A clink of the five rings goes out to "Doug" and "Nancy," who both had some fun with our Education Olympics Games on Eduwonkette yesterday:
First Doug:
E, I think Wise and Fordham are referring to the Average Olympics, a concurrent event taking place in Dalian, China (an average Chinese city of only 5.4 million) where the mediocre athletes of the world go head to head in a battle of the middling. Why would they use an event that pits the top 1/2% of athletes to make a point about mean differences?Some of my favorite events at the Average Olympics:
the median jump
the roughly parallel bars
almost synchronized swimming
the halfathalon
Then Nancy:
Don't forget:The 500 meter Run of the Mill
Pretty BadMinton
Archery, where everyone wants to be in the middle.
That's pretty good! But skoolboy comes to our rescue today, analyzing PISA results for each country's top students and concluding that "the fact that the top 5% of U.S. students are getting their butts kicked in math and science is alarming to those who tie U.S. global competitiveness to the academic performance of American youth."
Indeed it is. Follow all the action at www.edolympics.net.
