Schools for Tomorrow Blog

Well, thanks to The Onion, I found the perfect holiday video. Is this the future awaiting our kids if we don’t heed Tom Friedman’s advice?

New Portable Sewing Machine Lets Sweatshop Employees Work On The Go

Check out this fascinating map, which portrays national economies (GDPs) around the world as comparable to the economies of the fifty American states (Gross State Products - GSPs).  It is an impressive visual reminder of just how big the U.S. economy really is, even in this time of economic uncertainty.  For example, the much feared, possible world-dominating Iran has an economy comparable to, well, . . . California? Florida? Texas? . . no, um, Alabama.

 Cool yes, you may say, but how does this relate to education?

Well, in a couple of ways.  It turns out that Colorado’s economy is comparable to Finland’s.  Interesting, because, as we know, Finland stands out on the international comparisons ( PISA, TIMMS), with some of the highest math, reading, and science scores.  Colorado scores a bit lower, in all of these comparisons. 

So, let’s talk about Finland and spending.  Finland, according to OECD data, spends…

Almost everybody in the education world likes to fret about U.S. students falling behind the rest of the world, and that supposed gap is cited as a reason for all sorts of education reforms.

Results from the latest Program for International Student Assessment results got a typical, navel-gazing headline last week on nytimes.com: “Other Countries’ Students Surpass U.S.’s on Tests.”

Actually, we’re not alone in being fretful, as I learned this morning reading a story about the test results on economist.com.

That article sparked me to do a little experiment on another website, and it’s one worth trying yourself. Go to news.google.com and search on these two terms - oecd education.

You’ll see that the rest of the world (or at least its headline writers) is fretful as well.

In the May 28^th edition of the New York Times, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, writes of the competitive edge the Chinese have in education (registration and fee required to view).  After a recent visit he was distressed to find that the math his daughter is doing in the States is two or three years behind her peers attending very ordinary schools in China. 

Kristof offers several reasons for the differences:  First the Chinese attend school for more hours and work harder at school subjects outside of school.  Second, Chinese culture reveres education and teachers are compensated, financially and emotionally, accordingly.  Third, the Chinese believe that success in school is the result of hard work not native smarts. Acknowledging that the Chinese have to struggle to promote creativity, Kristof ends his column with the now classic platitude of urging us to raise our own education standards. 

How is raising standards an answer to…

Many thoughtful observers of American education often point to two main problems with outcomes, a persistent “achievement gap” that consistently shows lower income students performing substantially below higher income students, and an overall or average level of performance by American students that lags test scores in other, economic competitor nations. This second “competitiveness” agenda is often “easier” to sell politically, since it generally involves ramping up resources for education for everyone, rather than redistributing a “fixed pie” in some manner. Indeed, a recent panel in DC, featuring Rick Hess, Andy Rotherham and others, devoted considerable attention to this conflict (see Ed Week article: “Scholars: Equity, Competitiveness Agendas can be at Odds”).

Without denying a potential conflict between how these problems are addressed, it is worth noting an important point, often made by Gerald Bracey: leaving the achievement gap issues aside, much of American K-12 education is pretty good. If the achievement gap could be…

Education reformers are fond of scare tactics as a goad to developing public support for their programs. The Sputnik scare of the 50’s, A Nation at Risk, and now Tough Choices/Tough Times. Today’s scary monsters are India and China, the population behemoths whose technical and economic prowess is viewed as a threat to the American standard of living.

Some recent articles raise a question as to whether the threats they pose have been exaggerated.

On March 22, the New York Times ran an article entitled “China Scrambles for Stability as Its Workers Age.” According to the article, “The proportion of people 60 and older is growing faster in China than in any other major country, with the number of retirees set to double between 2005 and 2015, when it is expected to reach 200 million. By mid-century, according to United Nations projections, roughly 430 million people

A recent technical report from the National Center on Education Statistics allows researchers to compare Nartional Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores with math and science scores on international tests like the TIMSS (Third International Math and Science Study). This report is available here.

A quick and dirty, but probably reasonably accurate, placement of Colorado’s NAEP score results suggests that, were Governor Ritter promoted to President of the Nation of Colorado, we would rank about 11^th in science scores for grade 8 (tied with Russia), and 16^th in grade 8 math scores (tied with Bulgaria). In addition to the usual Asian nations that always seem to dominate the top of these lists, if Colorado students could improve their math and science training, we could make a run at catching up to Slovenia.

Note that, despite the much feared recent technological and engineering competition from India and China, these two countries were not among the 38 that…