

Why Our Schools Suck, The Movie - rafaelc
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/why-our-schools-suck-the-movie/

======
Maro
I'm Hungarian. Due to my parents, I attended schools in 3 different countries:

\- first half year : Hungary

\- grades 1.5 - 4 : Germany

\- grades 5 - 8 : Hungary

\- grades 9 - 12 : USA, California

\- Universities, PhD: Hungary

After the first half year in Hungary, when I arrived in Germany, I was waaay
ahead of all the other kids in Math & Sciences and was near the top of the
class for most of the 4 years without speaking the language properly.

Then I got back to Hungary, where I had major catching up to do, especially in
terms of Math, Sciences, Music and of course Hungarian language. I eventually
caught up in Math & Physics, but not in Biology or Music, which never
interested me much. (I mention Music because Hungarian schools teach music at
a high level from grade 1 to everyone according to the "Liszt system", and for
someone like me, who is not musically minded it was impossible to catch up.)

Then I went to University High School in Irvine, Orange County, California,
one of the best public high schools in the USA I believe. Even so, that was a
fairly shocking experience for me. Initially I was way ahead, but the whole
system was so different, neither I not my parents knew how it worked (eg. you
have to pick your own classes), the advisors put me into idiotic "English as a
Second Language" classes for the first few months, where you really can't
actually learn English because all the other kids are Korean. And for some
reason they only had ESL for low-level math classes, roughly at the level
you'd learn in 6th grade everywhere else. So eventually I did okay at UHS,
because we figured out to ignore what the advisors (who seemed completely
useless to me) say. But I couldn't really cope with all the freedom, all the
activities, or the fact that everybody had cars at age 16, and I didn't, so I
got Bs regularly.

Then I got back to a Hungarian University for a CS major, and even though I
took all the AP classes in the US and took some CS at the local community
college and UCI, I was waaaaaaaaaay behind, esp. in Physics. The AP Calculus
classes are not so bad, but the one year AP Physics class is a major joke. In
Hungary they study Physics for 4 years straight. So at first I had really bad
grades at University. Eventually I went on to do a 2nd degree (another 5
manyears) in Physics, mostly because it interested me and I was so annoyed by
my lack of understanding.

Overall, it's clear that the US public HS, even one of the best, was a major
waste of time. I didn't learn much, nor were the teachers any good. I
eventually enrolled to become a physicist to properly repair the "damage"
caused by a lack of proper Physics education at the HS. It quickly turned out
I'm so interested in Physical theories that I'm currently doing a PhD.

I'm also fairly certain that I got a better University education here in
Hungary (esp. Physics) than I would have gotten at a public University in the
US, all things taken into account. However, it's clear that no University in
any part of the world can compete with top US and UK schools (mostly private
and some public like Berkeley).

Overall, I'm still very happy to have spent 4 years in the USA, as it was a
major life experience, and I benefit from it every day. I would say it was
worth it even though the HS sucked, because the US culture / language is like
Rome was 2000 years ago. The United States is the center of the world, and if
somebody doesn't understand the United States, they don't understand the
world. To get a better feeling for the "center of the world" part, visit the
NASA museum in Washington. Everything worth mentioning that has happened after
1940 is there.

Also, the preview of this film seems to discount the self-confidence issue. I
can understand this, but the makers should visit a country where kids, and
thus people, are not injected with such self-confidence and see how they're
doing (like here in Hungary). US self-confidence is one of the major factors
why the economy is so great and why you have so many startups. I'm doing a
startup right now, and it's no question that it's because after having spent 4
years in California I have a "can do" attitude, completely off the charts
compared to my peers here in Hungary. I remember when I was at Uni I overheard
someone referring to me as the "American guy" and I asked him how he knew I
spent time in the States: he replied he didn't, he just gave me that nickname
based on my attitude.

~~~
nadam
I am also a Hungarian, and I think Hungary is a worse and worse place as you
get older. I've attended one of the best high schools in Hungary which was
very high quality. Universities on the other hand are not bad, but also by far
not the best. And jobs are mostly the boring outsourced stuff. Attitude
towards starting up is very poor. I am so different from the people
surrounding me. I literally live physically in Hungary, but virtually in the
Valley (reading HN, Techrunch, etc...)

~~~
dschobel
It's perplexing to me how a country with a great primary education can have
mediocre universities. And then you have the exact inverse phenomenon for the
USA.

~~~
Maro
Problem is your first Uni. degree is free for Hungarian citizens, so everybody
wants to get in, after all it beats getting a job. And the gov't goes along
with it, because it temporarily decreases unemployment. However, this decrease
in quality of incoming students led to quality of education going down at most
places, and completely bogus management/administration majors gaining
popularity. As a result, now virtually everybody younger than 30 has a Uni.
degree, but most degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on, as the
people holding have little real-world or even theoretical skills ---
eventually they become secreteries or HR people. That's why many smart people,
once they figure this out, pay and do a second degree at one of the few places
that's not affected by this phenomenon, like me doing the Physics major.
Fortunately Physics is scary to most people, so it's one of the last remaining
oasis in our education system.

------
andrewce
It's not just being able to fire/reward teachers (depending on quality).

The definition of "good teacher" they seem to be using is some variant of the
"value-added" model, by which teachers are evaluated based on how much the
test scores of their students improve. However, the tests are only barely
valid (if at all), and don't measure much (if anything) worth measuring.

Meanwhile, the reading and writing go by the wayside in favour of multiple-
choice "comprehension" questions, math becomes an exercise in gaming in the
arithmetic, and science (held up so high in theory and so low in practice)
becomes a glorified exercise in vocabulary memorization.

This isn't even beginning to mention the arts.

I'd have more faith in Superman if I thought schools knew what they wanted to
do, or if there were a cohesive and coherent philosophical approach.

As it is now, there is a system which reduces good teachers, protects bad
teachers, and hamstrings learning in favour of that which can be easily
measured and that which can be taught with only a modicum of thoughtfulness
required.

Wake me up when "education" is something other than scripts delivered to
teachers by bureaucrats and specialists who haven't ever felt what it's like
to _actually_ teach.

~~~
jerf
"It's not just being able to fire/reward teachers (depending on quality)."

Consider it a necessary, but not sufficient, start. Right now, getting rid of
a teacher that is committing actual crimes is a challenge in many places,
getting rid of a teacher who merely objectively doesn't teach to _any_
standard you care to name is a challenge everywhere. You can play with all the
other knobs on the system you like, but until you change this you've _already
lost_.

I would argue that exactly because of this fact, the blundering around the
rest of the system has done is the expected result. No matter what the system
does, this means the problem just gets worse every year as more dead wood is
accumulated. Therefore, the system never gets any feedback about the value of
what the changes were. When everything uniformly produces the same negative
result, you can't get any information from the results. (At least human
systems are less prone than individual humans to learned helplessness and
things are still being tried.) Until you fix this problem, the question of
what changes actually work can not even be properly _asked_ , in a way that
can actually obtain useful and actionable answers.

(I have simplified this for internet-debate purposes; in fact some schools
sometimes manage to improve, there's always variations, etc. But I don't think
I need to go too far in defending the premise that the system as a whole has
been sinking for decades now.)

~~~
_delirium
Is it actually _that_ hard to fire teachers? The numbers I can find indicate
that, depending on the state, around 3-5% of "tenured" teachers are fired
every year. That's definitely a higher for-cause termination rate than
anywhere I've worked. It's also higher than in many of the countries that have
good school systems.

I'm not exactly sure what the solution is, but I don't think simply firing
teachers will do much. Even firing teachers and raising pay, while both are
probably necessary (if you're offering $30k/year, don't be surprised that you
get $30k/year types of applicants), doesn't solve the worst problems. Some
schools are just a mess of poor discipline that's hard to get a handle on; you
could have strict performance reviews and pay $70k/year and I think there are
schools that will still be difficult to fix.

One particular problem with giving administrators more authority to fire
people is that I have this sneaking suspicion that they'll actually fire the
best teachers! The best teachers I had in high school were mostly not very
popular with the administration, because they deviated a bit from the official
line and were actually effective at teaching, instead of treating the entire
class as year-long prep for a multiple-choice test, Kaplan-style. Principals
and superintendents are by and large like a less competent version of your
stereotypical corporate middle-management, rotating in and out of schools and
districts in 2-4 years, changing policies arbitrarily to leave their mark on
things and not staying around to see them through, all aimed at moving up the
ranks. Anything that gives them more power without first greatly reforming
that system is bad imo.

~~~
splat
Here's an illustrated guide to firing an incompetent teacher in New York City:

<http://reason.com/assets/db/12639308918768.pdf>

~~~
misterbwong
Wow. Compared to any job in the private sector, the process is more like an
impeachment than a firing. No wonder it's so difficult to remove teachers.

------
kevin_morrill
I think we'd benefit more from taking a critical look at the ideas of John
Dewey that pervade virtually all of education. Unions are definitely a blight
on education, but a screwed up epistemology is much more fundamental.

Details on Dewey's approach, which is pretty much gospel in American
education, can be found at <http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm>

Thinking is not a social function; communicating is. If you wonder why
politicians spend less time thinking and more time following polls--look no
further. If you wonder why our country fails to enlist math and science--
here's your answer.

~~~
grandalf
Interesting. The only thing I'd offer as a counter-argument is that if the
public education monopoly were broken then chances are there'd be a lot of
different philosophies guiding the emerging schools.

Any top-down system suffers the weakness that a choice made from on high might
not be the best for everyone, or that competing approaches might never be
explored.

~~~
shawndumas
[http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-
scho...](http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-schools-need)

------
nRike
We cannot blame the teachers, nor the children. I think it's a big trouble for
all humanity. All these things i've lived in varsity was so terrible, i
remember something from the career chief of on of the best schools here in
Mexico(<http://ipn.mx>). At the final exam, those one for get the degree, we
told him that we wanted to do a online startup to begin creating jobs in our
country, learn great things and be proactives, we argued if Mark Zuckerberg
did, why we didn't?. He answered "Place yourself in your context, this is
Mexico and there are nobody who has done something like this, please be
realistics."

I honestly can understand his thoughs, because he's a person who finished his
Master Degree in the same school he studied his career, he never got a job in
the industry and by the same, he didn't know anything about what's going on
this daily-changing world called internet.

I have several things to share here, and also i have my own answer about why
the schools aren't working anymore. Why humans created schools? universities
and specialized courses of some science? Because they noted if you start
giving "education" to people they will be useful for industries and they will
generate wealth, and that was true 70 years ago, -ie i've studied as part of
Computer Engineer career a subject called "logical circuits" where we built
some circuits with some logic gates, and using a protoboard. I really hated
these stuff, but if i imagine myself studying these topic 70 years ago, I
would be surely fascinated.

Today is another history, a history where driven-knowledge is to a few clicks,
and where you can learn as fast as you want, a history where knowledge six
months ago is no longer profitable,a history where you cannot wait to get
information from another guy who calls himself a professor but it really does
not love their job, but by money. You cannot depend of what are you learning
using such a valuable resource like time from a stranger who doesn't care
about what you love to do. We need to start creating yesterday, and the future
is today.

I think schools need to change the way educate people, because just give
knowledge with non sense of application kind of useless(some psychologists
says the knowledge is better developed by practicing not just reading or
listening), and i personally consider a waste of time these behavior, because
we forget knowledge pretty much everything if we don't use it, and also we
didn't really own knowledge at all, sometimes it's just an act of imitating
your teacher trying to get a high note.

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and repeating some old stuff
doesn't solve nothing but high average in school.

From the other hand, i think internet is such a great tool to start building
real knowledge of almost anything, we can search from how to find the g point
to build a molotov bomb in a few clicks away. Internet is such an amazing way
of share experiential knowledge and give value to other people like
HackerNews, somo other tools like Quora, StackOverflow and more to come. We
can connect people with the same ideology or same musical preferences. I find
my first paid work using Internet, i met my actual girlfriend from internet, i
know almost all i do from here, the internet, i'm sharing what i'm learning in
a blog post, i've built a community for Mexican and Latin American Android
Developers. There aren't barriers here, and those mental barriers you can
defeat at a pair of clicks.

------
smutticus
Both of my parents are/were teachers so of course I'm a little biased. But I
just don't understand where this teacher hating attitude comes from. Teaching
is hard work. In addition to the hours they put in actually teaching they
spend lots of time preparing and grading. And since most of them are salaried
it's not as if they get paid for all that overtime.

It's true there are huge disparities between good teachers and bad. And maybe
a meritocratic injection would do the system a whole lot of good. But to boil
the entire problem down to this is simply naive.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Overtime? The average teacher works less than 40 hours/week (unlike other
professionals) for the 9-10 months/year they actually work at all.

<http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf>

~~~
artlogic
This is highly variable. My wife was a high school teacher for two years. She
was up and at school by 7:30AM each day, and worked until at least 6:00PM each
night just to keep up with grading. Couple that with lesson planning and hard
to grade assignments (like essays) and she was easily putting in 60 hours a
week. At least half of that time was spent in front of students (who can be a
fairly adversarial audience). At no time did I look at her and think she was
having an easy time of it. Also, if you do the math, you'll notice that she
worked -more- than the average professional, despite the 10 week break.

In the interest of full disclosure, this was a very good school that had high
expectations of both its students and teachers.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
As a counterpoint, I date a lot of school teachers in NYC. Almost every one of
them has the same story... They were working in another job with crazy hours,
like film production or advertising, and specifically became a school teacher
because it had easier hours, good benefits, and summers off.

Perhaps compared to doing nothing, 7:30 to 6 is a hardship, but if you're
coming from a normal NYC office job where it's not uncommon to work 9am-10pm
it sounds like a vacation. Also, you don't actually have to be at the school
from 7:30 to 6. You typically can go home by 3:30 and do whatever grading you
need to at home.

On the other hand, being stuck in a room for 8 hours with NYC teenagers sounds
like one of the most exhausting and frustrating tasks in the world. Maybe all
that down time is necessary for recovery? I certainly would (and do) choose 10
hours a day futzing with C++ over 8 hours a day with teenagers who don't want
to be there. Would be nice to have summers off, though.

~~~
artlogic
I'd counter that NYC is not representative of the rest of the country. Most
statistics I'm easily able to find say that the average hours worked per week
in the US is closer to 35 than 60 or 65.

It's also worth noting that most of the people here don't spend 6 solid hours
presenting to adversarial clients every day and then move on to 6 more hours
of coding. In fact, most of us likely have jobs that allow us to take breaks
whenever we'd like. That's a luxury teachers don't have for at least part of
the day.

However, there is something to be said for the benefits and job security.

------
jlgbecom
The most successful schools in the world are in Finland, Americans need to
look at their model, put aside our prejudices, and adopt it's best practices.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html>

------
younata
Having just left the US High School system, the problem is that we aren't
teaching anything in high school.

As PG said in his essay "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" [1], American high schools
are popularity contests. The focus is not on actually learning anything, but
on keeping us confined in one room while the adults go do work.

Of course, the system is WAY too complicated for that to be the only cause.
For example, another cause is apathy amongst the students. My high school
senior class was 250-300 students large. My high school graduating class was
about 150-200 students large. This is because ~100 students simply didn't care
enough. Of the 150-200 students graduating, most went on to a community
college, very few - about 50 or so, actually went to a 4 year university.

Again, that's only barely scratching the surface, but I have class to go to,
and that's of a higher priority than this comment. Because caring about your
education is half the battle.

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

------
stretchwithme
I think parents should be free to choose what they think is best for their
children and not be forced to support what some people think is best for
everyone. The parents are the ones who must live with the consequences and
collectivism simply enables people who get control to use children for their
own political purposes or serve whatever abstractions they happened to be
enamored with.

Filtering the concerns and wisdom of parents through multiple political layers
serves the layers and not the parents.

~~~
Charuru
That's not really practical... There aren't enough schools around, and not
everyone can afford private school.

Also politically, it's the unfortunate reality that parents are not the only
interests that must be served. All parents want the highest quality teachers
for the lowest costs, of course that's just impossible.

~~~
grandalf
How do you know the market price of education when we don't have a market for
it? My take is that breaking the public school monopoly (possibly via a
widespread voucher system) would result in more competition... this would have
the familiar effects... better value, lower prices, etc.

~~~
loewenskind
How would this happen exactly? Teachers are _vastly_ underpaid at present
($30k for a job that has such a major impact on the future of the country?).
Classes are also _over_ populated. Where would these savings come from?

~~~
stretchwithme
and you know this how?

and its not just about savings. its about better teaching, teaching what
parents want and less of what the unionized want you to believe. And less
using kids to promote your politics, such as dragging grade school kids to
political protests as has been done here in California

this whole system stifles independent thought. We need more independent
thought and more questioning of the educational cliches incessantly repeated
throughout schooling and in the media.

If government and unions were in charge of our technology, we'd still be
waiting for DOS 2.0.

~~~
loewenskind
>and you know this how?

And I know what how? That teachers are underpaid? Do you really think such an
important job is only worth a paltry $30k year? The kind of people we actually
want teaching can make 3 times that by either going into technology teaching
or staying out of teaching all together. That classes are overcrowded? Because
I see reports in the various papers every other week about how the classes are
overcrowded?

The rest of your message seems to be against apologetics for the current
system. I hate the current system, I think it's complete garbage. I was simply
calling out the bizarre claim that making it better would make it _cheaper_.

~~~
pchristensen
No matter how important teaching is, _teaching 20 kids per year_ is worth
about $30K.

If the goal of education is to produce 18 year olds with social adjustment,
like and work skills, and the ability to work or get into college, _let's be
explicit about that!_ If there's a clear goal, a market, and competition,
costs _always go down_.

Web browsers are free because both companies and non-profits can build them,
benefit from providing them, and can't charge more than free. Computing used
to be done by hand by humans, now you can buy millions of person-equivalents
of computing for less than the cost of coffee. Why is it so cheap? Because
companies wanted the dollars people would give in exchange for fast
computation. Horses aren't used as transportation because someone invented
cars, people fly across the ocean instead of taking ocean liners, etc because
companies wanted the money people would spend on fast travel. Pens exist
because companies wanted the dollars people would spend on fast, clean
writing. Look at anything around you and it's there because someone
outperformed other people in the competition for the dollars you spent on it.
Every time, you either got the same product for less money (think Dell
laptops), a better product for the same money (think of how Apple provides the
best product they can at basically fixed price points), or often a better
product for less money.

Schools districts spend between $5-15K/student/yr. We're doing it the same way
we have for 100 years. Lack of competition or even an opt-out policy has given
us a worse product for a higher cost
([http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-
scho...](http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-schools-
need)). It is very, very, _very_ reasonable to expect that open competition
with well-defined expectations would be both cheaper and better.

~~~
loewenskind
The market is not the solution to _every_ problem. Many problems sure, maybe
even most but not _all_.

It really seems like there are a lot of people talking about what the market
will do who haven't done even cursory studies of what market theory actually
is. Do you know what market elasticity is? Without it the market can't work.
That's why, for example, the market can't save us with health care. Health
care is fundamentally inelastic (you'd pay any price for a life saving
operation because without it you, to quote a movie, lose everything you've
ever had and ever will have).

I believe we have a similar situation with education. You can't just opt out
if it costs too much.

EDIT:

>No matter how important teaching is, teaching 20 kids per year is worth about
$30K.

How do you know this? We know that we pay $30K/year now. We know that our
teaching quality is awful. Doesn't that actually demonstrate (or at the very
least strongly suggest) that it is in fact worth _more_?

~~~
pchristensen
I know about the market and elasticity very well, thank you. Saying that the
market doesn't solve every problem in no way implies that it can't solve a
given problem. But one key ingredient is that you have to know what you're
purchasing, which is one reason why health care is so messed up.

By opt-out I mean opt-out of your standard assigned school district, not out
of education. You should be able to take your $X per-child that would go to
the district and spend it on any educational program that meets defined
standards.

Teaching 20 kids per year is worth $30K _by definition_ , because that's what
we pay people to do it. There is a high, positive return on additional money
invested in better education, but we as a society are not opting for it.

~~~
loewenskind
> Saying that the market doesn't solve every problem in no way implies that it
> can't solve a given problem.

Nope, I never made such an illogical assertion.

>By opt-out I mean opt-out of your standard assigned school district, not out
of education.

I was pointing out why education may be inelastic. Not assuming you didn't
want your children educated.

>Teaching 20 kids per year is worth $30K by definition

Extremely bizarre logic. If we pay $30k for something and _fail_ then it
obviously something is wrong. If other systems pay more than this and _don't
fail_ (or at least not as badly) then that makes a rather strong case that the
pay is too low.

>but we as a society are not opting for it.

That doesn't mean it's _worth less_ , that means you're not paying enough and
it shows. This furthers the argument that education may not be an elastic
market. If people are simply incapable of acting in their own best interest
(given the choice, always picking the crappy cheap education for their kids)
then there must be intervention.

The only reason I'm not convinced that this is indeed the case are grandalf's
posts.

------
grandalf
If anyone is interested in starting a school please contact me.

~~~
Reclix
Definitely intending to eventually - but this is a much longer term goal for
me - not sure I'd be of much help in the very near future.

My long term vision is to blend traditional schooling with both practical
skills (how to manage your credit, etc.) and interpersonal, soft skills (self
awareness, conflict resolution, etc.) in an effort to empower students to take
control of their own lives.

~~~
aik
Reclix, please send me an e-mail: aikon3390 at gmail.

Your long term vision is nearly identical to my current one and I would love
to hear how you are preparing for that vision.

~~~
pchristensen
I'd also be interested to hear about it.

Reclix, you should add your email address to your about section - users can't
see what you put in your email field.

~~~
Reclix
thanks for the tip! will e-mail you shortly.

------
js2
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671651>

------
Debugreality
Put cameras inside classrooms that parents can login to online at any time of
day and I think we will see a vast improvement in schools. Just a thought :)

~~~
aik
I don't think the main problem is that parents have access to what's going on
in the classroom, I think it's that a lot of parents don't care or know what
to care about. They're too busy working or doing other things.

~~~
aik
*parents _don't_ have access

------
iko371
Hey, here's a great idea. Let's cut maybe a tenth of the military budget and
put it towards K-12 teacher's salaries. I hear the median income in the
military is around $120k. One tenth of the military budget could get teacher's
salaries up to that amount, and we'd probably be able to throw in some state
of the art learning facilities, smartboards, a computer at every desk, the
works in practically every school. We'd have top notch facilities and
candidates qualified to use it effectively!

Regardless of whether or not we end up using a tenure or merit system for
hiring and firing (the benefits outweigh the flaws in the former, imo),
schools will, in the end, get the quality of teachers that they are capable of
paying for. How many good teachers do you think will work in a run down school
teaching unruly students for $30k annual salary? I sure as hell wouldn't want
to be that teacher.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I don't think an 8% increase in education funding will increase teacher
salaries to $120k. You do realize that we already spend 15% more on education
than we do on the military, right?

[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20.html)

~~~
iko371
I love how when you click on the "about" tab on usgovernmentspending.com, it's
basically revealed that the site is run by some guy with a blog. I went to the
guy's blog, and prominently on the left side of the screen, there's an image
that reads, "proud right wing extremist".

Usgovernmentspending.com looks like a great source of accurate, reliable
information! </sarcasm>

~~~
yummyfajitas
What I love about it is when you scroll down, you can click on links which
take you to the original source for the numbers (both official government
sources). When you scroll down further, you see an explanation of his
methodology in merging two spreadsheets.

I guess ad-hominem attacks are easier than actually downloading the
spreadsheets yourself and crunching the numbers, right?

(Note: you can only download the spreadsheets for 2008 or earlier. 2009-2014
are marked as guesstimates, since official data is not yet available.

------
HilbertSpace
Yup, here we go again: US education is _falling behind_ other countries.

This time the _cause_ is bad teachers protected by the teachers union. I'm all
for busting up the teachers union, but I don't for a nano second believe that
bad teachers are really the cause of what is being observed.

Instead, what's being observed is deliberately made up, mostly nonsense,
mostly to spend still more money on K-12 education which, with some irony,
would help the teachers union!

We went through all this just 17 months ago with

 _McKinsey's report, The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's
Schools, April, 2009,_

then but no longer at

[http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/achieveme...](http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/achievement_gap_report.pdf)

and

 _supporting materials (PDF - 1.0 MB)_

then but no longer at

[http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/detailed_...](http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/detailed_achievement_gap_findings.pdf)

Cover to cover it is clear that the main concern of this, apparently _pro
bono_ effort by some dedicated McKinsey staff members, was to scream that _US
K-12_ educational achievement sucks while what they really meant was that _US
Black K-12_ educational achievement sucks. So, that pro bono effort was to
_save the US Blacks_.

Throughout the two long PDF files, they omitted any view of the elephant in
the room until they gave a glimpse on page 26 of

 _supporting materials (PDF - 1.0 MB)_

where they did a little _cross-tabulation_ , that is, started on the main
technique in looking for _causality_ in social-economic data.

So on page 26 we finally get the US students, White, Latino, and Black,
compared separately with students in many other countries in the world.

So, wonder of wonders, the ranking goes:

Finland

Hong Kong

Canada

Japan

Australia

US whites

Korea

Germany

United Kingdom

Switzerland

Ireland

Sweden

The US Latinos? Just above Chile.

The US Blacks? A little ahead of Indonesia and Argentina.

Is there any question how the US Blacks would do against, say, Ghana, Liberia,
Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, Zimbabwe?

So wonder how US students of Finish descent would do against Finland, Asian
descent, against Hong Kong, Canadian descent, against Canada, Japanese
descent, against Japan, Australian descent, against Australia? The study
didn't say. Ah, wonder why? Why oh why? Maybe they followed the old rule, "If
you don't think you will like the answer, then don't ask the question.".

So the study mostly tried to obscure the obvious _cause_ : For the data they
considered, the main cause of good performance is country of origin. Right: In
particular, parents are a still more important cause, and it might be possible
to dig still deeper.

Then the main reason for the low average US ranking is that the US is a
diverse country and the other countries are homogeneous.

So, Virgina, this _statistical pattern_ has NOTHING to do with education or US
education: Instead, take any 100 homogeneous populations, of anything -- kitty
cats, puppy dogs, or billy goats. Then pick a measure, any nontrivial measure
you want from length of hair, body weight, running speed, jumping ability,
whisker length, nearly anything at all. Then from the 100 homogeneous
populations, make a diverse population and apply the measure. Then rank all
the 101 populations. Presto: Wonder of wonders, the diverse population will be
ahead of some of the homogeneous populations and behind some of the others.
Obvious. Trivial.

And that obvious, trivial observation is so far ALL the screaming is about.
How 'bout that.

So, if want to tar and feather US education, which for other reasons I'm
plenty eager to do, will build the fire to warm up the tar right away, then
compare US _education_ with apples against apples. So, compare US education on
people from Finland with Finland education on people in Finland. In this way
have compared US _education_ with Finland _education_. Then rinse, repeat for
Hong Kong, Canada, Japan, etc.

But the semi-, pseudo-, quasi-smart, partly objective McKinsey team last year
and the movie people this year showed their grasp of _education_ : All they
showed was the same thing would see from 101 collections of kitty cats
measured on length of whiskers.

There's another big point: Apparently actually there isn't much in K-12 in the
public school systems of any of the countries so that at most not much is
missed.

Another point: Let's compare college education and, there, GRE scores. Bet the
top 100 US colleges and universities do quite well, thank you.

Another point: Let's compare graduate education and research progress -- as we
know, the US by itself totally blows all the rest of the world off the court
and out of the arena.

Another point: K-12 really _should_ amount to something. So let's move to
that.

Another point: It may be that the US should take vocational education as
seriously as, say, Germany does. We should consider that.

Another point: In the classic _Democracy and Education_ , John Dewey made a
big point: He defined _education_ as the passing from one generation to the
next and mentioned that what gets passed is mostly just what was there, both
good and bad, with maybe a little improvement at each passing. So, without
some quite special efforts, tough to take teachers from the middle third of US
educational accomplishment and have them pass on only the top 10% of
educational content.

Another point: Once again we see that high accomplishment is mostly the
responsibility of individuals and where their best help is from their own
families. So, enter the promise of home schooling.

Here's my approach to improving US education (listen up billionaires):

First, set up _educational certification_ in nearly all subjects of interest
from math, physics, and chemistry to auto body repair, grass mowing, all the
way down to, say, computer science, and from there way, way down to, say,
programming in C++, if could find anyone so weak minded. The CEEB tests should
be a good start.

Second, get most colleges to agree on the required subjects to be ready for
college work.

Third, fund some efforts at educational materials and programs to prepare
students for the tests. Of course should try to make heavy use of PDF files,
video lectures on YouTUBE, Web fora, tutoring, etc.

Then, let free enterprise take over and develop still better educational
materials.

For K-12, leave that to local school boards: Some will _get it_ and let well
motivated and guided students just pursue some of the better sets of materials
and, then, be ready for college work at age 10 or 12.

Then have those 12 year olds compete with 12 year olds around the world.

Here we cut out a lot of nonsense: If someone wants to learn, then sit in a
cubicle with a computer, work through some of the best educational materials,
take the test, and see how well they do, and then all the credit and/or blame
is just theirs.

For varsity athletics, f'get about it except for the cheerleaders -- wouldn't
want not to have the cheerleaders, a crown jewel of the US educational system!

~~~
halostatue
You've got a mishmash of pretty good and execrably bad in this comment.
Context: I'm not a teacher, but my wife is; we've seen what happens when
assessment-happy libertarians (or pseudo-libertarians for those who want to
get upset with my assessment) actually get to destroy a school system. For the
fellow Ontarians in the virtual room, I'm talking about Mike Harris.

For those who want to follow my deconstruction at home, I'm going to refer to
the original report[1] and the detailed findings[2] that the original poster
pointed to but with live links.

[1] The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools Summary of
Findings April 2009
[http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/images/page_images/offices...](http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/images/page_images/offices/socialsector/pdf/achievement_gap_report.pdf)

[2] Detailed findings on the economic impact of the achievement gap in
America's schools April 2009
[http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Images/Page_Images/Offices...](http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Images/Page_Images/Offices/SocialSector/PDF/detailed_achievement_gap_findings.pdf).

Let's start with a couple of points that go to history. Fifteen years ago (not
too long before I emigrated), Mike Harris was elected in Ontario and started
on a massive program of social change from which Ontario has yet to recover.
His schools program changes weren't _all_ bad, but could have been achieved
much less confrontationally and more smoothly, and could have been done
without harming the quality programs that existed before. The basis for all of
the changes was rooted in a politicized interpretation of test results that
weren't meant for such comparisons by the people who put those tests together
(at the time, it was largely TIMSS as the driver).

TIMSS is the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study"
(<http://timss.org/>), and at the time, the results were interpreted by the
Harris government to show that Canadian students (and most especially Ontario
students) were performing badly. One problem: TIMSS was supposed to be a
universal student study (that is, all students at the grade level in the
school system were supposed to be taking it regardless of ability); some of
the investigated countries[3] did selected populations (that is, they excluded
their worst students) instead of universal.

[3] My recollection is that the above criticisms were laid against some of the
PacRim countries and some of the former Soviet Bloc countries.

Canada, the U.S. and many other countries followed the rules and were
subsequently ranked much lower than they would have been ranked otherwise
(they still would have been middling-to-low ranking, but not as low as they
were). The charges of population homogeneity that you make were also made in
Canada at the time ("of course our diverse kids didn't do as well as the
uniform kids in Korea").

This last makes one of your conclusions nonsense:

"Then the main reason for the low average US ranking is that the US is a
diverse country and the other countries are homogeneous."

Canada isn't homogeneous and ranked 5th in science and 3rd in math on the PISA
tests (page 4 of the detailed findings); New Zealand and Australia (both also
immigrant countries) exhibited good results. The United Kingdom (a diverse
country that has some immigration) exhibited average results. It's also worth
noting (page 7) that Canada's performance declined by 5 points between 2003
and 2006; the U.S. declined by 9 points in the same period. (Most countries,
in fact, declined, with France dropping by _15_ and clustering around the U.K.
for overall performance.)

It's also worth noting that the statements on page 8 essentially assume that
only the U.S. has changed (e.g., it ignores the efforts that other countries
have put into improving and focusses solely on the U.S. lag).

The ethnic make-up of Canada is similar to that of the U.S. as we're both
immigrant countries. This isn't about race or diversity. It's about
socioeconomic disadvantage (sorry, but it's true). Those two things tend to be
highly correlated in the U.S. (and to some degree in Canada, too), but school
funding in Canada is much more uniform than it is in the U.S. so that
socioeconomic differences are smoothed out but not eliminated. See pages 12-13
of the detailed document.

You choose to focus on the ethnic achievement gaps pointed out by McKinsey,
but _they don't stop there_ and go on to point out the income achievement gap.
Look at pages 42-45 for how this works. Compare the chart on page 26 (a 3 - 8
times difference in low achievement by race) with that on 43 (a 4 - 6 times
difference in low achievement by income). There's strong correlation there.

The entire report is worth reading, not just the bit that you quoted or that I
quoted.

You're right, though:

"This time the cause is bad teachers protected by the teachers union. I'm all
for busting up the teachers union, but I don't for a nano second believe that
bad teachers are really the cause of what is being observed."

The problem is a bad system, not bad teachers (although they exist and should
be removed from the system). The problem is local funding that isn't smoothed
out so that students with all of the advantages get even more advantages
because their schools can afford more and better equipment on the same tax
rates. The problem is an over-reliance on quantization of the problem space,
when students aren't cogs but are individuals (and if you place performance
bonuses, etc. on classroom performance of a test, you get "teaching to the
test", not learning). The problem is hunger (hungry children cannot study as
well as those who aren't).

There are things to be fixed with how teachers and teachers unions work,
certainly, but they should be done with a deeper understanding and NOT by
misunderstanding what we do know.

A couple of other points:

"Is there any question how the US Blacks would do against, say, Ghana,
Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, Zimbabwe?"

One might be surprised. I don't know of any particular test for this, but at
least some of the countries you named (and other countries in sub-Saharan
Africa) might outperform U.S. blacks; they will, at the very least, be better
than your off-hand comment suggests.

"So wonder how US students of Finish descent would do against Finland, Asian
descent, against Hong Kong, Canadian descent, against Canada, Japanese
descent, against Japan, Australian descent, against Australia? The study
didn't say. Ah, wonder why? Why oh why? Maybe they followed the old rule, "If
you don't think you will like the answer, then don't ask the question.".

"So the study mostly tried to obscure the obvious cause: For the data they
considered, the main cause of good performance is country of origin. Right: In
particular, parents are a still more important cause, and it might be possible
to dig still deeper."

Um, no. The study _does_ say, after a fashion. Your comment is a little
nonsensical, though, because you're simply taking the top countries on the
first couple of pages and applying them as ethnicities. As I noted at the top,
both Canada and Australia are immigrant countries with broad ethnic diversity
(but a strong English/WASP contingent, just like the U.S.).

The rest of your comment is nonsense that's easily covered by the summary
McKinsey did and the original data (see page 8 of the detailed report for a
sample about post-secondary education). Home schooling is mostly a disaster
(home schoolers in the U.S. on average perform worse than public school
children on all subjects; this may partially be because most home schoolers in
the U.S. are nutty Christians who don't want their children to be able to
think critically).

What your prescription for education will do is pretty much put the U.S.
results 100% in the toilet, as it ensures that only those people with money
will have access to education. Education is not a simple subject, and the
libertarian approach will fail--and has already (it's why we _have_ public
schooling and that the majority of economic growth has happened since public
schooling started).

~~~
shasta
> The ethnic make-up of Canada is similar to that of the U.S. as we're both
> immigrant countries

According to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States),
the US is over 15% Latino and over 12% black (as of 2008). Canada is listed as
1% Latin American, according to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada>, and blacks aren't even
listed (implying less than 1%) (as of 2006). Since blacks and Latinos seem to
be among the worst performers in US schools (citation needed?), your attempt
to paint Canada as having a similar demographic to the US seems pretty bogus
to me.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The _visible minorities_ table on that page is what you're looking for:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada#Visible_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada#Visible_minorities)

It has south asian: 4%, chinese: 3.7%, black: 2.5%, latin american : 1%, arab
0.9% and total visible minorities at 16.2%

Perhaps not as visibly diverse as the US, but obviously also mostly immigrant
based and non-homogeneous as a result (unless by homogeneous you mean only
skin color).

It's also worth pointing out that your figures for the US are out of 115%:

 _"These figures add up to more than 100% on this table because Hispanic and
Latino Americans are distributed among all the races and are also listed as an
ethnicity category, resulting in a double count."_

~~~
shasta
I think you may have missed Hilbert Spaces' point (as halostatue may have).
His thesis is not that "diversity" is a cause of low performance, but rather
that genetics is. Holding up Canada as an example of another "diverse" country
with better scores doesn't contradict that thesis if that diversity tends to
be from the higher performing ethnicities.

Unforunately, in US politics, it is taken as an axiom that ethnicity (read:
skin color) is not correlated with _innate_ performance, and thus any
difference in measured performance must be due solely to inequality of
opportunity.

~~~
halostatue
I didn't miss the point. I consider it deeply offensive and am baffled that
anyone would consider it germane in 2010.

You mention "inequality of opportunity." The linked PDF overviews didn't
ignore race; they (like I) indicated that in the U.S., race and poverty are
tightly correlated. They also indicate (without touching the third rail of
racial politics in the U.S.) that "racial" performance differences exist even
within broader socioeconomic groups. This is also unsurprising, as there's a
lot of subconscious racism in the U.S. (there's documented bias toward picking
white or lighter coloured children to answer questions in class, even when the
teacher tries to avoid it, as well as many other examples such as
[1][2][3][4]).

Go back to Gladwell for a moment: advantages multiply. Whether you agree with
his approach or not, on this part he's right. Canadian hockey players born in
January are substantially more successful than those born in December because
of the way that junior and senior hockey leagues are organized. This is
because they are bigger, play better, have better coordination, etc. and then
better coaches become more interested. They _get_ more advantage because they
started with a birth advantage. The inverse is also true: disadvantages
multiply.

You also mention "measured performance"; many of these measures are
unconsciously biased toward a middle-class to upper-class experience. In my
wife's teaching experience, she has had students who are raised without
religion who don't get (Christian) religious allusions that are present in
some of the books that they read. If one doesn't have a particular experience,
then one cannot be meaningfully tested on that experience. If your measure of
"success" is based on those experiences, then your measure of success is by
definition biased. That bias may be good or not, but the exposure to those
experiences must be measured and controlled for before you start making
sweeping (and wrong) statements as Hilbert Spaces was doing.

In 2010, Hilbert Spaces suggestion that ethnicity is the primary factor
involved here is as nonsensical as the idea that girls should think that "math
is hard." It's stupid, it's racist, and it's offensive.

\--

[1] "One of the more upsetting discoveries is that children as young as three-
years-old will associate positive traits with white people and negative traits
with black people regardless of the race of the child or the attitudes of the
children's parents and teachers." [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-
samuels/unconscious-racism...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-
samuels/unconscious-racism-at-the_b_491817.html)

[2] "But inequalities extend beyond UD's African-American students and onto
other campus minorities. An American born and raised student, junior Ed
Hazboun, has faced discrimination multiple times due to his Arabic ethnicity.
'At one time my advisor for three years was going over my schedule and made a
comment about the paper work I would have to fill out. You would think that
after three years, that advisor would realize that I was a current student and
not a foreign exchange student,' he said. 'Another time my philosophy teacher
asked me if the Muslim religion viewed the topic we were discussing about
ethics differently. Being born and raised Catholic, I was unable to answer.'"
<http://flyernews.com/articles/volume/57/issue/36/id/5718>

[3] "A 2008 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology took Norton’s research a step further, examining the effects that
whites’ attempts at colorblindness had on black participants. Ironically, the
negative nonverbal behaviors exhibited by “colorblind” whites were interpreted
by blacks as signs of prejudice, making them suspicious of their partners. It
is hardly surprising that racial tensions increased among participants."
[http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_perils_of_c...](http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_perils_of_colorblindness/)

[4] "In many situations, from either the dominant or the oppressed, simple
unconscious associations may drastically change outcomes. An example is Steele
and Aaronson's (1995) work on stereotype threat, in which the performance of
African-American students in a testing situation was cut in half by asking
them to identify their race at the start of the test. This simple act
unconsciously reminded students of the stereotypes connected with their race.
Moreover, when asked at the end of the test, the students who were primed to
remember their race were unable to identify the reminder as a factor in their
poorer test score (Steele 1997)."
<http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v90/k0901mou.htm>

~~~
shasta
> I consider it deeply offensive and am baffled that anyone would consider it
> germane in 2010.

What exactly do you find "deeply offensive"? Because I think your tone isn't
helping your cause. If you wish to argue that race and/or genetics are not
significantly correlated with innate ability, please feel free to do so. If
this is an established fact that you can document, I would love to see links
to research supporting that position (your citations establishing certain
biases are much weaker). Your righteous indignation that someone would even
bring this up (in 2010!!) is anti-intellectual and needs to go.

In my opinion, based mostly on common sense (and racism, no doubt you will
claim), I don't think any of the assorted biases you cite are a _major_ cause
of performance differences. My intuition is that the major causes are much
less subtle: genetics and family life (particularly early family life). I do
agree that there is likely a snowball effect that causes early labels of "not
good at school" to compound.

BTW. Your citation [4] looks deeply suspicious. Asking them to check which
race they are cut performance in half? HALF? As in, they were able to, on
average, supply 50% fewer correct answers if asked to check a box indicating
their race?

~~~
halostatue
I find it deeply offensive that anyone would take what amounts to eugenic
nonsense seriously. If we've learned anything about genetics in the last
decade of having the genome decoded, it's that we don't understand squat about
how intelligence comes from genetic factors.

I don't have a cause here, by the way. I am not arguing a negative; it is up
to the folks who which to establish a significant correlation to make their
case. So far, all of the indicators are against them (genetics per se seems
not to play a major role in success later in life).

You may _think_ that the biases that I cite aren't _major_ causes of
performance differences, but that's no different than you saying that you
think that green tea tastes good. I may _think_ that they're _major_ causes,
but that's no different than me saying that black tea is better. What I _know_
is that there are studies out there that indicate that there are many factors
much stronger than genetics will ever be for success.

The top of these _is_ , by the way, family life. These are measurable more in
the negative than the positive: children of alcoholics and drug addicts _tend_
to do worse in school than those with non-addicted parents; children of broken
homes _tend_ to do worse in school than those with unified families. One of
the major positive correlations is reading: children whose family reads, even
if they don't read together, _tend_ to perform better in school than those who
don't. What families read, especially together? Those who don't have to spend
a lot of time working to make ends meet and put food on the table.

You may think that [4] is suspicious, but I've heard about this study a few
times and I believe that it has been corroborated by other studies. Yeah, it's
surprising, but that doesn't make it wrong. Again, step to Gladwell for a
second and look at what Korean Air found out. When the subconscious social
status indicators happened in language, accidents were more likely to happen.
As soon as the entire cockpit switched to an informal English, accident rates
dropped dramatically. So yes, reminding someone of their "social place" can
significantly reduce their performance.

------
tkahn6
I don't even see how it's possible to claim that 'schools suck' unless you
define a) what the purpose of school is and b) what a 'good' education is.

Until you have a clear definition, you can't 'reform' or 'fix' anything
because you have no goal.

I, of course, have very strong opinions about this, but these questions are
rarely brought up in the debate about the education system.

~~~
grandalf
The purpose of low end schools is to pay teachers more than they would earn
(for less work) in another job and to provide daycare for kids so their
parents can work.

The purpose of high end schools is to prepare kids for Ivy league colleges
where they will learn to work on wall street (about half of Harvard grads)
where they'll exploit regulatory failures/oversights for profit.

edit: corrected the percentage of harvard grads that go to wall street.

~~~
natrius
Finance is not the unalloyed evil you're making it out to be.

~~~
carbocation
I didn't interpret "exploiting regulatory failures" to be a metonym for all of
finance.

~~~
grandalf
It wasn't intended as such. Finance is a very important part of the economy
and should be.

I actually blame regulators for creating a false sense of security. A more
"wild west" environment would have at least led investors/counterparties to
question more of the claims that were being made leading up to the crisis.

~~~
Retric
The root cause was and is the ability for people to gamble with other people’s
money and only share in the upside. It promotes ever increasing levels of risk
taking. Plenty of mid level people knew they were selling or buying crap but
there was zero incentive for them to stop.

~~~
grandalf
I see your point. I view that as a problem with the incentives firms gave
their employees.

However, think about the role of government incentives. It took decades of tax
breaks and other stimuli to get the public to think that real estate prices
"just go up" year after year. It was this massive blind spot about real-estate
that was (I think) at the core of the failure of firms to appropriately manage
systemic risk.

