When the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment results came out in December 2016, the headline for American schools was hard to soften: U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 31st of the 35 OECD countries in mathematics, and their scores had fallen since 2012. The InformED Report for February 10, 2017 looked at what educators were saying in response. One argument was that the math gap starts long before high school. The other was that districts already sat on the data they needed to act, if they had the time and tools to use it. The edition closed with a scholarship offer for 21 young women freed from Boko Haram in Nigeria.
In this edition
- U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 31st of 35 OECD countries in math on PISA 2015, and their scores had fallen since 2012.
- Educators argued that math, like reading, has to start in the early years, and PISA linked preschool attendance with higher math scores at 15.
- Learning analytics could help districts act on the data they already collect, but teachers and leaders lacked the time to use it.
- Robert F. Smith offered to pay for the education of 21 Chibok schoolgirls freed from Boko Haram.
U.S. math scores and the case for starting early
The PISA results gave the debate its numbers. American teenagers scored below the OECD average in math, and the gap with high-performing systems such as Singapore, Japan and Estonia had widened. Writing in The Virgin Islands Daily News, John Green argued that the response had to begin with the youngest learners. His case was that schools and families treat early reading as essential but leave early math to chance, and that number sense built before kindergarten shapes how children handle math for years afterward.
Education Week’s Sarah D. Sparks reported a related thread in the same PISA data. Students who had attended preschool tended to score higher in math at 15, and many of the countries at the top of the table invest heavily in early childhood education. Sparks was careful about the limits of that finding. PISA shows an association, not a cause, and the researchers she spoke with warned that it was hard to know which parts of other countries’ preschool systems would carry over to the United States.
For district leaders, the practical point was the same in both pieces. A weak result at 15 is the end of a long chain. Schools that wanted different math outcomes in high school had reasons to look at what happened in pre-K and the early grades: how much time went to number work, how confident early-childhood teachers were with math, and whether families were given ways to practise counting and measuring at home.
Learning analytics and the time problem in K-12
The second story turned from test results to the data schools already collect. In EdTech Magazine, Elizabeth Combs argued that learning analytics could point teachers and district leaders to where students needed help. Too little of that data reached the classroom, she said, because educators simply lacked the time to find relevant research and pull out the figures that mattered to them. Turning those figures into a plan for a school was harder still.
Her answer was support rather than another mandate. That meant tools and partners that do the sorting, and research summaries written for the decisions a principal or curriculum director actually faces. The underlying question has not gone away. Most districts gather attendance, assessment and course data every week. Far fewer have the staff time and the clear questions that turn it into changes in instruction.
InformED Report spotlight: an education for 21 Chibok girls
The spotlight went to Nigeria. In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from their school in Chibok. Twenty-one of them were released in October 2016, and The Huffington Post’s Taryn Finley reported that American businessman Robert F. Smith, founder of the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, had offered to pay for their education. Nigerian officials said the young women would study at the American University of Nigeria in Yola. Smith also said he would take responsibility for the education of any other Chibok students who were later freed.
The story was a reminder of why the original attack was aimed at a school. Boko Haram’s name is commonly translated as “Western education is forbidden,” and the Chibok kidnapping became a global symbol of attacks on girls’ schooling. A scholarship could not undo what the students had lived through, but it put the right to an education back at the centre of their story.
Further reading from that week
- Futurity: High school isn’t too late to get teens into STEM
- Tech Times: Educational Psychology: Math Can Be Fun, Too!
- The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Teenagers Lose Ground in International Math Exam, Raising Competitiveness Concerns
Sources
- John Green, “Math education needs to start early,” The Virgin Islands Daily News, January 2017.
- Sarah D. Sparks, “Preschool Linked to Success on Global Math Test,” Education Week, January 11, 2017.
- Elizabeth Combs, “Utilizing Learning Analytics Can Help Inform K-12 Decisions,” EdTech Magazine, January 2017.
- Taryn Finley, “Billionaire To Sponsor Education of 21 Girls Freed From Boko Haram,” The Huffington Post, January 2017.
- OECD, PISA 2015 Results, released December 6, 2016.
About the InformED Report
The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on February 10, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.
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