There was another interesting NY Times article- it was about a reporter who moved his kids to Russia for 4 years (they are American and spoke no Russian) and enrolled them in Russian public school.
It was called "My family's experiment in extreme schooling" by Clifford Levy.
He describes how these schools in Russia post each week the results of exams for each child and their ranking compared to their classmates. They felt this ultra-competition was good. It's a very interesting article.