Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Meet the German scientist who is shaping education reform from West Virginia to Tokyo. My profile of Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s education guru, is in the new Atlantic.

As always, there is one missing link—one point that I failed to work into the story. So that’s what a blog is for! The story never ends. So the missing point is this: Schleicher’s conclusions about what makes a great school system do not fall neatly into either the reform or the teachers’ union camp. He is skeptical of performance pay for teachers, for example, but he is also insistent that poverty and immigration are not insurmountable barriers to high-level learning—and he is convinced that great systems must find, train and support excellent teachers and principals.

This complexity of his has three important implications, I think. First, it makes Schleicher infinitely more powerful. Both sides can—and do—claim him as their own, so he has become very hard to dismiss (unlike, say, Michelle Rhee, Diane Ravitch, Randi Weingarten or almost any other demagogue you can think of in America’s polarized education debate.)

Secondly, it means Schleicher is probably right. The truth is usually complex.

But thirdly, and paradoxically, this nuance makes his mission much harder. At the moment, education policy makers can pick and choose from Schleicher’s recommendations like cruise ship passengers at a midnight buffet. Don’t want waffles? They don’t fit your political or emotional needs? Then skip it! Bring on the bacon! I have yet to find a state that is intentionally benchmarking itself to international standards in all the ways that Schleicher suggests. And yet it is the interaction of these magical ingredients that matters most—not the existence of a few best practices in isolation.

So there’s the challenge. If you think you know of a state or a district that is really, truly trying to holistically follow the world’s lead, please let me know. I am on the hunt.

Some reflections on Finland: People put the lid down on the toilet in public restrooms. (Not just the seat; the lid!) There are a lot of statues of women (fully clothed). When the Finns win the World Ice Hockey Championship, it’s not a small deal. And finally, the schools are not perfect—which makes them more interesting than I’d thought.

I interviewed principals, teachers, students and researchers in five cities. I had some beers with American teachers who have spent the past four months obsessing over what the Finns are doing that we are not. I ate frozen cranberries covered in hot caramel sauce. I flashed across the fir-lined countryside in a train full of quiet Finns.

My favorite part of the trip was visiting with Kim, the American girl who chose to spend this school year in Pietarsaari, Finland, leaving Sallisaw, Oklahoma, far behind. Now I have a notebook full of treasures ready to be sorted and shined for the book. Many, many thanks to Kim, her host families, AFS and her school for so graciously putting up with me.

There was a time when a reporter on the road just needed a pad, pen and a corporate credit card. But today, as I head to the airport to go to Finland, I feel more like a secret agent. I have a magic pen that records what you are saying (for real!), a tricked-out camera that also captures hi-def video, a shotgun microphone for said camera, a teeny tiny tripod, a webcam, and 57 chargers, USB cables and assorted other crap to go along with all of them. Oh, and no corporate credit card at all whatsoever. Times have changed.

Anyway, despite all this baggage, I am excited. After a year of research, interviews and reckless speculation, I am headed off to investigate how other countries built smarter, cheaper, fairer public schools—all while spending far less money than we do per student. I’ll visit 5 cities in Finland and then 2 cities in Poland. I’ll meet up with the American kids and teachers I’ve been relying on for on-the-ground intel and finally see what they are talking about up close.

Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard Commander and one of the country’s leading thinkers on resilience and counterterrorism, has a scathing Foreign Affairs piece out this week about the state of our so-called Homeland Security. Putting aside the tedious debates over cargo screening and liquids in your carry-on, the fundamental flaw in our defenses is the failure to treat regular Americans like grown-ups and enlist them intelligently in this never-ending and complex fight. Ten years after 9/11, American officials continue to overestimate their own ability to prevent terrorism and underestimate the competence of the public. It is a scheme designed to fail, with certainty.

Flynn’s piece is behind a paywall, and it’s worth the price of admission. A few snippets to get you started:

For much of its history, the United States drew on the strength of its citizens in times of crisis, with volunteers joining fire brigades and civilians enlisting or being drafted to fight the nation’s wars. But during the Cold War, keeping the threat of a nuclear holocaust at bay required career military and intelligence professionals operating within a large, complex, and highly secretive national security establishment....By the time the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, two generations of Americans had grown accustomed to sitting on the
sidelines and the national security community had become used to operating in a world of its own.

To an extraordinary extent, this same self-contained Cold War–era national security apparatus is what Washington is using today to confront the far different challenge presented by terrorism….This is the wrong approach to protecting the homeland. Even with the help of their state and local counterparts, these federal agencies cannot detect and intercept every act of terrorism….A sidewalk T-shirt vendor, not a police patrol officer, sounded the alarm about Faisal Shahzad’s SUV in his May 2010 car-bombing attempt on New York’s Times Square. Courageous passengers and flight-crew members, not a federal air marshal, helped disrupt the suicide-bombing attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab aboard Northwest Airlines Flight
253 on Christmas Day 2009....

To improve the nation’s capacity to manage dangers, federal agencies must avoid alienating the very people they are responsible for protecting. Regrettably,Washington’s growing homeland security bureaucracy has largely overlooked the need to garner support from the public. New security measures are advanced without spelling out the vulnerability that they are designed to address. When the TSA introduced full-body x-ray scanners and enhanced pat-downs at U.S. airports last fall, it prioritized public compliance over public acceptance.

Please forgive the plug, but I have to shout from the mountain tops that Ben Ripley, who is a very talented screenwriter in addition to being an excellent brother, has a movie opening this week.

The Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga, opens April 1. Time travel, disasters, romance…and Jake Gyllenhaal, let me just say again.