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Just a snip-it from the report- not dismissing your concern.

Maybe the higher achievement is based more on the fact that they invest more for their most promising students rather than the least advanced as seems to be the case here. Of course the issue of why some students are furthest behind in America may have more to do with lack of wealth than lack of ability.

I don't think all schools care about individual student achievment. THey focus more on the overall average and how that data can be spun to make they adults look good.

We used to have a Charter school in my town that specialized education for students who minor learning issues like ADD/HD or dislexia. My neighbors daughter went there and was finally excelling in school. Her acievement scores nearly doubled after 1 year attending school with other kids like her.
The school is now closed down. The problem was, that even though her and her fellow students were improving, the school was not reaching the standards of the No Child Left Behind. The school lost funding and support because it frequently got a bad school grade. When in fact in was doing great.
So what happens now? These kids get placed into regular schools and pulled out once a week to help them catch up.
Just one sad story in a million

That is a sad story Floridama.

That's one reason I'd like to see a shift to value-added assessment.
http://www.cgp.upenn.edu/ope_value.html

My guess would be that parental involvement has a higher correlation than school performance in the US.

Inky,
I just fowarded your link to our state senator who sits on the education committee.

Thanks for posting it!

You're welcome. You've inspired me to look into doing the same thing.

The PISA test Friedman was referring to is taken by students in OECD countries. Umm --- accusing other OECD nations of not educating girls, etc. is a little unfair, especially when gender equality is greater in many of these countries than it is here. I lived in western Europe for a decade and am married to a European and am a product of tertiary-level education there, so I've seen the system close-up. Plus my son goes to French school.

Bottom line: many other education systems are just better. I know that nothing is perfect, but the European systems are definitely BETTER by and large.

Europeans group by ability and rarely use multiple choice tests. These are huge assets to their systems. The use of essay questions and oral exams means that students gain a deeper understanding of subject matter and can't guess at an answer the way you can on a MC test. European schools rarely focus on reading short passages like the ones we rely on. Instead, their kids start with short stories and poems and move to longer texts. Mathematics education encourages a deeper understanding of the subject over the superficial approach commonly used here.

Kids with disabilities (in the 4 countries I'm familiar with) all receive an education appropriate to their abilities. Education (like health care) is seen as more of a right than a privilege over there.

Students who don't wish to attend a university have many educational options that are free at worst and usually come with a stipend. Ex. my husband's brother decided he wanted to be a welder when he was 17 and did an apprenticeship. Later, he decided he wanted to go to university and now has a position as chief of orthopedic surgery.

Also, university fees over there are very, very low compared even to state colleges in this country. Student loans don't exist unless you flunk out and have to repeat a year and can't afford the fees.

Sometimes it's hard for people here to believe that our school system isn't "the best" because we're all raised to believe that it is. But it isn't.

Pardon me for soapboxing here, but our problem isn't funding and it isn't class size or any of the usual reasons that people use. In fact, the US consistently outspends all or nearly other nations in education, no matter how you measure things. Our problem is our pedagogical philosophy. We refuse to group by ability in the name of phony equity, we mismanage our money, we duplicate effort by having thousands of school boards instead of state- or national-level curricula, we rely on multiple choice tests which encourage memorization of factoids over synthesis of knowledge, and we spend too much money on administrators and on services for disabled children. Sorry, I know this last point isn't PC but it's true. I didn't say "Don't spend on the disabled." I said that we spend too much and we end up shortchanging absolutely everyone else.

Okay, rant off.

Val

Rant on Val... rant on.

Me nodding my head to your soapbox speech. The only thing I don't know if I agree with is the disabled comment but I haven't done any research on it to disprove it. I will say that the hot topic today is Autism and locally I have seen many reports of what the public schools in the area are doing to help Autism which aligns with your argument. A big chunk of money is being allotted to this cause which means more teachers to student ratio and more square footage for specialized rooms. Again ... aligning to your argument. But I don't know if I would lump that into why our systems are failing just need to even the field and give all children the right to succeed.

Thanks kcab and Katelyn's mom.

I'm reasonably embedded in educational issues. Between having to deal with issues related to educating gifted kids, I teach p/t a community college and have done grant review for education-related grants. I've been a voracious reader on the subject for the last ten years, so I wasn't making stuff up out of thin air here.

I believe that most people want to fix the school system here. What's so frustrating is that so many of them trot out the same ideas that haven't worked (we need more money, etc.). I think a major obstacle is that most people don't want to change. ?

Val