Article Review: Tutors

Article Review
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Article Review
Parents, tutors, as well as governments globally are becoming more and more interested in international comparisons of their students’ achievement. The current world is practically without borders. For a country to meet the realities of today’s global economy and sustain their competitive edge into the years to come, they need learners who are ready to compete not just with their peers within their national borders, but also with learners from other parts of the world for tomorrow’s jobs. International assessments that could be used in benchmarking include TIMSS and PISA (Hanushek, 2012). This paper provides a critical review of one article. The main findings or ideas in this article are summarized. Moreover, the weaknesses and strengths of using the international benchmarking in the article are identified and analyzed.
Wu, K. B., Goldschmidt, P., Boscardin, C. K., & Sankar, D. (2009). International benchmarking and determinants of mathematics achievement in two Indian states. Education Economics, 17(3): 395-411
Summary of article’s main ideas/findings:
An overview of results concerning the effects of the quality of education – as assessed by internally standardized attainment test scores – on a country’s economic growth concluded that in nations in which there is a high quality of education, economic growth of the country is likely to be considerably quicker. It also concluded that evidence suggests that this effect is in fact causal (Wu et al., 2009; Hanushek, 2012). Even so, there is no mention of India those studies. In this article, Wu et al. (2009) analysed a World Bank-sponsored survey on Ninth Grade learners in Orissa and Rajasthan states in the year 2005. In the survey, internationally comparable items from the ’99 Trends of Mathematics Study were used in providing the first international benchmark for quality of education in India for 30 years. In both Orissa and Rajasthan, students of 9th Grade have high standard deviations and low mean scores. With 37 percent correct and standard deviation of 17 percent, learners in Orissa State have a higher average score compared to those in Rajasthan who have 34 percent correct and 15 percent standard deviation (Wu et al., 2009).
The score distribution suggests that significantly few learners scored higher than the expected international mean of 52 percent correct. The findings of the study revealed that just 25 percent of learners in Orissa state and 15 percent of learners in Rajasthan have attained the expected international average of 52 percent right (Wu et al., 2009). The poor performance overall indicates that secondary and elementary instruction should be improved. In comparison to the international mean performance on the common items, Orissa and Rajasthan learners have a less likelihood of accurately answering any of the individual items (Wu et al., 2009). In addition, the study by Wu et al. (2009) also demons...