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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"PISA: Which countries to trust the least"

16 Comments -

1 – 16 of 16
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Costa Rica 50%

ROTFL

12/4/13, 3:13 PM

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This comment has been removed by the author.

12/4/13, 3:17 PM

Anonymous Bill said...

I don't believe for a minute that only 21% of Shanghai's kids were missing from the data. Migrant laborers are ubiquitous in China's big cities, yet are not counted as residents. They have higher fertility than native Shanghainese - who have the lowest fertility in China, if not the entire world - and far lower standards when it comes to education.

My bet is that they weren't even included as residents for the purposes of this test. The rational basis behind their exclusion would be that since they don't have the hukou they aren't Shanghainese, but they do in fact live there. The results would change the scores in a similar manner to removing all the illegal immigrants' children's scores from the data in Los Angeles.

12/4/13, 3:27 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

China has a residence permit "Hukou" system which allows migrants to work in the cities, but forces them to live in suburbs. Their children probably don't go to school in Shanghai because they're not registered in the city. I'd also guess that the typical migrant couldn't afford to live in the city even if they had a residence permit. I know it's common for Chinese workers to leave their children with their spouse and migrate for work.

Shanghai is an exceptionally expensive city and the financial capital of the country. Those being tested are probably from the top 5-10% of China's socioeconomic ladder.

A better question is how well Chinese in the rural villages would score. There was some data from the last PISA which indicates Chinese village children scoring near the Western mean, but it's not clear what percent of the children were tested. In China, it's common for village kids to leave school at a young age to work, so I'm not sure how well a more representative sample would score.

I've seen data which show rural Chinese kids are extremely underrepresented in China's top colleges, which are entered into through test scores. I've seen other data which show an enormous (larger than the black-white gap) cognitive gap between even young kids from rural and urban China. It'd be interesting to find out how much of this is nurture (higher accessibility to cram schools and tutors among the urbanites) and how much is nature (ie IQ).

Taiwan was built by Chinese peasants, but they were mainly from Fujian. Fujian and the other southeastern provinces historically were the wealthiest in the nation and produced the majority of the successful imperial exam takers. How representative they are of the interior, I don't know.

I was surprised to Vietnam score so highly on the PISA. I wonder if the test was disproportionately given in predominately Chinese schools in the big cities. Remember, a substantial percentage of Vietnam's urban population are from the ethnic Chinese minority. When I read that only half of Vietnam's pool of potential test takers were tested, it introduces a strong possibility that of the government deliberately skewing the results.

12/4/13, 4:17 PM

Anonymous 5371 said...

In 2015 China will reportedly participate en bloc, though I'm pretty sure if they score well the haters will still find an excuse or thirty!

12/4/13, 4:30 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This may help excuse slightly Argentina's horrible scores. The Argentineans misplaced only 20% of their 15-year-olds compared to the 37% of Mexicans who went missing.

What's the deal with Romania? They only missed 4% and scored below Hispanics and the UAE. They almost scored as low as African Americans.



12/4/13, 4:33 PM

Anonymous AngMo said...

Fujianese and Cantonese Chinese are also the dominant groups in the Chinese diaspora. For instance, almost everyone in my building (I live in Flushing, NYC) is Fujianese. Almost all Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia were native Hokkein (a Fujianese dialect) speakers 50 years ago. The Singaporean government Mandarinized the entire country for economic reasons. This included surnames--my husband is Malaysian Chinese and the Malaysian side of the family still uses the Hokkein pronunciation of their name; the ones who are in Singapore use the Mandarin pronunciation.

I don't know how representative people from Fujian and Guandong provinces are of China as a whole.

12/4/13, 6:53 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ethnic Chinese (Hoa) were mostly run out of Vietnam when the commies took over, so they're less than 1% of the population now, compared to 14% in Thailand. It'd take some horrific testing methodology for that to be a factor.

I'm Vietnamese-American myself and went to schools that were about a quarter Vietnamese-American and a quarter white, and there were always way more of us in the honors classes. My impression is we're a bit more slack than the Chinese or Koreans, but we're still solidly in the Asian cluster when it comes to academics.

12/4/13, 7:15 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Steve, I might look at a linear regression equation later to try and predict what the PISA score "would've" been adjusted for participation rates in different countries.

I'll bet the Asian countries'll still come through fairly strong, but we may see them fall to have a smaller advantage over the FinnStonians.

12/5/13, 1:12 AM

Anonymous DJF said...

""""What's the deal with Romania? They only missed 4% and scored below Hispanics and the UAE. They almost scored as low as African Americans."""

Since they only missed 4% that means they included lots of Roma who are not known for their intellectual skills.

But with the EU now allowing Roma to move to richer countries with richer pick pocketing opportunities the Romanian scores might be increasing. Might be a good time to be a minister of education in the Romanian government who can take credit for the increase in scores.

12/5/13, 4:16 AM

Blogger panjoomby said...

on group testing days (& more so if the tests take a few days) the least able are the least likely to show up for all the testing. SO some data must be "weighted" e.g., you count a low scoring kid as equal to 1.4 kids instead of 1. this is done with some IQ tests, b/c it's harder to get low ability/low SES kids to show up!!

12/5/13, 6:51 AM

Blogger Sulla said...

-1% missing in Holland! Do kids magically appear out of nowhere on test day or do they score the smart kids twice?

12/5/13, 10:41 AM

Anonymous countenance said...

Someone on AR noticed that black Americans > Mexico. "God help us" was his reaction.

If 37% of Mexico's 15-yos were missing in terms of random distribution of this test, it means that Mexico is even worse than it seems.

12/5/13, 2:26 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm surprised Costa Rica heads the list with 50%. This is not a 3rd world country. It is a country that made a decision decades ago to devote its budget to culture and education, instead of military. Generally they are well educated. I think perhaps they have different ideas of whether it's worth testing.

12/5/13, 5:09 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Talk about jumping to conclusion, Steve seem to be running out of reasons to dismiss the gap between Asians and white.

12/6/13, 4:07 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You don't get the point. Nobody cares about PISA and TIMSS. Nobody is trying to manipulate scores at all.
Your data shows that 21% Malaysia was absent on PISA day. Malaysia is 28% Chinese. And has a PISA score of 420 with 0.9% reaching level 5 and 6.
By any possible estimate, the Chinese score is below 475. Even if I look at the distribution of score in Malaysia and only consider top 30%, it will still show 475.
If I consider that bottom 21% students in Malaysia were absent on PISA day, the scores for Chinese in Malaysia will be below African Americans at 430. And this is the maximum possible score (the abosulte upper limit by assuming that "all Chinese outscore all Malays").
It does not make sense that East Asians can score below African Americans or even Europeans.

Most probably the schools that were tested declared "school vacations" for 15 year old that were not supposed to participate in PISA. And those kids went on a vacation and you had mass bunk at many schools.

12/5/16, 12:04 AM

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