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Comment by avenoir | Hacker News Reader

I was a B student in a Russian school from 1 to 8th grade and started in an American High School in 1999. If you factored in ungodly amount of mandatory summer break reading everyone had to do in Russian schools, you'd probably end up with 3 times the material covered in a span of a year compared to American schools. This basically allowed me to just coast through all 4 years of High School with all kinds of stupid awards and a GPA of 4.0. The same amount of effort would've probably turned me into a dropout back in Russia. Kids here don't learn anything and I think lack of quality material both in and outside of school is to blame. Ironically, I hear they don't learn much in Russian schools either these days.

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These anecdotes from smart foreigners contemptuous of Americans never make any sense against the stats. White Americans outperform all of them in the PISA tests. America only performs poorly in the PISA tests when you don't exclude non-whites.

Non-whites are Americans too, and I don't see a reason to exclude them. The fact that non-white students perform so poorly as to drag down the average so much speaks of a massive systematic failure in education.

If whites have high test scores while non-whites don't, it might mean that the system does work for some groups, but not for others. This indicates as problem not with the curriculum, but rather with the way the curriculum is "distributed" (aka: the massive disparity between schools in wealthy areas vs poor urban areas).

This is a pretty important distinction to make, given that this entire discussion is regarding the content of the curriculum.

The system works for all groups. Russian-Americans outperform Russians. Nigerian-Americans outperform Nigerians. And so on.

There is ultimately a problem of the students involved that is not going to change on the scale of a single generation or two. Across multiple generations of concerted effort, who knows. But ignoring what might be 200 years from now the American education system actually works pretty well.

It's not the case. Citation another commenter posted

https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-in...

I fail to see how "it's not the case". That link very clearly shows that White Americans and Asian Americans vastly outperform African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Asian Americans are #4 on that list and White Americans are #16, bested only by a handful of Asian and European countries that are notorious for their stellar education systems. Meanwhile, Hispanic Americans are around #50 and African Americans around #60 on that list.

Your original comment said

"If whites have high test scores while non-whites don't"

Whites do not have the highest test scores. Are you implying Asian Americans live in wealthier areas than whites?

Based on your link, it very clearly shows that some groups in America excel in America's education system while other groups don't. I'm not sure why you're so intent on splitting hairs about that.

By the way, yes, Asian Americans typically do live in higher-income areas when compared to other racial groups in America. Very few Asian Americans live in rural areas or in states that are known to have poor education distributions (eg deep south). Asian Americans overwhelmingly live in LA, NYC, Massachusetts, Dallas, Houston, or the Bay Area, which are certainly more "wealthier area" than places like rural Alabama, West Virginia, or Montana where poorer whites live. Asian Americans have the highest income levels out of any racial group in America.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_American...

Considering that racial difference in learning outcomes is due to socioeconomic status, if you are going to use socioeconomic status to normalize or filter American results, shouldn't you also do it for the country you are comparing it to? I am sure if you exclude poor people from the results of every country (or use a proxy for poverty like race in America; perhaps religion, ethno-linguistic background, geographical location, etc in other countries) the results for all of them would significantly improve. It's not fair to compare rich people from country A with the average of county B.

> Considering that racial difference in learning outcomes is due to socioeconomic status

Citation required

For what it's worth here's a citation proving counter to the statement...I stole from another commenter.

https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-in...

As someone who grew up in a poor immigrant family where the first generation was uneducated and spoke no English...I always find it insulting when low education is attributed to not having money. Not just myself as a counter anecdote, but 10 out of 11 of us second generation have college degrees and doing pretty darn well for ourselves . #11 is still in college.

Just goes to show you that school smarts don't make a successful nation. It takes a cohesive people and cultural heritage. This is why immigration is such a huge problem. I don't care how smart and high earning and proud of themselves the foreigner in question happens to be. These people are a huge problem for our future. We got where we are in substantial part on the basis of our culture and self respect. We can do without the snide foreigners. They should leave.

After all, You're here. I'm not making derogatory and chauvinistic comments in your country.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt for your earlier comment that is now clear was undeserved. So your solution for the failure of the American education system is that non-white people (whom you call "snide foreigners") should leave?

I'm addressing the very, very common phenomenon of post-Soviets, Indians, and East Asians coming here to a country superior to their own in almost every measure and talking smack about how dumb we all are here, with little basis in fact. They should lose the chip on their shoulder, realize they come from flawed countries and flawed cultures, and see the relative superiority of the one they elected to emigrate to. After all, I'm not the emigrant being snide in a foreign land. I've lived overseas extensively and was always respectful and learned a lot. These newcomers should learn to salute Old Glory and cheer or they should go home.

Good luck going to China (where the other fellow apparently ethnically originates) and talking about how dumb they all are online and how much smarter westerners are. They have an insane and violent sense of chauvinism. I merely hope to instill a sane level of chauvinism in Americans who read disparaging foreigners.

Wow that went south fast.

> For what it's worth here's a citation proving counter to the statement.

Does it? It seems to support my view. Your link shows that in PISA rankings by race in America are in this order:

1. Asian Americans

2. White Americans

3. Multiracial Americans

4. Hispanic Americans

5. African Americans

Ignoring the multiracial category, because I couldn't find a source that included this category, that is exactly how median income differs between races in the US, i.e. Asian Americans have a higher median income that White Americans who have a higher median income than Hispanic Americans who have a higher median income than African Americans [1]. How exactly does this disprove my statement? And what exactly is insulting about saying education outcomes are related to socioeconomic status?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

The heresy is probably that the higher median income, which correlates with higher test scores, are both caused by another underlying difference. I really haven't decided whether that is culture or genetics, but there's something there.

Your second sentence is clearly not accurate, especially for math:

https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-in...

The Sino nations completely game these tests. Japan is legit. The Baltics are legit. The high entries for China et al are total nonsense and should be struck from the list. They game who takes the test, and it's not tightly observed.

The purpose of the link I think is not about other countries but the subset between Asian Americans, white Americans, multi racial Americans and other races.

White and multi racial are very similar. Asian Americans are much higher. Unless you think the Asians Americans in America somehow game it...

That is often claimed without much evidence. Any citations?

Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, for example are well known for their technical capabilities, which correlate well with the PISA scores.

The link I posted refutes the GGP’s second sentence regardless of which countries have a higher score since there are quite a few of them in several geographic regions.

> White Americans outperform all of them in the PISA tests. America only performs poorly in the PISA tests when you don't exclude non-whites.

I'm not sure that's a good metric of overall literacy levels in the country. Additionally, I think Soviet-era education, which expired around 2002, always stacked up pretty well to other leading countries.

> These anecdotes from smart foreigners contemptuous of Americans never make any sense against the stats.

It doesn't seem unlikely that smart foreigners might be placed in schools with other smart kids in their home country, while getting placed in schools with average kids in the US. As a smart white American who went to an unselective American college, it was certainly easy to learn contempt for the abilities of the students there.

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