World Pisa Results 2009

Comments

1. Alexander Mercouris says

   April 10, 2012 at 3:02 pm

   A most interesting. map. There are all sorts of figures I would have expected for example Slovenia outperforming the Czech Republic.

   I am confident that Russia’s rankings will rise steadily just as I am confident that life expectancy and general health will improve.

   • AK says

     April 10, 2012 at 8:08 pm

     I too expect Russia will go up, as schooling shifts to the Western methods that are better are producing good results in PISA, but only moderately so. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect it to exceed the “Slavic ceiling” seemingly set by Poland at about 500-510.
2. Albo says

   April 10, 2012 at 4:03 pm

   Has anybody noted that Robert Lynn’s IQ tables give Finland 97 (close to Russia’s 96) ?
   Now its educational prowess kind of disprove his theories, isn’t it ? In the end what are Japan or South Korea’s stellar national IQs good for if Finnish students are better anyway?

   • AK says

     April 10, 2012 at 8:02 pm

     No, of course it doesn’t. There are of course exceptions here and there, but overall, the correlation between PISA scores and IQ scores is extremely close.

     R2=.71, to be precise, based on average of PISA 2009, and Lynn’s 2006 figures. This rises to R2=.79 once you include those of Lynn’s IQ figures which were calculated via the crude method of averaging the scores of their neighbors. This is because the much bally-hoed “g-Factor” is a fact of life.

     And Finnish students are mediocre as measured by TIMMS and PIRLS, whereas Japan and Korea perform even better on them than on PISA.

     • Albo says

       April 11, 2012 at 1:11 am

       Anatoly,

       The fact that measures of intelligence vary among individuals and regions/ethnicities and that much of the difference is probably explained by biology isn’t mutually exclusive with the idea that schooling and good education policies can also make a difference.

       Yes we can just view Finland as a statistical oddity that doesn’t change the general trend, but what if Finland’s education policies are really much better than most of the others? (You said Pisa is closer to an IQ test than TIMMS, that the latter put more emphasis on  preparedness and Finland was tested only once a while ago). I think we all accept that success in education is some  function of heredity and hard work, and we can establish trends about the role of each. 

       Yet that doesn’t mean a particular school or method can’t manage to extract much more from its students than others- I’m sure we all witnessed that also. Generally they stand out and are the rarity (much more attention and efforts than usual are needed, which often but not necessarily translate into funds) -but they exist. Now what if Finland’s education were simply one of the most successful internationally in this regard? This is what I suspect (Finland policies are lauded and envied all over Europe) and if so, to a large extent the Wealth of Nations that Richard Lynn linked to IQ can be circumvented : when Finland’s (97 average) can engineer the best higher education and the third place in innovation in the world (only after the Us and Switzerland- as per the world economic forum report- and considerably less helped by brain drain I’m sure) much ahead than Honk-Kong and it’s 10 points higher IQ,  larger population and financial bonanza – at least yes, Russia can take note in any case 😉