OK, I'll bite. I've read a lot about PISA and standardized testing, trying to understand what does and doesn't impact these scores. Given our own extreme frustrations with our school system, I have to admit I am always a little startled when Canada ranks so high.
I think the simple answer is that Canada, comparatively speaking, lacks the extremes of the US in education (and in most domains, for that matter). The US has extraordinarily great schools - and extraordinarily bad ones. In Canada, what we have is consistency: pretty much universally OK schools. They serve the vast majority of students reasonably well. They can be pretty bad with academic outliers, but they (mostly) offer consistency across SES and other domains. Yes, of course we do have some schools full of children from poor families, or new immigrants, or other marginalized populations, and they're not doing as well as they could be, and we could do way more and better. But at least those kids are getting the same as everyone else, not less. In our district, our low achievers link a lot more to unremediated LDs than to poverty.
In contrast, I have seen a lot of research along the lines of what's summarized in this article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business...ool-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/Here I am going to attempt to tread carefully, as I don't want to divert this thread into politics, but it's hard to avoid, as the education system as a whole is such a small piece of educational outcomes. So the more complex answer to why Canada can manage this consistency is that we do a lot to even things out long before children ever hit school. We have less poverty, and we do a lot to reduce its impact, especially on kids. We have one-year paid parental leave, universal health care (so good preventative care, but also no financial issues from catastrophic costs), as well as other pieces of the social safety network. We pay teachers very well, and subsidize daycare. (PISA says teacher pay isn't crucial, but my impression is that teacher salaries in the US are unusually low). Our system for community sponsorship and support of new immigrants is getting a lot of attention lately for how well it gets newcomer families up and running and fully functional in society. There's lots of pieces like this, all aimed at putting some money in up front, so that in the long run, more people are more fully engaged in society, and better employed, for more of their lives. As a re-read this, it sounds like socialism run amuck, but actually it costs a lot less in the long run.
This isn't intended to sound like some smug look-how-great-we-are. It's hardly utopia up here, just a different model. We screw up lots, all the time. I spend much of my time ranting about all the things we do wrong. And the Canadian obsession with equity makes us awful at dealing with outliers. Tall poppy syndrome, big time. I drool, often, about some of the opportunities I read about in this forum. And of course lots of people still do fall through the cracks. But when they do, most don't fall quite as far, and there's more ways for them to find their way back up. The result is that when I just did a quick google of "social mobility Canada vs US", I found pretty broad agreement that children born in poverty in Canada are far less likely to stay there. So all that to say, if you want to improve US educational outcomes, the challenge is far more complex than curriculum (ours, for the record, sucks. We are most definitely NOT "pushing too hard". We do great in PISA anyways).
If this derails this thread, I will apologize and immediately delete. I have spent an awful lot of time pondering this question, but I know politics is pretty raw right now, and it is not my intent to inflame.
