Can Public Schools Really Change?

 
As the recent Chicago teacher strike demonstrated, public school systems are phenomenally difficult institutions to change. The array of competing forces—unions, politicians, parents, principals, charter schools, state and national bureaucrats—gums up many reform efforts and frustrates all but the most persistent reformers. But what’s happening in the historically troubled New Haven, Conn., public school system suggests there may be ways around this, ways that all sides can support.

 Emily Bazelon
EMILY BAZELON
Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and the Truman Capote Fellow at Yale Law School. She is the author of Sticks and Stones.

 In 2009, New Haven’s school district and teachers’ union signed a groundbreaking contract for the 21,000-student system. The four-year deal included a small annual pay hike—and allowed the district to give merit bonuses, close failing schools, and evaluate teachers based in part on student performance. The contract’s reform-minded provisions brought praise to a struggling urban district, from admirers including Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, and New York Times columnists David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof. Three years later, there are signs that cultural change is coming, too, in fits and starts. It’s especially evident in the district’s unusual effort to groom future leaders by handing them over to a local charter network that it used to view as an upstart threat.

A little history so you can see how big a change this represents: In 1998, a group led by two Yale Law students, Dacia Toll, who’d previously worked as a student teacher in New Haven, and Stefan Pryor, who’d been a policy adviser for the city’s mayor, John DeStefano, opened Amistad Academy, a charter school. (Pryor is now the state commissioner of education for Connecticut.) Amistad soon posted test scores for its students that far outstripped New Haven’s. Charters like this one are often accused of creaming students off the top, but the Amistad kids were chosen by lottery and resembled New Haven’s student population demographically: heavily low income and almost entirely African-American and Hispanic.

DeStefano has been in office for nearly 20 years, along with school superintendent Reginald Mayo, and for much of that time, the New Haven schools has suffered from nepotism and low achievement and graduation rates. In 2003, Toll formed an umbrella organization, Achievement First, and opened a second school in New Haven. A couple of years later, DeStefano and Mayo felt attacked by a friend of Toll’s, former Rhodes Scholar Alex Johnston, who’d launched a pro-reform group called Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN, with a board that included heavy hitters like Yale President Richard Levin. The mayor and superintendent accused ConnCAN of denigrating the New Haven schools. Toll expanded her charter efforts elsewhere, in Brooklyn, Hartford, and Bridgeport. Achievement First now runs 22 schools with 7,000 students; only five are in New Haven.

But a funny thing happened on the way to explaining away Achievement First’s success. Mayor DeStefano forced his way onto AF’s board (via a Connecticut law to requiring the charter to appoint a city official), and then as he sat through meetings, he found himself thinking that he had something to learn. “He sat and listened for a year, and then he and the superintendent started asking, ‘What do we need to do differently?’ ” assistant superintendent Garth Harries says. DeStefano began declaring that school reform would be his legacy. He and Mayo called in David Cicarella, the president of the New Haven teachers’ union. “Pre-reform, I’d almost never talked to the mayor,” Cicarella says. “Now he was saying, ‘What’s your input? What do you think?’ ”

The union and the district together hammered out a method for evaluating teachers based in part on state test scores and in part on factors like classroom management, use of data, and parent outreach. The goal was to help as many teachers as possible improve—and to drum out the ones who wouldn’t. Over the next two years, 70 teachers failed to lift themselves out of the bottom of the pack, and the union went along with removing them. The terminations were only about 4 percent of the total workforce of about 1,700 but far more than in previous years, and they sent an unmistakable signal. “The people who were let go had been fairly evaluated by a system we helped to create and shown no improvement,” Cicarella says. “I don’t see how we can defend that. Frankly, we shouldn’t.”

Connecticut students in the fourth through eighth grades take a state test every year, and in New Haven, their scores rose a bit in 2011. So did the graduation rate and the number of ninth through 11th graders who are on track to graduate. Other news is mixed: Yale University and a local foundation started awarding scholarships to in-state public schools for New Haven high-school graduates with a B average and good attendance. Among the first group of 115 freshmen, only 62 percent made it to sophomore year. This fall, the principal of one of the city’s high schools is embroiled in a cheating scandal.

DeStefano and Mayo get credit, though, for some adventurous hires. They brought in Harries, a former McKinsey consultant who came to New Haven in 2009 from New York, where he worked on special education reform for former schools chancellor Joel Klein. The district also tapped Gemma Joseph Lumpkin for the new position of executive manager of leadership development: She grew up in New Haven, had consulted for the district on using data collection to strengthen student performance, and had worked on a National Science Foundation initiative for urban schools. And DeStefano mended fences with Alex Johnston, appointing him to the school board.

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American Basic Education System (USA)

Education as a whole gives a tremendous turning to the individual’s life. It makes the person feel as literate human being. American education as a whole is the most developed education in world. The funding divides from three levels state, local and federal. The education sector is divided into three sectors elementary school, middle school and high school.

The relative schools are divided into respective grades according to their age. Kindergarten is the first grade and the twelfth grade is the last grade of high school. Post secondary education commonly known as college is separate for the respective demands of the students. Community college offers four year degree. There are 4495 colleges and universities. They offer bachelors and masters degree.

The schools, colleges and universities provide tremendous education which lead their young generation to the glory of life. Education as a whole develops a keen responsibility on the shoulders of the individual. He gains knowledge and executes it in respective sectors on which he has command.  It enables us to learn, gain knowledge, practice it, get to know your skills and then utilize them in a good manner.

Pre schools or Basic schools are the most important and imperative for the growth of the individual. The child is small; he is unaware about the things around him. He has to be thought from the scratch. He when thought magnificently in the basic school he then would lead to a better individual.

The educational institutions which are colloquially known as prep schools in the USA can be boarding or day schools which are associated with a scrupulous conviction or entirely sophisticated. At the immense end of the gamut they are also known for ultra bloodthirsty admittance, high coaching and top indentation amenities. Their aim is to provide students with education that conduit them into the very paramount universities.

ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL:

It is a boarding school. St. Paul’s School is a highly selective and coeducational boarding school in Concord. It is affiliated with the Episcopal Church. The school is one of only six remaining residential boarding schools in the U.S. It was founded in 1856. It has a spectacular building with play grounds which help the students in enhancing their talent in other extracurricular activates.

THE LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL:

The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational and independent college which is preparatory boarding school for grades 9–12. It has 809 students. It was established in 1810. It is located on 700 acres in the historic Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, New Jersey, United States. There is a trend of Harkness table on which the students and teachers discuss about the individuals educational status with him. They are good at sports and create a trend of extracurricular activities along with studies

TRINITY SCHOOL:

Trinity School is a co educational day school for grades K-12 located in New York City, USA near Manhattan. It was founded in 1709. It is a member of both the New York Interschool and the Ivy Preparatory School League. It has a spectacular building with play grounds which help the students in enhancing their talent in other extracurricular activates. They provide advance placement classes to the students. They are offered languages and are allowed to choose any two if them

PHILLIPS ACADEMY ANDOVER:

Phillips Academy Andover is a highly prestigious co-educational independent boarding preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12. It was established in 1778. It has a spectacular building with play grounds which help the students in enhancing their talent in other extracurricular activates.It has 4 halls and a library with all the possible books which are required for the students.

PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY

Phillips Exeter Academy is a highly celebrated co-educational autonomous boarding preliminary school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12. They introduced the harkness learning method in which the teachers and the students. The Academy uses a unique designation for its grade levels.

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Assisting Power Our country’s Future through Education in USA

Shell’s objective is to grow Our country’s upcoming Jordan Einstein right here at house. To meet up with this objective, Spend has connected with several companies to improve STEM knowledge for learners. One such collaboration is with Project Graduate student, a charitable wanting to offer excellent public knowledge for financially deprived learners in Austin, Florida. For over 14 years, the two companies have connected to buy the Spend Advanced Numbers Higher education Institution at Grain School. The Institution, which makes kids for effective professions in institution arithmetic, provides 64 educational institutions and approximately 44,000 children in the Austin area. The learners provided are mostly at risk youth:  seventy three % of the learners are in danger of losing out and over 90 % are low-income unprivileged.

Shell has also dedicated to offer $200,000 in allow assistance and $100,000 of in-kind assistance through 2015 to the National Technology Resource Center (NSRC) for its Authority and Assistance for Technology Education Change (LASER) Model. The system utilizes a comprehensive, research-based science system for 25,000 learners and 1,000 instructors.

In addition to operating directly with learners, Spend also teaches Our country’s instructors so they can offer their learners with excellent STEM “educations“.  One effective STEM effort is Shell’s cooperation with the Florida Local Collaborative for Quality in Technology and Mathematics Training (TRC).  By providing primary and junior great institution instructors with university-level training in STEM topics, the TRC provides excellent science training in STEM topics and helps motivate learners to engage in STEM-related professions. These are just three of Shell’s several applications and relationships.

Shell’s attempts are greatly needed. The Combined Declares looks an academic and job durability disaster in the science, ‘technology‘, technological innovation, and arithmetic (STEM) areas.  These areas signify the present and upcoming {United states job} market.  In sharp comparison to the 8.2 % unemployment rate, these sectors hold millions of useless tasks.

According to the US Institution of Work Research, there is a STEM ability gap of 3.5 million workers, with this number predicted to double by 2016. STEM tasks have grown three times faster than all other tasks combined, and are required to see 17 % growth in the next several years. By 2014, 15 of the 20 top professions will require qualification in arithmetic and science.  Unfortunately, the Combined Declares is as of yet unable to meet our STEM challenge.

One reason for the vast ability gap is the lack of academic search and training in the STEM areas. Only 16 % of United states undergraduates obtain a science or technological innovation degree, contrary to 44 % in Chinese suppliers. In the graduate field, foreign learners make up 33 % of the country’s STEM doctoral learners and 43 % of postdoctoral STEM scientists. The numbers are even more hopeless for underrepresented unprivileged (URMS) – Africa People in america, Latino People in america and Native People in america.

UMRS are greatly underrepresented in STEM knowledge and professions. URMS generate 13 % of technological innovation bachelor’s levels, 11 % of technological innovation master’s levels, and 9 % of technological innovation doctoral levels. In any given year, URMS generate about 15 % of all STEM levels. Even worse, many URMS who earned STEM levels do not end up operating in STEM areas. Underrepresented unprivileged are less than ten % of school graduate students operating in science and technological innovation careers.

The Combined Declares STEM-reliant sectors face not only an academic and employment disaster, but a variety disaster as well. The US quickly needs a generation of learners well experienced in STEM topics, making them able to contend here at house and overseas. Thus applications and opportunities like Shell’s are necessary to ensure Our country’s social equity and competition.

- See more at: http://www.trendsfair.com/assisting-power-our-countrys-future-through-education-in-usa/#sthash.nksmBIMn.dpuf

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Education System in USA

 

United States offers superior and wide range of choices and opportunities in education to those seeking quality academic learning. Studying in the US holds many advantages however it is necessary that while you make your choice of your program or degree or the university, you should have a know how about the US education system. To make the right decision as an international student it is essential you have enough knowledge about the academics offered in US and how the system works.

In most of the countries it is usually the central government controlling the education sector however in USA that is not the case. In America the higher education systems which are private are under independent groups or trustees or the public schools are shared between local and state governments. The main difference between the private and the public institutions is the cost. The private schools are usually more expensive and costly to attend than the public schools. This is because private schools require funding from nongovernmental sources. Furthermore the Department of Education in USA has formed accrediting agencies with the job of ensuring quality of education and programs offered by a specific institution. When you are choosing a school or college it is advised that the college you choose has accreditation. That ensures that the institute has met a certain academic conditions and administrative, financial standards. It is made sure that your degree is recognized by other institute. When you are applying from abroad it is necessary you look for your field of programs which are accredited.

In USA educations is compulsory until the age of 16 and it is necessary that majority of students complete their high school. After finishing 12 years of primary and secondary school students begin enrolling themselves for higher education. The first level for is the undergraduate study after which a student may earn a graduate degree. Nowadays these degrees are not just attained on campus an international student may earn one online too through online degree programs which are being offered. It is necessary that when you are choosing a two year degree of four year undergraduate course you know which is better for you and the field you wish to pursue. Some professional fields only require a two year of study so it’s advisable you do your research and make a smart choice. Many states also provide schools for children with special educational needs who may have learning difficulties due to some disability or behavioral issue. There are also private schools for specially gifted and talented students.

For admission of the international students in undergraduate or graduate programs there are a set of policies which usually vary in universities. The admission is determined on high school criteria or equivalent education; participate in extracurricular activities, SAT scores, a written personal essay and sometimes also an interview.  In College the students are referred by certain names according to their levels. In first year of undergraduate study the students are called freshman, in second they are known as sophomore. In the third year they are referred as junior and senior in their last year. Tuition fees are charged in all universities however the amount varies. Students are also provided with loans and grants and scholarships depending on their finances and abilities. For international students the traveling and residence costs are to be met too which considerably heightens the overall cost of studying in America. American higher education has a good reputation globally as some of the best universities of the world such as Harvard, MIT and Princeton are located here.

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Can Public Schools Really Change

Why New Haven’s ambitious new education strategy might actually succeed.

 

 

 

As the recent Chicago teacher strike demonstrated, public school systems are phenomenally difficult institutions to change. The array of competing forces—unions, politicians, parents, principals, charter schools, state and national bureaucrats—gums up many reform efforts and frustrates all but the most persistent reformers. But what’s happening in the historically troubled New Haven, Conn., public school system suggests there may be ways around this, ways that all sides can support.
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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and the Truman Capote Fellow at Yale Law School. She is the author of Sticks and Stones.

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 In 2009, New Haven’s school district and teachers’ union signed a groundbreaking contract for the 21,000-student system. The four-year deal included a small annual pay hike—and allowed the district to give merit bonuses, close failing schools, and evaluate teachers based in part on student performance. The contract’s reform-minded provisions brought praise to a struggling urban district, from admirers including Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, and New York Times columnists David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof. Three years later, there are signs that cultural change is coming, too, in fits and starts. It’s especially evident in the district’s unusual effort to groom future leaders by handing them over to a local charter network that it used to view as an upstart threat.

A little history so you can see how big a change this represents: In 1998, a group led by two Yale Law students, Dacia Toll, who’d previously worked as a student teacher in New Haven, and Stefan Pryor, who’d been a policy adviser for the city’s mayor, John DeStefano, opened Amistad Academy, a charter school. (Pryor is now the state commissioner of education for Connecticut.) Amistad soon posted test scores for its students that far outstripped New Haven’s. Charters like this one are often accused of creaming students off the top, but the Amistad kids were chosen by lottery and resembled New Haven’s student population demographically: heavily low income and almost entirely African-American and Hispanic.

DeStefano has been in office for nearly 20 years, along with school superintendent Reginald Mayo, and for much of that time, the New Haven schools has suffered from nepotism and low achievement and graduation rates. In 2003, Toll formed an umbrella organization, Achievement First, and opened a second school in New Haven. A couple of years later, DeStefano and Mayo felt attacked by a friend of Toll’s, former Rhodes Scholar Alex Johnston, who’d launched a pro-reform group called Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN, with a board that included heavy hitters like Yale President Richard Levin. The mayor and superintendent accused ConnCAN of denigrating the New Haven schools. Toll expanded her charter efforts elsewhere, in Brooklyn, Hartford, and Bridgeport. Achievement First now runs 22 schools with 7,000 students; only five are in New Haven.

But a funny thing happened on the way to explaining away Achievement First’s success. Mayor DeStefano forced his way onto AF’s board (via a Connecticut law to requiring the charter to appoint a city official), and then as he sat through meetings, he found himself thinking that he had something to learn. “He sat and listened for a year, and then he and the superintendent started asking, ‘What do we need to do differently?’ ” assistant superintendent Garth Harries says. DeStefano began declaring that school reform would be his legacy. He and Mayo called in David Cicarella, the president of the New Haven teachers’ union. “Pre-reform, I’d almost never talked to the mayor,” Cicarella says. “Now he was saying, ‘What’s your input? What do you think?’ ”

The union and the district together hammered out a method for evaluating teachers based in part on state test scores and in part on factors like classroom management, use of data, and parent outreach. The goal was to help as many teachers as possible improve—and to drum out the ones who wouldn’t. Over the next two years, 70 teachers failed to lift themselves out of the bottom of the pack, and the union went along with removing them. The terminations were only about 4 percent of the total workforce of about 1,700 but far more than in previous years, and they sent an unmistakable signal. “The people who were let go had been fairly evaluated by a system we helped to create and shown no improvement,” Cicarella says. “I don’t see how we can defend that. Frankly, we shouldn’t.”

Connecticut students in the fourth through eighth grades take a state test every year, and in New Haven, their scores rose a bit in 2011. So did the graduation rate and the number of ninth through 11th graders who are on track to graduate. Other news is mixed: Yale University and a local foundation started awarding scholarships to in-state public schools for New Haven high-school graduates with a B average and good attendance. Among the first group of 115 freshmen, only 62 percent made it to sophomore year. This fall, the principal of one of the city’s high schools is embroiled in a cheating scandal.

DeStefano and Mayo get credit, though, for some adventurous hires. They brought in Harries, a former McKinsey consultant who came to New Haven in 2009 from New York, where he worked on special education reform for former schools chancellor Joel Klein. The district also tapped Gemma Joseph Lumpkin for the new position of executive manager of leadership development: She grew up in New Haven, had consulted for the district on using data collection to strengthen student performance, and had worked on a National Science Foundation initiative for urban schools. And DeStefano mended fences with Alex Johnston, appointing him to the school board.
 

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How Does Your Child's School Rank Against the Rest of the World?

If your kids are in a good American public school, chances are you know it. (In fact, it's probably the reason you traded in that urban loft for the property taxes of the suburbs.) But what if you woke up one morning and found that a Wizard of Oz-style tornado had dropped your entire district down in the middle of Singapore or Finland? How would your children's test scores measure up then?

That's more or less what the Bush Institute wants to you to imagine as you click through its Global Report Card, an interactive graphic that lets you rank your district against 25 other countries. "When you tell people there are problems in education, elites will usually think, 'Ah, that refers to those poor kids in big cities. It doesn't have anything to do with me,'" says Jay P. Greene, head of the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas and one of the lead researchers behind the Global Report Card. "The power of denial is so great that people don't think a finding really has anything to do with them unless you actually name their town."



Say you live in Santa Cruz, California. It's a relatively affluent district, and by state standards, Santa Cruz City High scores in the 62nd percentile for reading and 59th for math. But when you rank the school against the rest of the developed world, it drops into the 50th percentile for reading and the 39th for math. Up the coast a bit, Palo Alto Unified ranks nearly 30 points higher in each area. But even those numbers are discouraging -- if one of the wealthiest and most reputable districts in America, right in the cradle of Silicon Valley, can't break the 70th percentile in math, what does that say about the rest of the country?

Those lagging scores have real-world consequences, says Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist who was one of the first to rank American students against their foreign counterparts. "If you look across nations over the last 50 years, the growth rates are really very highly correlated with math performance on these basic tests," Hanushek says.

And you don't have to look overseas to realize what a difference education makes. Every year, more and more coveted slots at U.S. companies and universities are being filled by foreigners. In an article last year ominously titled "Danger: America Is Losing Its Edge in Innovation," Forbes reported that 70 percent of the engineers who graduate from U.S. universities are now foreign-born. According to a 2007 study at Duke University, more than a quarter of all U.S. tech start-ups between 1995 and 2005 had at least one immigrant founder.

"Just visit Silicon Valley and you'll see a fairly thick stock of international grocery stores," says Hanushek. "We like to talk about American innovation, but many of the people doing the innovating here were in fact born elsewhere." He estimates that if America's high schools could match the math scores of our top competitors, our GDP could increase five- to sevenfold. "That's the value of what we're leaving on the table," he says.

The question, as always, is how to bring those scores up. The Bush Institute has its own ideas -- its programs include initiatives to replace subpar principals and improve middle schools. There's no shortage of other proposals out there -- everything from having students grade their teachers to handing out more vouchers, bringing in the private sector, or following Finland's lead and focusing on equality instead of excellence.

For now, Greene, who is a Bush Institute fellow, says he wants to avoid tying the Global Report Card too closely to any specific recommendations. "Once you propose a solution, people who don't like the solution are less likely to listen to your description of the problem," he says. "Frankly, our goal here is to show that the problem is broader than many people realize -- it also includes wealthier and whiter folks. We certainly can't make progress if we don't change the conversation."

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Do American Schools Need to Change

Do American Schools Need to Change? Depends What You Compare Them To

Compared to its own history, the U.S. education system may be doing fine. But compared to the rest of the world, it needs work—and quickly

 

Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

It’s no secret that America’s education debate is increasingly polarized and increasingly public. We see it every day on Twitter, in the headlines, and occasionally even on the picket line. The public discussion pits reformers who think that our education system is failing students against anti-reformers who think what’s wrong with our schools is the people trying to fix them. I've been immersed in American education for more than 20 years and have led a global education network for the last seven, and to me there’s no question that our school system must improve, and quickly. But today’s debate has become a distraction that keeps us paralyzed in old divisions and false debates, rather than uniting against common problems. 
Two recent bestselling books on education, Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error and Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World, shine light on the conflict—and why taking a step back and embracing a global perspective is necessary to move forward.
At first blush it’s hard to believe that Ravitch and Ripley are writing about the same education system. They seem to be coming from different worlds—and in a way, they are. Ravitch is a stalwart of what education reporter Jay Matthewsdescribes as “education geek world…full of people who have been arguing for decades about class size and test validity.” She doesn’t just come from it, she’s a pillar of it—a prolific polemicist who more than anyone else has defined today’s dynamic.
Ripley, on the other hand, is relatively new to writing about education. In fact, she admits in her new book that as a reporter she actively avoided it—until she became fascinated with a question obscured by all the noise. Everything else being equal, why are some kids learning so much and others so little? For the last several years she’s covered the globe and immersed herself in data looking for answers. In Smartest Kids, she enlists three American teenagers who are studying abroad as “field agents” to find out what’s really going on in the world’s highest performing or fastest-improving countries.
I’m the first to admit I’m not a disinterested reader of either book. The organization I founded, Teach for America, is the subject of one of Reign of Error’s 32 chapters, and as regular readers of Dr. Ravitch’s blog know, she is not a fan. On the other hand, I’ve been so impressed by Ripley’s insightful reporting that I’ve invited her to speak to Teach for America and Teach for All staff members.

Related Story

Report: American Education Isn't Mediocre—It's Deeply Unequal

The authors’ conclusions are as different as their approaches to the subject. Ravitch argues that contrary to popular opinion, there is no crisis in American schools today. “The public schools are working very well for most students,” she writes, and anyone who says differently is “crying wolf.” She considers the real problem to be so-called “corporate education reformers,” a label she applies to a diverse group including The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hedge-fund millionaires, President Obama, and yours truly.
To Ravitch, reforms like charter schools and teacher accountability pose a greater threat than the bleak realities they were designed to address, like the fact that only 9 percent of low-income students are graduating from college. Her proposed solutions reflect her belief that no progress in education is possible without first addressing poverty: more government support for low-income families, pre-natal care for women, etc.
To Ripley, there’s something wrong with the status quo when America spends more per pupil than nearly every other country and yet on the best international assessments of critical-thinking, our results are mediocre at best (American teenagers rank 25th in math). We do a worse job than other countries at giving our poorest students the high-quality education they need to lead better lives than their parents. Even our rich kids perform below their peers in 18 other countries, according to PISA data Ripley cites in her book.
Just this month a first-ever international comparison of workers’ skills in 23 industrialized nations revealed that younger Americans rank near the bottom in literacy, numeracy, and (ominously) “problem solving in technology rich environments.” Ripley hears a lot of theories for this phenomenon, from poverty to parental involvement. But as she explores the remarkable progress of places like Poland that have higher child poverty rates but get better results, it’s clear that something else is going on—and Ripley is determined to figure out what it is.
She discovers that students in these “education superpowers” take school seriously because it is serious. Kids are trained to persist in mastering difficult subject matter, and more than their American peers they are convinced that getting an education is the key to a successful and fulfilling life. Even if they don’t like their teachers, they respect them because they know that only the very best students are allowed to become educators.
American schools, by contrast, lack the same rigor and the expectation that all students can and should perform at a high level. Ripley recommends giving students fewer, better standardized tests (like Common Core-aligned exams), making it more competitive and selective to become a teacher, and shifting the culture of schools to emphasize academics more than sports.
Ravitch and Ripley reach such different conclusions because they use different yardsticks. Reign of Error dismisses international tests like PISA and compares the U.S. to its own education track record. By that standard, there doesn’t seem to be much cause for alarm: For 50 years, achievement levels have stayed roughly the same or ticked up slightly.
But while our education system hasn’t changed, and the world we’re living in has. So has the value of education. To Ripley, international standards are the relevant ones in a globalized information economy where higher education has become a virtual prerequisite for financial security.
Today, academic mediocrity comes at a much higher price. The U.S. used to lead the world in the percentage of students graduating from high school and earning college degrees. Now about 20 countries outpace us. Perspective is relative, and Ripley argues that standing still while the rest of the world pulls ahead is falling behind. America’s marginal gains are not cutting it against a steep new learning curve. Sticking with schools that were designed for another era, as Ravitch suggests, would leave more of our citizens increasingly ill-equipped to compete for high-skill, high-paying jobs.
Yet Ripley gives us a reason to stay optimistic. It turns out that none of today’s education superpowers were that super a few decades ago. In the 1950s only 10 percent of Finnish students graduated from high school. In the decades while America’s performance has stagnated, South Korea has gone from having the standard of living of Afghanistan today to building a thriving modern economy, in large part by investing in the education of its people. Poland managed to catch up with the developed world in reading and math in only three years and by 2009 was outperforming the U.S. while spending half as much per pupil. These transformations were not easy or accidental, but they are entirely within reach.
The two books show us the benchmarks we use change our sense of what’s important. When the history of American education is your only reference point, it’s easy to see why Ravitch is preoccupied by the internal politics of our school system. But if like Ripley you consider the global vantage point, the stakes are higher. Whether teachers come from traditional or alternative certification programs suddenly seems beside the point. The co-location of charter schools and other issues that loom large today are dwarfed by the imperative to do whatever it takes to push our students to a higher bar or be left behind.
Like Ripley’s student informants, my own perspective changed profoundly when I began visiting schools in dozens of countries around the world about eight years ago. But instead of seeing the world’s best systems, I spend most of my time in disadvantaged communities in the developing world. From Karachi, Pakistan, to Yunnan, China, I see students clamoring to learn and parents investing every extra penny into their kids’ education. No one is having philosophical debates about whether fixing poverty or education must come first.
Now when I come home to my own four kids in New York City, the education discussion I see on TV and Twitter seems woefully behind the times. The trumped-up debates that have stalled progress seem even more irresponsible because they are of our own making.
So what do the two books say about the future of American education? It all depends on what lens we chose to apply. Following Ravitch, with her attachment to a model that has become obsolete, would mean its best days are already behind us. Embracing Ripley’s charge to adapt and learn from the best systems around the world would mean America’s best education days lay head.

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Homeschooling-Bonding Over Education

Over the past decade the number of parents opting to home school their children has risen by almost 77%. In fact within a short span from 2003 to 2007 the number of home schooled children increased by almost 37%. You may think the recent string of school shooting may have something to do with this rising trend, but that is not the case. Here are a few great homeschooling pros and cons to help you understand:

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

The reason why home schooling is catching on is because of the numerous academic benefits it offers, which were previously not so obvious to parents. Although tragic events like the recent senseless shootings at various school around the country have prompted parents to look into this option, if not for academic, then for security reasons.

It is quite understandable that the anxiety caused by the recent incidents could have pushed you and various other parents towards seriously considering home schooling as a security measure. In most cases the children themselves are so traumatized by the events, that the thought of going to school makes them anxious and scared, which greatly hampers their performance in class. In this case you need to calm down yourself and get proper therapy for your child, since home schooling is not a security bubble you can put your child into. Remember that there is absolutely no way of protecting your child from such incidents forever without mutating their normal and healthy growth. The outside would is a mix of the good and bad, the sooner you familiarize your children with this idea the better their chances of living a normal life.

…and the Right Reason is

The reason why you should consider home schooling your kid is because of the academic and personal benefits it offers. To begin with children who are home schooled tend to score higher in studies than kids taught in traditional schools. A blatant example of this ideology is the fact that some of America’s most brilliant minds were nurtured at home through home schooling, e.g, George Washington, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington Carver. During the time when these great names dominated the American society, America enjoyed the highest literacy level in the world.

While few parents are aware of these benefits, the idea of home schooling is still catching on rapidly and in some circles is now considered a mainstream educational alternative.

Benefits of Home-Schooling

So if you have by now made up your mind about homeschooling your kids, here are a few things you need to keep in mind about how to homeschool your child:

To begin with you need to check what your state laws dictate concerning homeschooling, while some states only demand you file a letter of intent, others have stricter rules which you need to follow to the dot in order to have your kids home schooled. However, don’t get discouraged by the mention of strict laws, complicated curriculum and record keeping of the child’s progress, since it is not as tough as it seems.

Relax. The first thing most parents considering homeschooling worry about is if they are qualified enough to educate their own kids and whether homeschooling will isolate their kids socially. Before you start out on this challenging journey, find your bearings and be confident in your abilities as a parent and a teacher.

Make Hay… this is not just a golden opportunity for your kid to get exclusive one-to-one attention in a classroom environment; it is also an opportunity for you to spend quality time with your kid. This is your chance to do all the things you wish their school had indulged in, like nature walks in order to teach them about the environment and so on.

Make Friends. The fear of isolating your kids and you could lead you down strange roads, so before you make any social blunders join a homeschooling support group in your area. Here you will get to meet like-minded parents, share their experiences, suggestions and get to have a whole new set of social contacts to enjoy. Same will happen for your kids, they will get to meet other children who are in the same situation and wont feel so alienated after all.

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