<p>My husband is from NJ. We meet lots of people from NJ and they all seem better educated than CA school products. Maybe lots of the cream comes to CA. I survived my schools in CA, so did my son. Son had a great elementary school, great Middle School teachers (from the East Coast) and with 1 or 2 exceptions, great dedicated HS teachers. Just one biased and very unscientific opinion.</p>
<p>I do not think that the provision of special education either brings the costs up very substantially or drags school scores drastically. Various people have been doing studies of the allocation of funds in my district and are arguing that special ed is not the major reason why our district seems to be spending twice as much as other comparable districts (a top-heavy administration is).</p>
<p>The OECD survey is the topic of an article in the New York Times, December 7, 2004:
US Students Fare Badly in International Survey of Math Skills.
""High school students in Hong Kong, Finland and South Korea do best in mathematics among those in 40 surveyed countries, while students in the US finished in the bottom half, according to a new international comparison of mathematical skills shown by 15-year olds. The US was also cited as having the poorest outcomes per dollar spent on education. It ranked 28th of 40 countries in math and 18th in reading."</p>
<p>Another article in the same issue of the NYT discusses the widespread need for remedial courses in writing in corporate America
What Corporate America Cannot Build: A Sentence.
"Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers, by setting oof requests for clarification and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion. "
"Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest going to new hires."</p>
<p>One must assume that the employees in question all have at the minimum a bachelor's degree and yet are deemed to need remedial classes in writing.</p>
<p>I agree with Shennie, that it would be very hard to compare internationally, since the systems are so different. It is almost a given that int'l students who are academically focussed, i.e planning on post-secondary education, have already been sorted out from the general ed population, i.e. the kids who get tracked toward trades.
Are the other students (those in trade-type schools) being included in the international scores?</p>
<p>And where are international students who are classified special ed taught? Are they mainstreamed...I honestly don't know. Just curious if anyone else knows.</p>
<p>In many parts of this country there are two or more systems within each school. The Honors types of programs that offer students AP classes and the other classes that usually offer overcrowding and additional behavior managment challenges are the two major systems I see operating within most high schools. Then a school may also offer special education and ELS classes. Most have the former.</p>
<p>Is your question where is the best education of middle or upper middle class children? Then I would suggest each state probably has more than one hot shot fully funded functional school with lots of community support. If your question is which state does the best job of educating everyone it gets more complicated.</p>
<p>How should we evaluate a school system? The proportion of SAT scores over 1000 or 1400; the number of AP classes offerred, Westinghouse or National Merit winners, the ability of the school to absorb and educate large numbers of ESL students, or some other national or international standard?</p>
<p>NCLB is misleading because different standards apply depending on the state you are in.</p>
<p>I am not sure that the foreign schools that recommend students to go to trade schools are considering them special ed candidates. I have a number cousins in Europe: some have gone to trade schools and some are attending leading high schools. I think it would be a mistake to view European trade schools as mere remedial schools. One of my cousins is graduating this year from a technical/trade school where he learned the finer points of masonry. While he is not a very gifted student, his knowledge of math and sciences is vastly SUPERIOR to the average student in the US. As far as another cousin who attends a top high school, I can assure that he runs circles around most students in the US in many subjects. However, what he does NOT have is a long list of ECs. He is entirely oblivious to all the key club/fake volunteerism crap that is thrown at US high schoolers. He goes to school for close to 40 hours and is TAUGHT for close to 40 hours by bona-fide teachers. </p>
<p>When I visited his school, there were no football and baseball fields, the classrooms occupied most of the real estate. Except for a few, the administrators were also teachers. At 4:30 in the afternoon, the school was buzzing with activity ... but in classes. Now compare that with the sclerotic, money-guzzling, and inefficient unionized bureaucracy that is afflicting most US schools! Want better educated children? Make them spend more time in the classroom, less time on the athletic fields and on sterile activities that only serve to give the teachers a "needed" break. Would it be that hard to stop building schools that look ... and cost and function like country clubs?</p>
<p>It is important to note that the comparison was among 15 year olds. Up through 6th grade and often through 8th grade, American kids are taught by generalists. In other countries, they are taught by specialists beginning in 6th grade at least and often earlier.
Liping Ma's comparison of US and Chinese teachers's knowledge of math was very instructive. Even at the lower grades, Chinese math teachers, who typically achieved only a 9th grade education before going to teachers college, taught only math and only for part of the work day. The rest was spent on professional development and lesson plans. The Chinese math teachers had a more profound understanding of the elementary math they taught (e.g., fractions, subtraction with carrying) than their American counterparts.
I agree with Xiggi about the length of the school day and the lack of ECs, though I note that in other countries, teachers are also unionized.</p>
<p>I think there's a lot of apples-to-oranges comparison involved, as many have observed. I think that your definiton of "best" is one major question. What is the goal of your school system? To provide an adequate education for the largest number of students? To provide an excellent education for the (smaller) number who will benefit from it? Are the "3 R's" all you should be teaching, or are other, less "academic" skills also worth including in the curriculum. And there's a lot more where those came from...</p>
<p>Xiggi, honey, are you feeling okay?</p>
<p>Not sure which European schools you are talking about but are you sure the students do not have required athletics? The exchange students we met from Austria were brilliant football (soccer) players. Secondary school sport is required down under and that's a good thing, IMHO.</p>
<p>What do you mean by 'sterile' activities? Art? Music? Drama?</p>
<p>It's true that international schools allow students to focus and specialize at a much earlier age--some would say they are forced to do so. But why all the venom? You're too young for that!</p>
<p>I don't know about Austria, but I had PE throughout high school, and it was part of my baccalaureat exam. But no soccer team or any organized sport. My brother is a devoted soccer fan, nonetheless. His D has been taking dance lessons at one of the two top Paris studios, but not as an EC. ECs are not part of a French student's vocabulary.</p>