For this blog post I finally read two articles in the "the bell curve wars" that support at least some of Hernstein and Murray's conclusions. The first article focused on the positive ways of looking at Hernstein and Murray's comments regarding race. In the author's view one can interpret the Bell Curve's conclusions as follows: Blacks score substantially lower on the IQ test, no racial group can be intellectually superior to another; therefore IQ tests are flawed and/or blacks suffer from environmental disadvantages that pre-date the earliest administered IQ tests (typically around 4 years old). The second article focused on the non-racial aspects of the bell curve and argues that the sections of the book are merely examples of the main point regarding class and intelligence. The article argues that Hernstein and Murray are entirely correct about the eventual outcome of a meritocracy, an opinion echoed in the interview of Murray I read for my last blog post. The second article also argues that Hernstein and Murray erred in including what they knew to be controversial arguments regarding race as the resulting conflict obscured there central point. I agree with the second articles point that the racial arguments in the bell curve detract from what I see as Herrnstein and Murray's insightful thesis about meritocracies. However, I cannot help but speculate that the Bell Curve's authors were aware of the level of publicity (and therefore book sales) that controversial claims regarding race would produce. However, even if one removes the section of racial differences in IQ there remain highly controversial statements in the book. These include a section where (not in so many words) Herrnstein and Murray essentially state that the end result of a stable-long term meritocracy is that poor people will be stupid. This of course is simply a corollary of their earlier statement, rich people are smart but seems highly objectionable nonetheless. To me, the bell curve would have retained a significant portion of its populairty and controversy without the racially charged chapters dealing with racial differences in the IQ scores. As the same time more attentions would have been given to the author's brilliant insights regarding the long-term future of our economic system. Many seem to aspire to an absolute meritocracy but if Herrnstein and Murray at least partially correct (and I think they are) than such a system would need serious refinement to avoid a social structure more rigid and uneven than any seen before.

For this blog post I looked at an interview with Charles Murray, one of the Bell Curve's authors, that was included in "The Bell Curve Wars" Murray begins the interview by attacking the assumption that race was the main point of the Bell Curve and by arguing that he (with the now deceased Hernstein) was looking at wider societal issues of class and intelligence. Murray states that his predictions about the concentration of high IQ individuals in the upper classes have come to pass. He calls the state of the labor market for low-paying, "low-intelligence" jobs "terrible" Murray than argues that the way to counteract this is for the large-scale redistribution of wealth (an interesting position for an avowed conservative). As he believes that intelligence essentially "follows" money this system would serve to "redistribute" IQ points as well as dollars. While it is difficult to quantify I think Murray and Hernstein were at least theoretically right about the concentration of intellectual capacity in the upper class. If IQ is heritable, people are more likely to marry and reproduce with others of the their class and the US is a true meritocracy, as Murray maintains, than he must be right. Many people tend to conflate meritocracy with an egalitarian social system, it is possible that a segment of the population possesses intellectual capabilities far above everyone else and will therefore thrive to an unparalleled extent. However, the current US system is not fully meritocratic, the correlation between SAT scores and IQ (themselves not perfect measures of ability) and measures of success (income, life expectancy etc.) is strong but far from perfect. The US still has a long way to go before achieving a meritocratic economic system. Nonetheless Murray's assertions about the distribution of intelligence are disconcerting. I do not accept that different racial groups have different intellectual capacities. However, I do accept that within the subset of the whole population there exist certain individuals who can process and absorb information and perform other mental tasks at a more efficient and effective level than others. In Hernstein's scenario, which I do not believe to be all that far-fetched, these individuals would dominate the financial and intellectual "resources" of our nation and the world.

As I approach the end of the Bell Curve Wars the articles, citing some of the earlier ones, already accept as fact that the assumptions of the Bell Curve are incorrect (there appear to be only 2 pro-bell curve articles in the whole book). They then begin to provide alternate explanations for phenomena observed in society. The two articles I read for this blog post focus on the effect of environment on IQ. They suggest that short-term environmental changes, such as the Head Start program, have significant positive effects only for a short time and that their long-term effect is negligible. In contrast, long-term environmental changes such as children from a poorer background being adopted by wealthy parents have significant positive and enduring effectives on everything from IQ and income to life expectancy. One of the factors that does not influence long-term outcome is an African-American child being adopted by poor white parents, suggesting that SES is what really matters not race. Both articles question the implications of their findings for public policy. Short term government programs have, according to their studies, had minima long-term impact. This would give credence to arguments against government intervention to rectify inequities in society, however long-term interventions might work. The solution found to have the most equitable effect in studies is that children from low-income backgrounds are adopted by high-income parents, a process that evens out IQ. However, the large-scale implication of this program would require literally taking children away from their parents at birth, a somewhat horrific idea. A more nuanced approach would be see if having high-income, high IQ individuals in one’s community, not necessarily as parents, has a strong positive effect on income, IQ, life expectancy, etc. If it did than programs ensure income diversity (subsidized housing for example) would be useful. As would sending poor children to wealthier schools and bringing teachers from wealthier backgrounds to poorer schools. To me all these steps must be implemented on a larger scale than ever before. Short-term interventions have little effect but a concerted well-funded and nationwide effort to expose poorer children to the environments present in richer areas would enormously beneficial to society and is the only way to lessen and eventually eliminate the achievement gap in this country.

The next three articles in the bell curve wars address the issue of what IQ measures. They attack the Bell Curve’s assumption that IQ measures “G” general intelligence and the assumption that G exists at all. The first article cites mostly anecdotal evidence that different types of intelligence exist. These include spacial reasoning, memory capacity and mathematical facility. The second article looks at the correlation between scores on different parts of the IQ test. It shows that while there is a minimal correlation between most segments of the tests most scholars estimate that this is due more to environmental factors (wealthier parents help both math and reading scores) than to the existence of a “general intelligence” Interestingly, this article also notes that African-Americans consistently perform better on certain elements of the IQ test than whites. The final article in this section addresses Herrnstein and Murray’s assumption that criminality is correlated with low IQ. In argues that while crimes such as shoplifting and assault are indicative of an inability to succeed in society, more nuanced crimes such as fraud may be indicative of particularly high IQs. The article also observes that criminals with high IQ’s are less likely to be caught or observed, thereby skewing data on criminality. I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as a general intelligence, in other words I do not agree that having a higher intellectual capacity for math correlates to reading faster. Nonetheless I tend to agree with the authors of the Bell Curve that IQ measures something concrete, even if it does not measure general intelligence. To me IQ measures the sum of the various “intelligences” as manifested in the sum of the test-takers scores on the various portions of the IQ test. As a result I do not believe that the existence of “G” is necessary for the conclusions of the Bell Curve to be valid (though they have other problems). I am also fascinated by that fact that different ethnicities scores better on different sections of the IQ test. I imagine that has genetic routes and I would be interested to discover why a certain ethnic group would genetically select for certain “intelligences” It would also be interesting to connect these IQ score variations to real-world tasks. For example, did the farming of one crop vs. another 10,000 years ago select for special intelligence vs. some other intelligence. .

For this blog post I read the next three articles in "The Bell Curve Wars" They continued the pattern of attacking the Bell Curve but did so without resorting to personal attacks. Instead they provide alternate research that refutes the claims of Herrnstein and Murray. The three articles site 7 studies from the last 70 years, 6 of which systematically refute the idea that those of African origin have a lower IQ than Europeans. They acknowledge that on IQ tests African-Americans score on average 15-18 points lower than whites. However, the 6 studies cited argue that this impact in environmental and/or contextual. In order to combat this each of the studies looks at situation where those from different ethnic backgrounds are raised in equivalent environments. These situations included government programs to help children “at risk” for low IQ’s (born prematurely, malnourished etc.) and adoptions of African-American children into white families (and vice-versa). The studies also examined the IQ scores of those of mixed-race descent; the theory being that if Europeans have higher IQs than Africans with some European genes would perform better than those of “pure” African descent. This was not the case. All these studies found no appreciable IQ difference between those of African and European descent, which suggests that if you control for environmental factors the IQ gap disappears. (The 7th study was inconclusive) I was surprised just how strong the pre-existing evidence against the ideas of the Bell Curve was. All the studies cited attack the basic assumptions of Hernstein and Murray, that IQ is substantially heritable, that IQ is immutable and that the substantial differences between different groups IQ scores are the result of quantifiable genetic differences. Nonetheless, despite repeated assaults on their work I believe Herrnstein and Murray’s work has significant value because they clearly address the issue of the IQ gap. While it can be explained by environmental factors African-Americans consistently perform significantly worse on IQ tests than whites. It is not known what precisely IQ measures but it does measure something: notably that ability to succeed in today’s society. IQ has a consistent positive correlation with income, high school graduation, life expectancy etc. For whatever reason African Americans (and other marginalized groups, including poor whites) are already at significant disadvantage by the age of 4 (when many IQ tests are administered). This is not because of genetics, but environmental factors, factors which must be equalized from birth if we are to eliminate the achievement gap.

For this blog post I read the first 50 pages of the bell curve wars. This included several articles highly critical of the bell curve. The first two articles I read were highly critical of the book. Articles authors attacked almost every conclusion present in the bell curve, from the basic assumptions (the heritability of IQ, the viability of IQ as measure of intelligence) upon which the book was based to the recommendations in its authors came to. The article’s authors Howard Gardner and Stephen Gould, both respected academics then proceed to launch personal attacks against Hernstein and Murray, the bell curve’s authors. Both articles argue that the data in the bell curve was either falsified or used in intellectually dishonest manner. They claim that Hernstein and especially Murray were advancing racist political agendas instead of focusing on a scientific and impartial reading of the true facts. My reaction to these first two articles was one of shock. Initially I was surprised that academic articles rose to such a level of personal vitriol directed against two fellow academics, especially one who is recently deceased. However, while reading the two articles I believe that there is a lot of marriage in their arguments and while their personal attacks are unwarranted there is substantial evidence to believe that the bell curve’s authors specifically Murray were advancing personal political agendas. Furthermore Gould and Gardner’s arguments about the erroneous use of data in the bell curve were very persuasive. They made the case that first of all, the data sets used by Hernstein and Murray were incomplete, contained too small sample sizes, and/or based upon faulty assumptions. Secondly, they argue that even if you accept the data at face value the assumption that IQ can be accurately used as a measure of heritable intelligence, cannot be changed after birth, and cannot be affected by environmental factors is ridiculous. I tend to agree with them and they are correct in that the failure of any one of these criteria to be true would discount a large part of the bell curve. Nonetheless, Hernstein and Murray repeatedly made a similar point themselves, they presented their work as a theory.

After I finished the bell curve I decided to explore the scholarly reaction to the book which has been extremely heated. Articles both for and against the conclusions of the book routinely attack their opponents as being racist, excessively politically correct, classist etc. A book compiling scholarly responses to the bell curve called "the bell curve wars" for my next several blog posts I will read and explore this compilation. In the introduction (essentially the first 50 pages) the most potent criticisms of the bell curve are explained. They start with Hernstein and Murray's assumption that IQ is "heritable" and that IQ can sufficiently measure a person's intelligence. Ignoring the rest of the book these two statements are highly controversial because they imply that one's intelligence is fixed at birth. Secondly, many have attacked the data sets used by Hernstein and Murray, an issue I have touched upon in previous posts. Many of their datasets have significant flaws such as small sample sizes and inconsistent data sources. Included in the bell curve war is a copy of an APA report investigating the data, which, according to the introduction affirms some but not all of Hernstein and Murray's assumptions. I was quite surprised to find that a book exists entirely of scholarly criticisms and defenses of the Bell Curve. However, from what I have read in the introduction these arguments shed new light on Hernstein and Murray's work and provide insights of their own. I think it is also important that the data in the bell curve is closely scrutinized. The book has been very widely read and has the potential to influence public policy. As a result I think it is a healthy intellectual exercise to verify its data. One element in response to the bell curve that I don't like is the more extreme, unqualified and politically motivated reactions. On one end these consist of individuals calling Hernstein and Murray racist and arguing that their works should never be read or discussed. On the other end are those who take the bell curve and use it to justify income inequality in the United States. Of these groups the second is far more harmful to society.

The bell curve is a very controversial work because of its supposedly racist and classist commentary. However, through what I have read so far there had been no evidence of objectionable comments regarding race and class. That changed party-way through the book when the authors claimed that if you control for IQ most of the US's minorities do as well as whites. The implication of this statement is that the academic and income-based performance of blacks, latinos etc. is as high as their IQ would suggest. In other words that the achievement gap is as wide as it should be. The insidious corollary to this theory is the minorities are less intelligent than whites and "deserve" to do less well based upon their intelligence. Hernstein and Murray provide statistical justification for this theory through the analysis of the educational attaiment of the top 5% of the population by IQ. According to their statistics more blacks than whites achieve post-graduate education (and almost as many latinos do) among the various segments of each group in the top 5% of IQ for the population. The theory posited by Hernstein and Murray is offensive, racist and highly controversial. I find it hard to credit and I wish to simply dismiss it out of hand. However, Hernstein and Murray are (or were in Hernstein's case) highly respected scholars and Harvard University and the American Enterprise institute respectively. Therefore their work does merit closer analysis. The basis of their claims are their analysis of educational performance, race and IQ scores. The data they provide do back up their assertions. I find it hard to believe that they simply invented it so I attempted to discover its source, which was buried under 150 pages of endnotes. I eventually discovered that it had several flaws. First of all, IQ scores are not available for the majority of the population as a result Hernstein and Murray converted SAT scores into IQ scores using a homemade formula. It seems likely to me that SAT scores are more influenced by educational background than IQ scores. Secondly, the sample size of blacks (10% of the population) in the top 5% of the population in a 10, 000 person sample is microscopic and extrapolating to the entire US population from such a small group is ridiculous. The inclusion of this section in the bell curve was unfortunate. Earlier in the book that made insightful, brilliant observations on educational inequities and possible solutions. However, those observations will be forever overshadowed by their racist and repugnant claims later on.

My book for this quarter (at least so far) is The Bell Curve by Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray. In the first hundred pages .It argues that intelligence is an inheritable trait, that today, more than ever before, intelligence correlates with material success and that material and intellectual resources are increasingly concentrated in the same small segment of the population. The prologue describes why the abolition of traditional aristocracies has in fact lead to a crystalization of wealth and intelligence rather than an increase in social mobility. It describes how in the past, an intelligent, capable person would be successful enough to hold hereditary, aristocratic rank. They would then marry and have children. Their title and wealth would pass to their firstborn, who would be likely to intellectually regress to the mean, a process that could continue for generations, progressively diluting the talents of the original, socially mobile aristocrat. The wealth would still remain in one family, but that family's intelligence would wither. Hernstein and Murray provide two reasons why the previous scenario is no longer valid. Firstly,, wealthy intelligent people are more likely to marry other intelligent people today than they were in the past (largely because wealth and intelligence are now more correlated than ever so marrying for money is more likely to produce an intelligent spouse). Secondly, the demise of primogeniture now allows parents to chose which offspring to pass on economic resources to. Within the first 30 pages the authors make several controversial statements. The idea that intelligence is largely predicated on gene structure, or even that it can ever be quantified is somewhat dubious. I think (or I would like to think) that environmental factors can effect intelligence more than genes. Even if you take the authors assumptions at face value they only claim that 40-80 percent of intelligence is heritable. Whatever the case, as long as it is not 100%, external factors such as public education can be used to make sure that all have sufficient intellectual capacity (or whatever you want to call it) to succeed in life. Nonetheless, I found this book's conclusions to be disconcerting. I have heard so much recently about income and wealth inequality but I always assumed that intelligence is relatively evenly distributed (and the book has not yet succeeded in disabusing me of this notion). Many of the solutions to income inequality deal with providing equal opportunity, to disadvantaged groups. If Hernstein and Murray are correct, these groups have already been sapped of the most vital resource they need: intelligence. All the smart members of a disadvantaged group become rich, leaving large swathes of the American population devoid of intellectual capacity and material resources. I do not yet believe the author's thesis but if they are even partially right, the situation in this nation is more dire than it seems.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/04/30/illinois-wake-up-call-stagnation-spiral-encourages-people-to-leave/ For this blog post I will be discussing the house-price/school quality spiral. I read several articles on this subject and they all described something like the following. A school performs poorly, a school develops a bad reputation, a school district develops a bad reputation, parents or prospective parents begin to move less and less frequently to the district, house prices drop as demand for real estate falls. Property taxes fall as house values fall. District further lowers property taxes in order to attract new resident. Schools receive less funding. schools perform poorly, cycle repeats. This has happened in countless communities in the United States and is a very serious problem. It also happens in reverse, with better performing schools leading to higher property taxes leading to more money for schools. As a result, wealthy parents, high property values and good schools seem to congregate in the same areas. Many solutions have been suggested to our collective education problem. However, only one seems suitable to this specific issue. The immediate cessation of local property tax funding and the apportioning of money for schools on a per-pupil basis. This argument has been countered by arguments to effect that parents should be able to fund their own children's education and not be forced to fund others. Such an argument is ridiculous, if wealthy parents want to fund a superior education for their children they can attend a private school. However, the public system has an obligation to provide equal educational opportunity to all children. Much has been made of the our educational crisis being caused by factors other than funding such as poorly-educated or un-committed parents. However, the two factors are inextricably linked. Poorer schools are likely to attract poorer parents, who are likely to be less educated, who are likely to have less time to commit to their children's education.

Link: http://www.corestandards.org/other-resources/key-shifts-in-english-language-arts/ For my last blog post I looked at the common core's specific math standards. Now I decided to look at the specific English language arts standards as listed on the common core website. The standards on the surface seem to be almost as vague as the math standards. They did seem to focus on reading comprehension and more specifically on the ability to read non-fiction texts and extract information from them, specifically in inter-disciplinary settings. I recall reading in the PISA report that US students are among the worst in the world at applying knowledge from one area of study to another so this could be a useful exercise (the math equivalent was present in the math standards in the form of word problems). The English standards fail to seriously mention writing, instead focusing on reading and comprehension scores. I have noticed throughout my education that this is an strategy shared my many of my english teachers: that reading lots of good writing and studying good writers will teach one how to write well even if one does not specifically study writing per se. While I cannot speak to the efficacy of the approach in the general population I do think that for me more specialized writing education would have been helpful. Like in the math standards the english standards provide vague learning objectives but not strategies for achieving these . My brief appraisal of the common core standards leaves me with the question: once nationalized standards are accepted how specific should they be? Should the government provide only standardized tests while leaving teachers to figure out how to teach the material. i suspect that a federal attempt to standardize the curriculum would be met with even more opposition that the current (already hotly contested) common core proposal. However, there seems no better way of achieving educational equity than mandating not just that the same material be taught in all classrooms but that it be taught in a specif way.

Link: www.corestandards.org For this blog post I decided to explore the proposed common core standards and what exactly they entail. I visited the common core standards homepage and read their academic standards section. I discovered the following six standards upon which the more specific standards are based Research and evidence based Clear, understandable, and consistent Aligned with college and career expectations Based on rigorous content and the application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills Built upon the strengths and lessons of current state standards Informed by other top-performing countries to prepare all students for success in our global economy and society These were about the vaguest pronouncements I have ever seen so I decided to look at the core math standards. They emphasized mastering basic mathematical operations and abstract thinking (word problems, puzzles etc.) in the early grade while building to more complex concepts by the end of elementary school and high school. These standards look appealing and are more specific but they still lack detail. My own elementary school experience corresponds roughly with the common core standards and yet I would say that depending of the teacher or textbook or classroom I learned some concepts very well and some not at all. To me the common core math standards provide too much leeway for a class to cover a topic yet not really learn it. This problem would theoretically be avoided with rigid standardized testing but I still wonder if some students would be short-changed. One solution to this problem would be to provide rigid and specific instructions to math teachers themselves perhaps including lesson plans and classroom tests. While this program would stifle teacher creativity it would also help to standardize math education across the nation It seems to me (and I really have no idea) that a good fractions lesson in Massachusetts looks precisely the same as a good fractions lesson in Mississippi. This brief look at the common core standards has convinced me (as much as any one webpage can) the the common core, while immensely useful is not a magical solution to our nations's education problems. Even a detailed and specific lesson plan would not fund a poor school or increase attendance rates. However, specific math standards can level the playing field in a field that is increasingly important in the modern world.

http://www.dailyorange.com/2014/04/educator-outlines-flaws-issues-with-american-education-system/ Most of what I have previously read has suggested that more rigidity, more standardization and above all more centralization of the school system (mostly by standardized tests) is the best way to help our education system. This article, while it does not argue against centralization of education standards it does argue that they are useless unless the underlying social and economic problems that create educational inequality are solved. Many of the states and districts with the worst school systems are the poorest in the nation. Without money the schools cannot improve. The article correspondingly attacks the No Child Left Behind Act despite its attempt to "leave no child behind" and force the worse performing schools to meet higher standards because it took money away from poor-performing schools, the ones that need it the most. The articles author also attacks the use of student performance to determine teacher pay, arguing that even good teachers will perform poorly in poor districts and will then choose to work in wealthier ones. All of these issues raise question of whether education is an problem than can be targeted and fixed independently of more wide spread social problems. Can someone get an education, even at an excellent school if their family is struggling to survive financially? I think the answer is no and the two problems are intertwined. However, I think a good starting place would be for educational funding to still be paid for by property taxes but to be pooled nationally and distributed to districts on a per-pupil basis.

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/ http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/20/so-how-overblown-were-no-1-shanghais-pisa-results/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/03/are-finlands-vaunted-schools-slipping/ http://simplystatistics.org/2013/08/23/stratifying-pisa-scores-by-poverty-rates-suggests-imitating-finland-is-not-necessarily-the-way-to-go-for-us-schools/ For this post I am going to explore the idea that Mr. Fischer introduced to me: that the US lags in educational performance because it educates its most disadvantaged citizens whom many other countries fail to educate at all. To investigate this I am going to compare the US to China and Finland, two nations whose educational systems are often touted as being superior to ours First the US: Poverty rate: 14.3% Literacy rate: 99% PISA Score: 481 China: Poverty Rate: 33.1% Literacy Rate: 95% PISA Score: 613 Finland: Poverty Rate: 3% Literacy Rate: 100% PISA Score: 536 On the surface these numbers suggest that China fails to adequately educate 5% of its poorer students even to the extent of literacy. The fact that their scores are still so high high would imply that the scores of the other 95% are astronomical. However, it turns out that only 73% of Chinese student body was adequately represented (mostly poorer, rural schools were missed). It seems likely that the illiterate 5% are simply not being tested. Furthermore while I had previously trusted China's results I recently read that higher-performing students were often bused in to take the test and poorer performing children thrown out of school. While it still seems likely China's school system is better than ours (it certainly is on a per dollar basis) their attempt at removing poorer students from the testing pool imply that a significant % of its students are "left behind" academically. Finland on the other hand has a 100% literacy rate but only a 3% poverty rate. In conclusion, my cursory analysis of the problem would suggest that the US does do a good job of educating all its poorest citizens to a minimum level, essentially literacy and that China's test scores are inflated by the exclusion of its poorer students. However, nations such as Finland seem to be even more inclusive but has such a low poverty rate that it does not make that much difference.

Sputnik Moment

Article Links: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/obama-calls-for-new-sputnik-moment/ http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/october-4-1957-soviet-union-launches-sputnik-satellite/ I wanted to investigate what Mr. Fischer told me about the US education system including poorer students while other, higher ranked systems fail to educate the less-fortunate, thereby boosting their scores. I would discover that this theory had some merit but that is what I will address in my next blogpost. For now I want to write about an article I found while researching explanations of our educational differences with other nations. This article essentially argued that no explanation or justification matters because we, as a society need the motivation of failure to improve our education system. It was not explicitly mentioned but it seemed to me the author was calling for an exaggeration of the education crisis in order for us to have a "sputnik moment" (the original sputnik moment happened when the USSR's satellite launch in 1957 reveled just how behind we were and lead to a period of educational and scientific investment that culminated with the moon landing) and reinvest in our education system. It is true that we have a disproportionately high level of satisfaction with our educational system compared to our outcomes and we do have a history of high-level educational achievement and an economy that can support more educational investment. However, is misleading people about the quality (or lack thereof) of their education worth enough to outway the dishonesty inherent to such an action? I don't know but it seems to me that in education, more than anything else, honesty is vital. Nonetheless I do think that not matter what the true state of our education system is we should always be striving to make it better, even the best nations (and US states) are cosntantly redefining their educational policies, re-training teachers and finding new ways to teach students.

Article Link: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf PISA country report: the United States This report explains the multitude of disheartening failings in the US education system. I describes below average (for OECD nations) scores in every subject area. It also describes how American students seem generally happy with their education despite below average results. My first response to this was that the US is only-below average for industrialized, first-world nations and since every nation cannot be number 1, are we not better off accepting inevitable mediocrity? However, according to the report the US spends the third most per pupil of any nation in the world. Furthermore, as a nation we have a long history of educational brilliance and we still have the best tertiary education system in the world. There is no reason for us to have an average education system, nor is there any reason to be complacent. The US currently has the world's biggest economy, that can not continue if our education system continues to slip. We must look at why our education system is failing and attempt to correct it. The PISA report singles out Massachusetts for its excellent performance and specifically for its strong state-wide education standards (which manifested themselves to me as the MCAS). The report also mentions that conspicuous lack of a national standards in the United States. Recommending the implementation of the common core standards. These standards are already being put in place but when I did further research on the common core I was shocked to discover the level of vitriol, especially from parents, directed against the standards. This I cannot comprehend, no reasonable person could possibly see the common core as a "way for the government to control local education". Nor could one think that common core standards would eliminate important regional-specific lesson plans such as local crop-cycles. Such information is essentially useless in the modern-world. These complaints against the common core seem to have their basis in a sense of regional pride or identity, one that I cannot understand. How can a citizen of Mississippi not see that their state is doing poorly and that nationalized standards would help it. It is tempting to see this distrust of central government as a symptom of the recent-wave of anti-government sentiment but the US has gone its entire existence, more than 200 years with the institution of a national curriculum, a step almost every other nations has taken. According to PISA without the common core the US will be hard-pressed to tread water in international rankings. I can only hope they are implemented. This article also brought to my attention the issue of school funding which, almost uniquely in the US is done through local property taxes an issue that I will explore further in my next post.

Article Link: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/09/19/innovation-what-american-education-needs-more-than-anything/ My first two articles were from CNN and the NYT and so I decided that a fox news article would provide me with a different perspective. It did. Each of the previous articles I read provided a different argument about our educational failures. The NYT blamed them of funding, CNN on too little government control. Fox blamed it on too much government control and a failure to trust in the "educational miracles of the free market." The author of the article, Peter Roff, argued that the same funding could produce better results in our education system if it was given to private enterprise. He then attacked the high tuition rates of supposedly non-profit colleges. I wholeheartedly agree that college costs are unjustifiably high and they should by no means by even 1/5 of what they are at many colleges I completely disagree with his solution. First of all, almost every other country on earth has kept college costs down not by privatization but through more government control. In fact many governments are the sole providers of higher education. Prices are therefore kept down because there is no competition between colleges driving up prices. While in some industries competition does increase the quality of the product offered, education does not seem, to me, to be one of them because it is almost impossible to accurately measure educational outcomes. Furthermore, nationalized with nationalized university systems often have national curriculum standards that extend through college, meaning that the quality of education is not supported by competition in a difficult to measure area, but by the law itself. While I disagree with Roff's point in this area I do understand his frustration with our college system. What I do not understand is his seeming desire to privatize every level of education, starting in elementary schools through charter schools and school vouchers. While I understand how competition acts as useful motivation for innovation I fail to see how a for-profit kindergarten would be in anyone's best interest. In fact what Roff seems to be suggesting, however obliquely, is a full-scale privatization of our education system, which would have disastrous consequences for education equality. I read several other of Roff's articles and was interested to learn that he seems to advocate "innovation" "privatization" and "less government" in every single situation. I then looked him up on the internet and discovered that not only is he employed by on organization, Frontiers of Freedom, that takes money from, among others, oil and mining companies, but that Roff has personally received research funding from Kaplan university, whose work he relentlessly extols. Roff states that new government regulation of the private sector would be "an opportunity killer for students.” In reality it would be an opportunity killed for Roff himself.

Article Link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/12/education.schmidt/ This article (which consists largely of an interview with Bill Schimdt, director of the education policy center at Michigan State University) argues that we fail to do well in math and science not necessarily because of a lack in funding or even because of cultural disinterest. Rather, the article argues that educational inequality is to blame. In some states (like Massachusetts) math and science scores measure up to other first world nations. However, in other states, mostly southern, math and science scores are closer to those in the developing world. Schmidt attributes this to a lack of coherent national education standards. While I agree with his generally premise that standardized curricula such as the the common core and related standardized teacher training would help I believe that the greatest impediment to educational success and educational equality is money. In the United States schools are funded directly from local property taxes, a system that, as far as I know, is used no-where else in the world. As a result nationally mandated standardized testing and teacher training standards, unless properly funded would be essentially useless as local schools do not have the money to fund them. In addition to problems with national standards Schmidt alludes to cultural problems with our education system. He seems to argue that some parents don't care about their children's success, some have given up hope that they can compete globally and some believe that despite poor understanding of science and math their children can make up ground in other areas such as reading (which the US also does poorly in). I personally believe that these attitudes are symptomatic rather than causal. Parents feel hopeless because their child's school is inadequate, not the other way around. I do agree with Schmidt's final point that the educational crisis is far more severe than many believe and that it must be resolved in the United States is going to continue to be competitive in the global economy.

Article Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 I wanted to start my study of differences in national education systems by establishing which countries do better on international standardized tests. I first discovered that the test used for international academic comparisons is called the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA. Then I found a New York Times article from 2010 entitled "Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators" that article had two main points. First, that the Untied States has fallen behind not only other first world-nations but even some developing or semi-developed nations such as Poland and China. The articles' second point was that China and Shanghai in particular was head and shoulders above not just the United States bu the rest of the world. These facts were interesting to me but what I found most fascinating and peculiar about the article was the extent to which the various people interviewed attempted to detract from China's brilliant academic performance. Excessive time studying, cultural obsessiveness and outright cheating were all used to explain away the massive test score differences between the US and China. While China's government does not have a great track record of honesty the PISA tests were independently administered by disinterested international non-profits and I find it hard to believe that such a large achievement gap could have been produced entirely through cheating. By refusing to acknowledge the validity of China's results we loose the ability to emulate what as worked in their system and apply it our own. I did find it comforting that Massachusetts routinely outpaces the rest of the nation in PISA performance, but we still did not do nearly as well as Shanghai.