Thanks to the folks at USC’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program for this nice graphic on $ and education around the world.
Via: MAT@USC | Master’s of Arts in Teaching
But this raises another mystery: We’ve known for a long time that more money does not tend to lead to more learning, once you get past a bare minimum (which we did a long time ago). So here’s my question: Where does all that money go…
The new book Bringing Up Bebe has got affluent American parents all in a tizzy—again. Why aren’t our kids parfait, aussi?
Good question. I lived in France for a while, and anecdotally speaking, it did seem like French parents were less likely to indulge their children in some ways. My French friends put their children to bed at 7:30 pm and had a civilized dinner with their husbands. (Except for the ones who didn’t, of course.)
I suspect that France is a more pleasant place to parent in 1,000 different ways, as my New America colleague Brigid…
What would a playground look like if it were designed the way kids actually play?
I’m collecting a list of the coolest playgrounds in the world. Send me one if you see one!
Here’s a good one from the U.S.A.
It’s hard to get excited about President Obama’s push for more states to require school until age 18. I know kids’ life chances improve if they make it through high school. That’s a big deal. But don’t we have an obligation to make school better before we force kids to spend even more time there?
There isn’t much empirical evidence that raising the drop-out age actually reduces drop outs. So this feels a little retro. Kind of like No Child Left Behind: all stick, no carrot. You can hammer on kids (and teachers) all you want; but if you don’t…
Sometimes it feels like we will never be able to be perfect, like the Finns. Ah, the Finns! In the U.S., our descriptions of the education system are so euphoric that it can be hard to relate.
But I have to say, I didn’t feel that same level of bliss when I was in Finland. I mean, I felt like it was an inspiring place—a lot more civilized in many ways, a place we can learn from. But in real life, it seemed like it was also a complicated place inhabited by…human beings.
It’s important to keep this in…
A few people have asked me to explain in more detail why I think the PISA index of socioeconomic status is a better way to compare the performance of rich and poor kids around the world (versus the breakdown of scores based on how many kids qualify for free or reduced price lunch at a US school). So I’ll do my best for those of you looking to get deep in the weeds on this….
OK, first let’s talk about the PISA index on socioeconomic status. The data for that index is…
The other day, I posted the country rankings you never hear about—the only legitimate ones to show how countries’ most privileged 15-year-olds do on the PISA test of what kids know around the world.*
Our richest kids rank No. 7 in reading. OK, so it is not No.1, as others keep insisting, and we spend way more money per student to get there. But I’ll take it. No. 7 is still a perfectly respectable performance—well above the OECD average for rich kids.
But it got me thinking: What about math and science? How did…
This is the story of how wishes come true in the strange, upside-down world of education.
Edu-pundits like Diane Ravitch like to say that America’s education problems have everything to do with poverty. This is actually a debate that goes back centuries in American schools. It takes different forms at different times, but it almost always follows the same equation: poverty (or race) is a problem so intractable that schools cannot be expected to overcome it. (Fun fact: the same debate was used to defend low-performing, segregated public schools in New York City in the 1960s. Check out this
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When Schools Bribe Kids
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Michelle Rhee