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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[RedKing]

That data is so old now...
Here's the 2012 data.

Why would they break up the Chinese scores, but none of the rest?

Because each of those Chinese regions has as many people as most European countries?

[smjjames]

That, and some states have their legislatures up in odd-numbered years.  New Jersey is going to have elections in 2015, and Virginia in 2017.  The elections never stop.

Yeah, I'm not sure of the exact reason for it, but I believe it's to keep all of the senate from getting a complete turnover each election. Then again, all of the House of Representatives seats are up for election at once.

What are the main differences between what we have and a parliamentary system? I think it's similar (or most similar) to the House of Representatives.

We kind of need a government types/election methods thread.

[Descan]

Also, I think they split them up because those Chinese areas have separate educational systems.

[Lord Shonus]

That, and some states have their legislatures up in odd-numbered years.  New Jersey is going to have elections in 2015, and Virginia in 2017.  The elections never stop.

Yeah, I'm not sure of the exact reason for it, but I believe it's to keep all of the senate from getting a complete turnover each election. Then again, all of the House of Representatives seats are up for election at once.

When the government was set up, the legislature was consciously modeled on the British Parliament, with an appointment-based Senate replacing the hereditary House Of Lords. The intention was for the Senate to provide continuity of government and insulation from "flash-in-the-pan" political movements while the House reflected the immediate will of the people. While Senators are no longer appointed (outside of vacancies due to death, expulsion, or resignation), trying to keep the laws from changing on a whim is still not a bad idea.

[RedKing]

Also, I think they split them up because those Chinese areas have separate educational systems.

Shanghai schools OP, nerf plz

[Baffler]

Also, I think they split them up because those Chinese areas have separate educational systems.

Shanghai schools OP, nerf plz

ur just mad b/c u cant Singapore.

[MaximumZero]

It's like holiday creep.

That's another thing I'd really like to see limited. Holiday shopping shit shouldn't start until December 1 at the very earliest. One of our local grocery stores started up the holiday music on October 20th.

Then again, I'm not really a fan of the holiday season in general. Working retail doesn't help.

[Sheb]

Funnily enough, there was an article in the New York Review of Books we just got about the rankings, called something like "Why China gets the best and worse school system in the world". The article was mostly a long, not particularly well-written rant about how the Chinese education system is great at churning out test-takers but sucks at actually teaching the children creativity or critical though.

However, it did raise a good point: the US has been about average in international rankings ever since they started in 1964. And yet, it did great during most of that period. So maybe we should not obsess about those rankings that much.

[RedKing]

Also, I think they split them up because those Chinese areas have separate educational systems.

Shanghai schools OP, nerf plz

ur just mad b/c u cant Singapore.

We can't even Poland. Poland can into learning better than US. 

The impressive part for Shanghai is that share of underachievers -- only 3.3 percent of the kids there were below the average. While 55.4 percent were above the average. When people talk about how China is going to eat our lunch in the next 10-20 years, this is why. Not because of their cheap labor (though that certainly helps, but is steadily diminishing) and their lack of environmental and safety regulations (again, helps but this is steadily going away) but because they're cranking out a shitload of smart kids.

Pseudo-EDIT: Sheb, I do agree that Chinese schools suffer from a lack of creativity and critical thinking skills, but then so does the US system now days. It's all about teaching to the test rather than the Oxfordian system of dialogue and critical thought that we copied in the 1800s and early 1900s.

[Baffler]

On Poland, I found a very interesting graph. After completing secondary school, Polish students take a standardized test called the Matura. The minimum score to pass is 30%, and a funny thing happens when students score a 29...

Edit: Graph
http://imgur.com/4nnbyru

[Sheb]

RedKing: I may not have been clear, but my real point was not so much about how Chinese schools stifle creativity, but how the US was never really good in international rankings. In the 1980's, people were convinced the Japanese were going to eat you, in part because they scored so much higher in international tests. Well, we know how that one turned out.

It turns out that the results on international rankings just don't matter much.

[RedKing]

RedKing: I may not have been clear, but my real point was not so much about how Chinese schools stifle creativity, but how the US was never really good in international rankings. In the 1980's, people were convinced the Japanese were going to eat you, in part because they scored so much higher in international tests. Well, we know how that one turned out.

It turns out that the results on international rankings just don't matter much.

Well, Japan probably would have eaten us if they hadn't gone nuts with all their newfound wealth and done stupid shit like bad real estate deals and building golf courses on top of skyscrapers.

[SealyStar]

On Poland, I found a very interesting graph. After completing secondary school, Polish students take a standardized test called the Matura. The minimum score to pass is 30%, and a funny thing happens when students score a 29...

Edit: Graph
http://imgur.com/4nnbyru

Which part of the document? I can only feed so much into Google Translate at a time and I don't want to scan the whole thing that way.

[mainiac]

Japans economy is actually doing pretty well on a per-worker basis, they just had a big decrease in the size of the workforce due to demographic stagnation.  Well "pretty well" in comparison to the US and Europe right now, which isn't the highest hurdle to cross.

[Helgoland]

Look at the graph, Sealy.
Something similar happened to a good friend of mine who I got through the Abitur, the German version of the matura: He had to take oral tests in his main subjects, mathematics and physics, because he'd failed the written exam on both. He was a fairly decent student with a surprisingly good average, but he had chosen his main subjects in a very unfortunate way. So he does the oral exam in physics, and gets a C-; he had hoped for a B. So he goes into the mathematics exam and gets a C+, better than he'd hoped for - he had been focusing on the physics exam, hoping to get all the points he needed there, only studying for mathematics a couple hours before the exam. But both grades left him with 99 points - and he needed 100 points total from these exams to get his Abitur. So the relevant teachers get together, and they think and think and think - they don't want to fail him, he's an intelligent guy with otherwise decent grades - and finally he gets a C in physics. Retroactively.
Havve I mentioned I love the Rhineland?