curriculum. Most recently, Hirsch has linked the lagging international test scores of children in the U.S. to a “knowledge deficit” that comes from recent trends in generalized and non-directed school curricula (The Knowledge Deficit, 2006).

Ongoing arguments about educating children are a dime-a-dozen with the educated and uneducated alike having almost unlimited capacity for airing their informed and uninformed opinions. How to teach children and what to teach children have educational, political, economic and socio-cultural aspects leaving most practicing educators scratching their heads.

In the absence of compelling argument, I like compelling evidence. There appears to be highly compelling and unopposed evidence of the following three facts.

1. There is a strong and positive correlation between an adult’s educational attainment and their annual income potential. Continuing and advanced education opens income-earning opportunities, it does not guarantee income earnings.

2. There is a strong and positive correlation between the volume and depth of a student’s working academic vocabulary and later success in school and eventual educational attainment. Vocabulary is related to reading and reading is related to academic success.

3. There is a strong and positive correlation between a child’s early development of an academic vocabulary and formative learning. Children who are exposed to and achieve a substantive vocabulary at an early age have real advantages over those who lack an early vocabulary.

Regarding education and income potential, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau publish an annual social and economic supplement that analyzes the annual earnings of people 25 years old and older. These data indicate median income levels which range broadly around the monetary value displayed. However, as a general indicator of income tendencies, there is a significant improvement in annual income based upon attained education levels. A person who attains a baccalaureate degree earns more than a high school graduate. A person with a Masters’ degree earns more than a person with a BA. Education pays off.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new03_028.htm

Success in school is not capricious. Just as those who are successful brain surgeons or carpenters or PGA golfers because they are highly skilled doctors, woodworkers and strikers of a golf ball, success in school is related to competence in what matters in school. The following excerpts from relevant research support the statement that a vocabulary, specifically academic vocabulary, is a significant indicator of a child’s formative learning and success in school, points 2 and 3 above.

“A child’s vocabulary is their passport to understanding and interpreting a wide range of texts. Unfortunately many children from low-income settings enter school with significantly smaller vocabularies than their more economically-advantaged peers. Hart & Risley’s (1995) research with young children showed a 30-million word gap by age three. This gap has an enormous impact on school success, with longitudinal research showing a strong correlation between the richness of vocabulary at age three and language test scores in vocabulary, listening, syntax and reading comprehension at ages 9 and 10.”

http://www.earlychildhoodwebinars.com/presentations/proven-strategies-early-education-administrators-can-use-to-help-teachers-close-the-vocabulary-gap-in-their-classrooms/

“Many research studies show that vocabulary is the best single indicator of intellectual ability and an accurate predictor of success in school.” (Elley, W. B. 1988 New Vocabulary: How do Children Learn New Words)

“From decoding and comprehension to succinctly expressing one’s thoughts through writing, language skill, such as appropriately posing and replying to questions vocabulary knowledge, and inference, are vital for academic success.”

http://www.speechpathology.com/articles/language-and-reading-skills-their-1175ademic success.”

“Vocabulary and reading show highest correlation with educational development. Results of early reading and vocab tests are best indicators of later academic achievement on Iowa tests.” (R. L. Thorndike, 1973-74, Reading as reasoning)

“Ryder and Graves (1984) contend that a lack of vocabulary is one of the reasons for failure in school. In addition to this, Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) report that students who have a wide vocabulary knowledge, get higher grades than students who have a lack vocabulary.

Children who have reading and reading comprehension problems have limited vocabulary. Particularly as these children read expository tests, they have difficulty in comprehending these texts due to the fact these texts include very difficult words compared to narrative texts.”

http://www.academia.edu/1393974/Is_Vocabulary_a_Strong_Variable_Predicting_Reading_Comprehension_and_Does_the_Prediction_Degree_of_Vocabulary_Vary_according_to_Text_Types

“English vocabulary level has been shown to be strongly related to educational success. Vocabulary level is a useful predictor of academic ability, even for courses like Chemistry that do not emphasize language usage.” (Bowker, R. 1981 English vocabulary manual)

“Vocabulary correlates highly with SAT Verbal and ACT and these tests correlate with college achievement.” (Mathiasen, R. 1984 Predicting college achievement: A research view)

“Reading and writing are intricate and complex processes that are closely related to and dependent on other language abilities (Pearson & Stephens, 1994). Language is the vehicle by which individuals acquire literate behaviors. Without language, we could not effectively express our thoughts and opinions or understand the thoughts and opinions of others. Language plays an important role in the development of literacy during the school-age and adolescent years. Therefore, the reciprocal relationship between language and literacy is one that cannot be ignored when considering students’ academic success.

Knowing the importance of vocabulary is one thing. Doing related to what you know is another thing entirely. Googling “how to build vocabulary in children” results in many pages of citations including academic papers, blogs and personal opinions, and the enticements of commercial vendors. Generally, these citations can be divided into school-based and home-based applications. Each base of action, school and home, is an essential contributor to a child’s vocabulary development and, when coordinated, each element supports the child’s innate interests as well as academic needs in developing a strong working vocabulary.

From the school side, the work of Robert Marzano is particularly significant. His “Building Academic Vocabulary” (http://marzano-strategies.wikispaces.com/Building+Vocabulary) has been adopted by individual classrooms, schools and school districts, and state departments of public instruction. Marzano’s designs for a structured teaching and learning of domains of vocabulary is very close to the recommendations made by Hirsch. The learning of vocabulary needs to be by instructional design in order for a child to develop a skeletal structure of language with which to add quantity and quality to a personal vocabulary. There are too many words to allow vocabulary to be taught or learned randomly.

Parents of school-aged children should become informed regarding their school’s strategy for vocabulary development. Becoming informed is not a passive waiting for the school to tell you – it is a personal inquiry into how children learn vocabulary in that school. A parent’s inspection should include knowledge of how vocabulary is addressed in grade level reading and language arts instruction, especially in the child’s learning different word groups and their semantics. Vocabulary also should be taught in every subject area as part of that discipline’s academic base. In particular, vocabulary should be a strong component of science, social studies, and mathematics. In order to understand and talk the language of biology and chemistry, history, economics and geography, algebra and geometry, the child must know the terminology of each subject. Vocabulary is just as important in art and music, physical education and technical education, and business education. Learning a foreign language intuitively is a heavy dose of vocabulary instruction. Parents should know how their child learns the skills and concepts of language and vocabulary acquisition. Memorization is important to building a vocabulary, but building a vocabulary is more than memorization.

The home-based applications can and should be just as designed and thought out as the school-based. Marzano’s six step process for building vocabulary also works at home, especially as the “subjects” learned at home are just as context-heavy as the subjects learned at school. Parents can identify the vocabulary of their home and that of their neighborhood and community. The words and word groups native to home, family and community translate very well back into school instruction.

As examples, before traveling to a grandparent’s or relative’s home in another community or state, talking about differences in location (geography, science, and culture), routes of travel (geography, mathematics, economics, culture), and how to act and behave when away from home (culture, psychology, sociology) can cause a child to learn, appropriately use and reinforce many current and new words. Food preparation and home maintenance have their own vocabularies. Personal and family shopping experiences use unique word groups and specific words. There is a vocabulary lesson available in almost every aspect of a child’s life. Whereas, every activity need not be a vocabulary lesson, because children are natural learners, taking a moment to repeat or explain an activity-based word can pay dividends, especially when multiplied by the great number of individual activities children do in the course of a day.

Children are social beings and communicating with each other is a natural process in most lives. The use of words is automatic in almost all communicating. As such, the greater a child’s vocabulary, the more successful a child will be in communicating and understanding the communications of others. The greater a child’s background knowledge as represented by vocabulary, the greater that child’s ability to comprehend what happens in her daily life, and to conceptualize about her world. A child’s vocabulary is her key to opening the future of school and adult success.

When most of us purchase a new-to-us car, we expect that the car will have an engine and a transmission, four wheels that go around when the engine and transmission are engaged, and a compartment within which we can ride. A basic concept of what we expect. But, what if the car you find when they hand you the keys only has three wheels? Or, if there are pedals instead of an engine? Or, if there only two wooden benches upon which to sit inside the car? Does what you expect match with what you got? It’s all about expectations.

Then again, sometimes we receive things in the blind – sight unseen. Things arrive in the mail box or standing directly in front of us. Things pop up, people pop up, ideas pop up and events happen. Life sometimes happens in the blind when we don’t notice or we are not attentive. Getting something in the blind can be by choice or design and often is rather fun, especially if the something is whimsical and of no great consequence. Mostly, we don’t want things that are important to us to happen in the blind.

Our children’s education occurs mostly in the blind. We have expectations based upon our own education or that of older children. However, when it comes to a particular child, most of his or her education happens outside of our notice and immediate attention. A child goes to school for 180 days of the year with noticeable benchmarks of vacations, open houses, parent conferences and report cards. In between benchmarks, the school year is a long string of days when the child is out of the house.

The daily exchange between a parent and a child gives us insight into a parent’s expectation about schooling to be and their attentiveness to school life. I wonder what parents really expect a child to say at the supper table (or breakfast table or anytime when parents and children are regularly together) when he or she is asked “What did you learn at school today?” What is a parent expecting to hear? To what extent will what they expect to hear align with what their child actually says? Sadly, I think that most often a parent’s questions about a child’s school day are perfunctory, much like a “how are you?” is asked when seeing an acquaintance at the grocery. It is a question asked without much regard for the answer; a question asked in the blind. If a child made the usual comments about reading and writing and arithmetic with a comment about lunch and snuck in “oh, and I invited my teacher home for dessert tonight” would a parent even hear it? In most homes, there is a very low threshold of expectation when a parent talks with a child about their day at school.

You must know what you are expecting in order for what you get to make any sense or have any ordinate value. It may be more like playing horseshoes than not. Tossed shoes are expected to be somewhere near the post even if they are not ringers. Tosses that land out of the pit should raise your eyebrows, as in “… my teacher is coming for dessert.” You expect what a child says about a day in school to be somewhere close to your expectation – in proximity to the post of your understanding about what they should be learning.

To this point, I offer assistance for parents to help them know where today’s “post” is in the sandpit of school. Re-visualizing the educational post is important because most parents believe that their child’s educational “post” is the same “post” of their schooling 25 to 40 years ago. Interestingly, these same parents can readily contrast the changes in cars over 25 to 4o years and would not pay today’s prices for a car made 30 years ago. But, at the supper table, they judge what their child says about school based upon their own experiences in school more than 30 years before.

These references can assist.

Grade-by-Grade Learning Guide

http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/going-to-school/grade-by-grade/first/

This Guide describes the literacy, reading, math, science and social studies concepts that a child typically learns in each grade, K through 5. The authors also include descriptors of how children at each grade level learn and how learning changes across the grade levels.

Kindergarten through fifth grade: What your child should know

http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/531-K-5-benchmarks.gs

This source describes grade level learning as end-of-year outcomes – what the child should know at the end of each grade level. Working backwards, a parents can stage this learning across the school year. Know how the educational post moves during the year and pay attention to how close your child’s talk is to what he or she should be talking about.

Grade Level Application of Dolch Sight Words

Grade Level Application of Dolch Sight Word List

This resource uses Dolch sight words to describe student learning. Because facility with sight words opens a student’s readiness for learning, sight words are a good indicator of ongoing learning. Watch to see that your child can recognize these words whenever and wherever they are seen.

Building Academic Vocabulary – Oklahoma State Department of Education

Robert Marzano and his associates studied and identified the academic vocabulary that is required for learning success at each grade level and in each subject area. These are the words a child needs to know and use in order to be ready to learn and extend their learning.

http://ok.gov/sde/building-academic-vocabulary

Know more about your child’s learning “post” so that you can better assure that the instruction your child receives and the learning they achieve matches your and the school’s expectations. Listen for benchmark words that correlate with grade level expectations in math, science and social studies. Listen for academic vocabulary that is appropriate for grade level reading and curricular understanding. If these benchmarks and vocabulary words are usual in your child’s supper table talk, then your child’s learning is around the expectation “post.” Then, know where the “post” moves as your child moves through the grade levels and subjects.

Eliminate as much of the educational blind as you can. You may not know everything about your child’s daily education, but when know what the learning “posts” look and sound like and pay attention, your expectations will be very close to your child’s daily schooling.

Do, listen, read, watch. Let’s think and talk about this together. Explain it to me. Show me. Once again. That’s good!

When teaching and learning are kept simple, children learn. Call this kind of teaching old fashioned. Label it as standard or traditional or “not very exciting” teaching. You may or may not see a lot of technology in this kind of lesson. And, it may not be the first thing a child talks about at the supper table when asked “What did you do at school today?” But, at the end of any day, acknowledge that this kind of teaching is exceptionally effective in causing children to learn.

This is how it works. The teacher sets the purpose of the lesson and helps children to connect the new lesson to what they already know. The children engage (do, listen, read, or watch) with what is to be learned. The teacher and children talk about it; children tell what they did, heard, read or saw and what they think and how they feel about it. The teacher asks questions of the children to clarify their learning story. Then, the teacher asks children to “do, tell, read or watch” again perhaps using different words or “stuff” to ascertain that each child actually accomplished the purpose of the lesson. Maybe children are asked to do it once again later or the next day to reinforce what they have learned. Children learn. Children conceptualize their learning. Children generalize from their learned concepts. Children grow from their learning and in their growth expand their expertise and capacity for more learning. And, this type of lesson design works in any curriculum and any subject. It works in reading and math and social studies as well as art, woodshop and computer studies. It works because it connects the child, teacher and what is to be learned and it applies good teaching and learning theories.

In the early 1900s John Dewey, American educator and philosopher, considered the linkage between children and their learning. He gave weight to the three components of teaching and learning by acknowledging the teacher, the matter to be learned, and the student. He conceived of the teacher as a guide to learning who adjusts the essential balance between the needs of the student and the integrity of the content, skills or processes to be learned. Dewey liked clear and simple instruction that challenged a child to create meaning from her experiences.

Madeline Hunter conceptualized the interplay of effective instructional practices with the theories of motivation, reinforcement and the transfer of learning in the 1980s. She understood the complexity of teaching and integrated research-based teaching practices and brain theories with schoolhouse practicalities.

Her methodology was popularized to an extreme in the 80s and 90s and later berated because it seemed too repetitively mechanical and overdone. In the rush to reform, the clarity and directness of Dr. Hunter’s methodologies were set aside for newer trends, especially trends that de-emphasized the importance of the teacher and emphasized the perceived needs of the learner. Interestingly, the current political mandates for improving the achievement of all children in U.S. schools is returning Madeline Hunter’s instructional practices to the front of the classroom. In his 2011 book, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, Mike Schmoker expounds on the values of Hunter’s methodologies.

In the context of school choice and educational consumerism, the need to keep children happy and their parents satisfied has changed our understanding of learning engagement. For many in our post-Dewey and Hunter century, the processes of learning often seem to supersede the outcomes of learning. A shortened attention span and need for quick successes connect millennial children with the advantages of techno-learning and fast-change options. Further, revolving choices of schools, curricula, and real and virtual teachers disconnects children and families from school communities. Whereas, speed and access to almost limitless experiences are a key stroke away at gigabytes per second, meaning and understanding that are checked and clarified by a knowledgeable adult operate at the speed of human conversation. The reality of that dichotomy aligns perfectly with a re-emergence of Dewey and Hunter. No matter how a child engages with a learning objective, “explain it to me, show me, and once again” are timeless in causing a child to learn and find meaning in what they learn.

The absence of “explain it, show me, and once again” may be analogous to manufacturing without a quality control. A child needs to know that learning has been achieved and that what has been learned is meaningful and matters in that child’s life. Good teaching completes and reinforces the loop connecting the purpose of learning, processes of learning, effectiveness of learning and application of learning.

Keep it John Dewey simple and meaningful. Keep it Madeline Hunter connected to sound learning theories. These two things keep teaching and learning effective and children learning.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its 2012 study of 65 participating nations/education systems this month. The news that 15-year olds in the U.S. once again were in the middle of the pack was printed as “PISA Test Results for U.S. Students are ‘Sobering’” (NPR), “American Kids Whiffed the PISA Exam” (Slate), “Testing Education: PISA Envy” (The Economist).

What price would need to be paid for the United States to climb the rank of education systems displayed in the PISA study? Let’s consider two elements – political commitment and cultural willingness.  What would it take on these two fronts to affect a change in the U.S. PISA fortunes?  For political commitment, we will examine my home state of Wisconsin.

This week Governor Walker received a letter from Tea Party and in- and out-of-state conservative groups calling for him to be a “hero” and bring legislation that would reject the Common Core Standards in Wisconsin schools. Be a hero? Abandon what more than 400 school districts have already accomplished in moving local instruction to the Core? Be a hero – for whom?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/27/scott-walker-common-core-standards-tea-party_n_4351092.html

Let’s see what this really means.

In 2010 the Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluated the academic standards in each state and ranked Wisconsin’s mathematics standards with a grade of F. “With their grade of F, Wisconsin’s mathematics standards are among the worst in the country, while those developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative earn an impressive A-. The CCSS math standards are vastly superior to what the Badger state has in place today.”

http://edexcellencemedia.net/publications/2010/201007_state_education_standards_common_standards/Wisconsin.pdf

The Fordham Institute awarded the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for English Language Arts a grade of D. “Wisconsin’s ELA standards are generally clearly written and presented, and include some rigorous content. Unfortunately, their failure to provide grade-specific expectations creates critical gaps in content that leave teachers without the guidance they need to drive rigorous curriculum, assessment and instruction.”

The letter to Governor Walker does not offer a substitute reform of educational standards or academic goals to replace the Common Core. The state legislators who held hearings around the state on the question of whether Wisconsin should support the Common Core also have not exposed anything but their disdain for the Common Core. Hence, abandoning the Common Core in the absence of any other improvement in academic standards returns Wisconsin schools to the Model Academic Standards that were graded with an F and D for their inadequacies. Interestingly, Model Academic Standards for all other subject areas remain the standards for instruction in those subject areas in our state’s public schools.  How would they be graded?

Standards make a difference in a discussion of PISA. The assessment of 15-year olds not only assesses their achievement on a once-every-three years test, but also assesses the instruction that is the foundation of that achievement. The dilemma in Wisconsin is the grave disconnect between the Model Academic Standards and the standards underlying the PISA test.

PISA views math literacy as “an individual’s capacity to formulate, employ, and interpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. It includes reasoning mathematically and using mathematical concepts, procedures, facts, and tools to describe, explain, and predict phenomenon. It assists individuals to recognize the role that mathematics plays in the world and to make the well-founded judgments and decisions by constructive, engaged, and reflective citizens.” As fact, the Fordham study found this definition of math literacy to be undeniably absent from the Wisconsin standards. Any Wisconsin student taking the PISA assessment could not rely upon his or her annual math instruction based upon the Model Academic Standards to assist their responses to PISA literacy in mathematics.

The problem is that current political commitment in Wisconsin is to politics and not to reforming the essential skeletal structure of public education, its academic standards. Any inference connecting the 2012 PISA results to public education in Wisconsin must be answered with the statement that state leadership is more interested in using education to improve its political advantage rather than using politics to improve public education.

The political price for Wisconsin’s improvement on PISA-like assessments is the commitment of our political leadership to real reform and measured improvement, like what the leaders in Massachusetts have rendered.  Massachusetts, and Connecticut and Florida, were accepted as independent education systems in the 2012 PISA assessment.  Massachusetts’ results rank the achievements of its 15-year olds among the top ten international education systems in the PISA data.  Those results did not happen by accident.  The are the result of a state commitment to achieving high results in the outcomes of their public education.  Way to go Massachusetts!

The status of cultural willingness is not much better off than political commitment when related to public education.

Frank Bruni, op-ed columnist for the New York Times recently asked “Are Kids Too Coddled?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/bruni-are-kids-too-coddled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Mr. Bruni cites the complaints by parents, teachers and social workers in New York who recently testified that “kids are not enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.” While he accepts the earnestness of these complaints, he says, “…we need to ask ourselves how much panic is trickling down from their parents and whether we’re paying the price of having insulated kids from blows to their egos and from the realization that not everyone’s a winner in every activity on every day.” Bruni points to the awarding of trophies not to the winner of a contest but to every participant, of the 20 to 30 valedictorians honored at high school graduations, and a court suit brought in Texas where a parent believes that a lopsided football score is a form of “bullying” an underachieving rival.

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Education wrote in Education Week that “our students have an inflated sense of their academic prowess. They do not spend that much time studying, but they expect good grades and marketable degrees.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2013/10/tales_of_the_common_core.html

“The questions asked when international comparative tests are given show that American schools typically believe that they are better at math and science than students in other countries believe they are, even though the converse is true; foreign students outperform ours…

The single biggest challenge in implementing the Common Core will be raising the expectations of Americans for their children’s achievement. While American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children to do better.”

Cultural willingness has a major impact upon the achievement of children in school.  The price of improvement is an upgrading of Wisconsin’s “grit” quotient.  Can you hear your grandparent when you were feeling dejected or defeated or sorry for yourself say “when the going gets tough, the tough get going!”  Grit keeps children in Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, and Massachusetts at their learning tasks when new learning is difficult.  It is their culture.

The capacity for children in the U.S. to be competitive in any international assessment is present. At some time soon, there will be a determination of who the adults in the room are and those adults will make a political commitment to improving educational achievement and those same adults will show a willingness to teach their children to “redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work. Students may not enjoy every step of it,” wrote David Coleman, President of the College Board and member of the Core authoring team). Coleman went further to say, “But if it takes them somewhere big and real, they’ll discover a satisfaction that redeems sweat. And, they’ll be ready to compete globally, an ability that too much worry over their egos could hinder.”

The price for the U.S. to achieve glory in the international competition of educational systems is not an insurmountable sum. Money is spent on public education every day. Politics is a game played every day. A political commitment could redirect money and human effort in a direction that already is available – the support of a public education based upon rigorous academic standards that align with the international educational community – movement up the PISA ladder is very realistic. At the same time, parental effort is expended every day to direct the lives of children. There is an equally important new call for parents: a willingness to redirect children toward to the work of an academically challenging studenthood and the connection of hard work, earned success, and self-esteem. Past generations of young Americans have been challenged with wars and depressions and questions of humanity. Being a more diligent student is doable.

The next PISA tests will be administered in 2015. History will record whether Americans were willing to do what needed to be done to achieve glory.

Duck, if you are a person responsible for the achievement of children in our nation’s public school systems. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its 2012 assessment results on December 3 and in the international box score the United States continues to languish around the middle of the pack of 65 nations. Although an assessment of 15-year old students only, PISA does not reflect well on the national entity of U.S public education.

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/

In the words of the National Center for Education Statistics,

In mathematics literacy, “the U.S. percentage was lower than 27 education systems, higher than 22 education systems, and not measurably different than 13 education systems.” Twenty-six percent of the tested children scored below level two on the assessment; level two is the bench line for proficiency in mathematics literacy.

In reading literacy, “the U.S. percentage was lower than 14 education systems, higher than 33 education systems, and not measurably different than 17 education systems.” Seventeen percent of U.S. students did not achieve the bench line for reading literacy proficiency.

In science literacy, “the U.S. percentage was higher than 21 education systems, lower than 29 education systems, and not measurably different than 14 education systems.” Eighteen percent of U.S. students did not achieve the bench line for science literacy proficiency.

Using the lens of time, the U.S. average scores in math, reading and science literacy were not measurably different than the average U.S. scores in prior PISA assessments dating back to 2003.

Of interest, PISA allowed three U.S. states, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida, to enter assessment data for students in their state independent of the U.S. data. The achievement of students in these states also were included in the U.S. data. Of these states, Massachusetts moves into the top ten education systems in each assessment and Connecticut is in the top ten in two assessments. The average scores of both states were superior to the average scores of the United States. On a comparative basis, the population and economic status of Massachusetts and Connecticut are greater than many of the 65 national/education systems participating in PISA.

To date, China has not participated as a nation. Specific cities in China have participated and Shanghai and Hong Kong have been assessment leaders in recent tests.

The 2012 international stars on the PISA look like a reshuffle of a ten card deck. The top ten just seem to shift places. However, Finland fell out of the top ten in mathematics literacy to 16th and was surpassed by Massachusetts. Massachusetts’ results were not measurably different than Finland in reading literacy and just below Finland’s average in science literacy.

If you tend to be a critic of public education in the United States, your criticism will be much the same as it was in 2009 and 2006. Why don’t children completing middle school and entering high school in the U.S., children and schools who have so many educational advantages over their international peers, achieve better than the middle of the pack? You will make accusations about systems failures. PISA’s stated goal “is to assess students’ preparation for the challenges of life as young adults.” (NCES.ed.gov) The PISA data would tell you that the next generation of 15-year olds in over half of the national education systems tested may be better prepared for their future than those in the United States.

If you tend to be a proponent of public education, your commentary will indicate that historical trends indicate little change, up or down, in the achievements of U.S. 15-year olds. You will point to the continuing emphasis in our nation’s schools on equity and equality of educational opportunity and progress in closing the achievement gaps displayed by state and local assessments among children in our local schools. You will talk about consistent achievement in the face of the many social and political agenda for public education.

You may also point to a disconnection between your local mathematics curriculum and the PISA assessment. PISA views math literacy as “an individual’s capacity to formulate, employ, and interpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. If includes reasoning mathematically and using mathematical concepts, procedures, facts, and tools to describe, explain, and predict phenomenon. It assists individuals to recognize the role that mathematics plays in the world and to make the well-founded judgments and decisions by constructive, engaged, and reflective citizens.” If your local curriculum is not Common Core aligned, it is probable that the PISA definition of math literacy does not match the course-based math at your local children are learning.

If you tend to be politically and economically realistic, you will speak about education being a political lever for many governors. They pull the lever down to move state financing committed to education to cover other non-education costs as they balance state budgets. They push the lever up to spotlight selected school successes and never fail to take advantage of the photo op. They push or pull the lever depending on their party affiliation, strip teachers of unionized rights, and give local school boards “tools” to change their local economic situation in the absence of collective bargaining. You will wonder how our schools continue to cause student learning with all of the politico-economic hub-bub.

If you are in the long haul, you will urge folks not to make knee-jerk reactions to the 2012 results. Wait until the 2015 results! PISA results are released every three years and thus far a success or lack of success on this international test has not impacted local education.

The PISA data pile continues to lean in disfavor of the U.S. Even so, school doors were open this morning to children across our nation. Moms and dads packed lunches, watched their children board a bus or walk or car pool to school and these same parents will sit in the bleachers or theater seats this week to support their children in their athletics and fine arts. Children in a thousands of classrooms will engage with their teachers and classmates and they will continue to learn although most will continue to report at the supper table that “nothing happened at school today.”

And, the PISA data will continue to lean. Let it lean. Our children are learning.