Soft science vs Hard science.

How does one calculate something as "soft" as smartness?  Finding the "hard" minimum or maximum point on a curve is straightforward.  We have "hard" tools like slopes, equilibrium points and saddle points to measure with arbitrary numbers of significant digits.  In this vein, a "soft" topic like smartness must be as smoke and mirrors - subjective and impossible to measure.  A "soft" topic is fluffy, easy, and not worthy of serious effort.

Then along came Andreas Schleicher, from the University of Hamburg Physics.  As related by Ripley (2013), "There is a right answer."  That answer happens to be the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), a standardized international test.  Its goal is to objectively measure scholastic smartness ability on a "hard" scale.  And the smartest students as measured by the top quantitative scores are from Singapore, South Korea, and China (Shanghai only). 

Silence.

Then Finland rises to one of the top scorers.  Educators come rushing hat in hand to see how the magic works.  Surely Singapore, South Korea, and China (Shanghai only) must be flukes, worthy of naught but pity for their old, rigid, memorization-only schools.  But if Finland can do this, especially without the strict hours, then something must be good. 

So starts the year-long immersion with exchange students in Finland, South Korea, and Poland (another country rising fast in the PISA rankings).  Based on selected student experiences and extensive interviews with their host teachers and superintendents, these broad anecdotal claims appear to emerge:

South Korean high schools are hamster wheel pressure cookers.  There are extremely high stakes exams.  The students get constant and public ranking and shaming.  The students go to Hagwon schools after school for a grand total of 17 hour school days.  Could this be the recipe for PISA success?

Polish school reforms include delaying student tracking - a common EurAsian practice to segregate students beyond 14-16 years of age into academic or trade schools based on their exam scores - raising expectations, and building new schools.  Could this be the recipe for PISA success?

Finnish schools have highly paid and educated teachers, focus on solidarity in their students, and give teachers independent control over their curricula.  There is generally no homework.  Could this be the recipe for PISA success?

United States schools by contrast spend far more per student, have endured decades of reforms, are filled with more expensive, high-tech gadgets, have poorly paid but strictly controlled teachers, and stubbornly middling test results.  There is universal acknowledgement that this is not the recipe for PISA success. 

Figure 1.  From left to right: School rooms in South Korea, Poland, and Finland.  Are there any differences?  Are there any similarities?  Would reversing the order of these questions matter?  

The layperson will immediately jump to the conclusion that everything US schools are doing is wrong.  South Korean schools are technically getting it.  But Finnish schools must have it right.  So we should try to copy what Finnish schools are doing.

The technology / data engineer will immediately get on working which variables are responsible for the Finnish successes.  Principal component analysis for example helps isolate which variables must independently (orthogonally) have the most impact - the teacher skills, or the teacher pay, or the student makeup, or is it the weather or food?  The engineer may progress to stepwise backwards regression to double check if removing such variables would make Finnish students score more like US students on the PISA.

This paper provides an alternative. 

Instead of being lost in a blur of academic jargon and intimidating stares from superintendents that have us signing up for tax expenditures we know nothing about to avoid appearing ignorant, it behooves us to take control.  We are the superintendents of our students, children, and employees.  We need to analyze.  We need a framework guide for how to analyze. 

To start, instead of asking how the US can score more like Finland on the PISA, perhaps Finland might be asking how they can score more like the US.  When President Abraham Lincoln's generals complained to him that General Ulyssees Grant had a drinking problem during the US Civil War (1861-1865), Lincoln responded by asking to give all his generals a barrel of Grant's whiskey.  As improper, as shameful, as shabby an image as scoring poorly on international sobriety tests as Grant showed, "[Lincoln] cannot fire this man; He fights." 

The institutional framework with which to derive insight is thus: in a highly populated nation surrounded by other highly populated nations with easy access to invade, solidarity is key.  Meeting the expectations of a centralized authority becomes as a moral duty to bind fealty and obedience.  Otherwise, divided we fall.  Every student drills with this.  Every teacher reinforces this.  Every teacher was once a student.  This is cultural indoctrination, sociocultural learning (e.g. Vygotsky, 1962) the vestiges of which biases the lay person into believing low test scores on the PISA is shameful.  But not every test is a positive one.  And not everywhere is a highly populated nation surrounded by other populous nations with long histories of brutal invasions.

Scoring high on boxing ability could correlate with prizes and fame.  Or it may correlate with biting peoples' ears.  Scoring high on a PowerScore (Martinsons & Davidson, 2007) indicates preference for top-down directed authority.  Scoring low means a preference for something else (e.g. more distributed democratic approach).  Scoring at the extremes on a body-mass-index test indicates unhealthy states, while scoring near average is ideal - but only at that point in time.  The average is a point estimate summary of the neighbors' values.  Scoring high in chess (e.g. Sala, Gorini, & Pravettoni, 2015; Sala & Gobet, 2016, an excellent review and critique of two dozen such studies) may mean slightly enhanced math ability or it more likely means specific skill in chess (e.g. Chi, 1978).  For what does a test test?  

What should we score on the PISA exam?  Perhaps it reflects an ex post facto biased recollection and reporting of what a University of Hamburg physics professor wants everyone else to believe was critical to his getting an artificially supply limited physics department slot.  "We had to walk through snow and ice to get to class, uphill, both ways..."

The PISA scores for the South Korean case are near the top of the scales, but superintendents in the US instinctively shy away from embracing the obvious causes - the long hours, the Hagwons, the student-shaming, the hamster wheel rote memorization. Perhaps the cost is too high. But perhaps this is the more general admission that not all tests and solutions fit everywhere. 

The PISA scores for the Poland case rose dramatically after the reforms, but fell back to baseline for children who tracked out of the academic path, further supporting the high specificity of the PISA preparations. If PISA were the be-all-end-all of standardized exams of cognitive aptitude and smartness, why is it unstable? 

The PISA scores for Finland rose dramatically after their reforms. Finland credits itself and the proud teacher education programs. Diving deeper, this implies students are malleable clay figures who need expert craftsmen and women to mold them. This is the definition of a top-down command economy. Leaving aside the issue of politics and markets, what happens when the proudly educated teachers leave? What happens when the students proceed to industry where there are no highly prepared teachers? Corporate jobs must be as the wild west in comparison, with no holds barred competition for the customers. And where the ideal team member is one who figures out what to do, does it, and adapts on the fly to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. 

The intuitive answer is that schooling prepares students for their adulthood.  In short, schooling is job training.  As adult managers, we can run through a thought experiment on the nature of jobs and careers.

Two friends start up a real estate company.  They take CEO and COO positions.  They hire sales staff - people who use literature and design to place ads, escort customers through properties, and write descriptions.  They hire database tech staff - people who use science, technology, engineering, and math to track properties, locations, and prices.  But then a real estate downturn occurs and revenue is down.  They must cut staff.  Whom do they cut?

Not the sales staff.  They bring in the fees. They can directly point towards the 3% commission fee on that $500,000 sale is $15,000 this month.  Cutting sales is cutting $15,000 in revenue.

Logic dictates they outsource the database engineering staff.  Cutting engineering is cutting $15,000 in costs.  The economic and business goal of any and all businesses is to stay alive.  To stay alive, it must have revenue and profits.  Whether young startup or established corporation, whether for real estate, or banking, or cakes and cookies, any business needs to make sales.

Managers then define smartness not in terms of academic or test scores but rather in terms of ability to keep the business alive.  Who can best generate those sales?  If the job requires creating poster ads in a design lab for attracting customers, then schooling would best be about creating poster ads in a design lab for attracting customers. 

There is a "hard" objective right answer in physics for example.  It is the sole single equilibrium point that everyone following the equation properly can get.  There is a "hard" objective right answer also in literature for example.  It is the sole primary conflict point that everyone following the plot properly can get.   But there is a more complex form of "soft" right answer about style, tone, symbolism, and mood.  That is the subjective  argumentative writing that convinces the reader.  In business, that is the sound of a customer's check depositing into your assets under management account. 

In the popular movie, Pursuit of Happyness (2006) starring Will Smith and real life son, Jaden Smith, the writers even saw fit to include a particular line from the hiring intern manager.  It essentially goes, "Do well on the written aptitude test.  But be sure to bring in the customer accounts' money." Main point: tests are important for appearances, but generating a profit is key.