Education official: Arab students lower standardized test scores
Growth and effectiveness measures for 2009 show slight improvement in Jewish population education scores.
By Ofri Ilani Tags: Israel education Israel newsEducation Minister Gideon Sa'ar said on Monday that the growth and effectiveness measures for schools in 2009 demonstrated a slight improvement, but also indicated a broadening gap between Jewish and Arab students, as well as students from low and high socio-economic classes.
"The gap is growing between Hebrew speakers and Arab speakers, which we will work to diminish," Sa'ar said during a press conference in Jerusalem.
Sa'ar also speculated that some reasons for the improvement could be the fact that the school year was uninterrupted by teachers' strikes and also due to the fact that the Education Ministry implemented conclusions from previous years' data.
Education Ministery Director General Shimshon Shoshani said, "If we want to improve our international rankings, we must improve the results of the Arab sector."
"The Arab population brings down our international status," he added.
Grades 5 and 6 showed a particular improvement in core subjects, such as math, science, English and Hebrew.
Thirty-nine percent of students admitted to taking private lessons to advance their studies, 27 percent of which attend private English tutoring and 24 percent of students attend math tutoring.
Twenty-five percent of teachers believe that students' workload is not too heavy for them to handle.
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this is the same problem we have here in Berlin, where the kids of 'non-German ancestry' instead of learning from their mothers - who in the Muslim case have little or no education or knowledge of the culture - they only get to stay at home and watch 'hate preacher' imams on the tube... fall behind there peers from less 'Halal' backgrounds.
". . .but also indicated a broadening gap between Jewish and Arab students, as well as students from low and high socio-economic classes." - Haaretz That statement hits the more crucial point than Jewish and Arab. The socio-economic factor seems to indicate poor Jews are also falling behind while wealthy Arabs might not be. "The Arab population brings our international status down," - Shimshon Shoshani Is the problem really 'Arab' or socio-economic? The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics keeps track of the students receiving matriculation certificates. Why is the matriculation rate in Jerusalem only about 36 percent while in Tel Aviv it's 60%? The ICBS says that in 2002 certificates were awarded 61.3% of Muslims, 75.4% of Christians and 51% of Druze. It tracks Hebrew Sector by origin, Israelis had the rate of 71.5%, Asia-Africa origin 64.3%, Europe-America 74.1%. For the facts as messy as they are http://www1.cbs.gov.il/www/publications/bagrut03/bagrut_e.htm
What percentage pf Arab populations vs Jewish populations continue to higher education? I think we would be surprised by the results.