The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

I recently read Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way" and was glad someone did this work. Yes, I knew that advocates for gifted children or advocates for teachers' unions would get their hackles up over many of the points that Ripley made. They might say that clearly she doesn't "understand" the needs of gifted children, blah-blah-blah. Clearly she doesn't understand how "unfair" it would be to keep "normal" people (i.e., those who weren't the best students themselves) out of teaching with her observation that schools must have the smartest and best trained teachers from the population if their students are to do well, become smart (i.e., live and learn up to their potential). Ripley’s book is about high schools in the United States, Finland, South Korea, and Poland. But, what Ripley wrote resonated with me, as I know it actually will with many who do understand the needs of the gifted, whom I will specifically discuss at the end of this. Here are a few reasons: • Ripley advocates changing university teacher training programs from one of the lowest thresholds for admittance to a threshold no lower than the top third of their high school graduating classes. • She advocates continuing supervision, mentoring and education for the teachers once they are hired to teach. • She advocates letting the teachers decide how to teach, what to use to support those lessons, and how to decide if their students are learning what they’ve been taught. Remember, the teacher continues to be part of a team system that offers support, input, feedback and encouragement to him or her. • She points out that the smartest kids in the world know how to use what they have learned. They know how to apply it and interpret when to apply a concept, thought, idea or skill. Real life. Thinking skills. Reasons why we just learned something. I used to teach elementary school. I joke that I was among the last of the generations of women who thought their only career options were nurse or teacher. I chose teacher because, in my experience at that time, I knew I’d be on my own, make my own decisions, and not be bossed around by say, a doctor (the way nurses were). Remember, I grew up during a time when girls were supposed to understand that the constant use of the male pronouns was understood to mean both male and female. Well, we didn’t actually understand that, but I digress. So, two things have changed mightily since that time. First, smart women have tons of career options, so far fewer of them choose teaching. (Keep in mind that the low pay has been unappealing to men for a long time, and as most men always had the option of any career they wanted, few ever aspired to become teachers compared to women). Second, today’s teachers are micro-managed, told exactly what to teach and how to assess for whether or not their students learned. I assume there have continued to be good teachers who worked around the system, and I applaud them, of course. So, what about gifted children and their needs? When their teachers are smart, creative, and allowed to make decisions based upon the needs of the students in their classes, all students truly do benefit. Ripley is opposed to ability grouping. In many ways, so am I. Almost any topic or concept can be taught at many levels. It’s how you individualize the same topic. It’s how you enable students to work together, choose with whom to work on certain topics – and on different days! It’s the deep understanding, mastery and love of the topics that a smart, well-trained teacher brings to the students. It’s the nerve, creativity, and the “why can’t we do this?” attitude that smart, well-trained teachers bring to their schools when they are empowered to do what needs to be done. Ripley’s book is about high schools. Most people focus on the quality of our high schools and I personally think that it’s the elementary and middle school levels that need the most change. Just putting it out there. So, yes. I liked the book, I liked the investigation into this topic that Ripley did when preparing for the book, and I recommend it.

This is a great book for folks who are interested in the state of American public schools, as compared with schools ranked higher than the U.S. in international testing. From the book, I learned about the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which, per Wikipedia, is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. This, as it turns out, is how we find out that students in the U.S. ranked 24th in reading, 28th in science and 36th in math in 2012, in comparison with about 65 participating countries. Apparently, we were 17th, 23rd and 21st, respectively, in these rankings in 2009. And, back in 2000, when all this got started, we were 15th, 16th and 20th, respectively. A trend is obvious here. In 2012, Shanghai, China, was the winner in all three categories, but the author choses South Korea, Poland and Finland as the democratically ruled countries that he trusts best to reflect equality with U.S. social components. Each of these three countries ranks very high in the international testing, each clearly higher than the U.S. The author sets out to find an American high school exchange student for each country. Using the three students, she collects data and experiences to build comparisons. Via these American kids, we get a first-hand view of public high schools in the three countries, plus we get to know the American kids, themselves, pretty well. Pretty cool, huh? There is a wealth of interesting information in each of their stories, which makes it impractical to detail here. So, what I want to do in the rest of this review is to give you some of more interesting tidbits I got along the way from the book. Then, I will go to the author's conclusions as to why U.S. students fall behind students from other countries. Some interesting tidbits: * The Korean public schools are a mess. The kids come primarily to sleep most of the day. Their learning, it turns out, happens mostly after their public schools close for the day. The kids then head out for private tutoring schools, where they may spend another eight or so hours in what sounds like grueling, exhausting "educational" experiences. No wonder the kids sleep during the day. But they do score well in international testing! * Testing for high school seniors in most Asian countries is very, very intense, so intense that the same test is given on the same day for all seniors in the country. Airlines, commuters and businesses are urged to reduce any kinds of noise or distractions during the testing period. But after the results are given, and the kids find out if they are accepted to the best schools or not, this pressure cooker is off, for the most part. In college, the kids do not take their studies that seriously, nor do the professors. No, the pressure is to prepare for the single test in high school, as if the results of it will determine their options for the rest of their lives. * American schools are crazy for sporting events, especially football. Nothing like this happens in any of the other countries that were profiled. There, sports are done via clubs outside of the schools, if at all. This element, in itself, is a huge variation for the American schools, which pride themselves on school spirit, supporting athletic competition. * Most of the higher performing countries are more selective in choosing their teachers. For the most part, the best students in college are selected. In contrast, American high school teachers tend not to be high performers in college. * Countries smaller than the U.S. are in a better position to control the training and development of their public school teachers. In Finland, for example, private high schools are not allowed, nor are charter schools. Finland does not encourage variances in the levels of excellence amongst its schools No, all the Finish schools are to be at the same level of excellence. In the U.S., states control their own training, oversight and curriculum of and for their teachers. And private high schools and charter schools are currently all the rage. * South Korean parents spend a ton of money on private tutoring for their kids, to the point that the Korean government tries to limit the excess. And, one of the most successful leaders of the private tutoring schools has said that he wants to devote his life in the future to the elimination of the private tutoring system. He wants to improve the public schools, instead. At the end of the book, the author gives us some insights into her struggles in writing the book. First, she admits that trying to make sense out of such a complex subject, even involving just three countries vs. the U.S., was overwhelming. Second, she tells us that, as a journalist by profession, she does not normally intend to lead readers to conclusions. She would rather report what she finds, then let readers make their own conclusions. But she seems to be compelled to give us some reasons why high school students in other countries are doing better in the worldwide testing than are American students. Her reasons include: * Students in other countries tend to be more engaged and to work harder. * Parents in other countries are more interested in educational progress than in excellence in sports or the arts or such in their public schools. * Schools in other countries invest far less in technology that does the U.S., which, perhaps, allows them to spend more money on teachers' and principal's salaries, instead. * Other countries have better teachers and principals, overall. * Students in other countries tend to better understand the consequences of failure; students in the U.S. tend to be told that they are doing better than they actually are, compared with students from other countries. * Overall, schools in the better-performing countries are harder than schools in the U.S. And, overall, the students in the other countries learn to have more persistence and drive than their counterparts in the U.S. Personally, I do not find the list above to be earth-shaking or alarming. I do find it educational, so to speak. But as Will Rogers famous remark goes, "The schools ain't what they used to be, and never was." The quest to be the best tends to be a never-ending, frequently redefined endeavor. I also like the adage I heard somewhere that "America produces the worst 16-year-olds and the best 30-year-olds, and no one understands why." In other words, as an educator, myself, I'm in this for the long haul. I can always learn; but I tend to think that no one, anywhere, at any time, has all the answers. American will rise again. I guarantee it!

Sometimes I think great teachers represent a kind of genius—a command and love of their subject by which they inspire in students a vision of its power and beauty. But maybe student geniuses simply resonate to a subject that engages their hearts, and even mediocre (or worse) teachers can’t deter them from their quest. For our primary and secondary schools, however, the real question is how we optimize what most students learn, with competent teachers to take them there. Blending extensive data and focused personal stories, Amanda Ripley’s marvelous book suggests that we know more about good teaching and real learning than we may suppose. Real learning means that graduates can “read, solve problems, and communicate what happened on their shift” (p. 5), and that’s for line workers who make the pies you get at McDonald’s. That American employer, and others, aren’t shifting jobs overseas only because of wages and benefits but often because they can’t find high school graduates who can do the work. “Better” jobs demand more; diesel mechanics must know geometry and physics, read blueprints and technical manuals, and understand percentages and ratios. Sales people have to comprehend engineering or chemistry or medicine (e.g. pharmaceutical reps) to communicate with their clients. Finance requires a command not only of markets and regulations but of financial analysis, statistics and probability. Ripley notes the extremely high recent correlation between nations’ educational accomplishments and economic growth, and America is slipping badly. The data to my mind are irrefutable (and, to paraphrase a quote in the book, without the ability to understand and process complex data, in today’s world you’re just another schmuck with an opinion). In language and science we score poorly in relation to almost all other developed nations, but our mathematics outcomes are execrable—in the bottom five of around thirty nations. It’s not about money; we’re second in the world (!) in just one category, per-pupil expense. It’s not about students studying longer. True, Korea’s schooling sounds to me like an industrial-strength nightmare—long school days followed by homework followed by hours in costly private academies followed by more hours of homework. (Korea’s students, says Ripley, spend more time on schoolwork than American kids spend awake.) But Finnish students do less homework than Americans and have far more free time (with much less scheduling and supervision from their parents) while leading the world. Nor is it about the advantages of less diverse cultures or more prosperous families. Race and family background matter, says Ripley—but how much they matter varies greatly, and we’re just dreadful by this measure, too (poor kids in Poland are poorer than poor kids here but do much better in school). Conversely, Norway (with all the “advantages” of Finland and much higher spending) has fallen behind dramatically, now trailing us and all other nations among the fifteen with long-term data. The heart of Ripley’s presentation lies in extended stories of three high-school students: Kim (from Oklahoma, who went to Finland for a school year), Tom (from Pennsylvania, to Poland), and Eric (from Minnesota, to Korea). She corresponded with them and traveled to interview them, their own and their exchange families, and the teachers and education administrators here and in the host communities. The stories and the data frame and interpret each other, clearly and effectively. America’s schools would do well to adopt “best practices” wherever we find them (as American companies do with their competitors), and I would suggest three benchmarks, from the Finns in particular. First, we need very demanding requirements for teachers. In Finland it starts with admission to one of a handful of colleges for teacher training, with admission standards “on the order of MIT” and prestige comparable to admission to med school. Then come six years of training. Once the graduates begin teaching, they have much more accountability for results (national textbook standards and testing) but also much greater autonomy and flexibility in how they do their jobs (after all, their competence and commitment can be presumed). Second, schools, homes, and communities have high expectations for students. ALL students (“tracking” by “ability” turns out to be counter-productive and debilitating). Apart from clinical cognitive disorders, the hypothesis is that every kid can learn. The students see it happening, have a high estimate of themselves and each other (and they respect their teachers’ preparation and competence), and contribute peer pressure (and mutual encouragement) to the hopes their families and schools have for them. Third, every student is expected to—fail. Frequently, but not finally. Nearly everyone finishes high school. (We used to lead the world in graduation rates, but have dropped to around 20th, with a 20% dropout rate). Their diplomas demonstrate their fundamental competencies. But high standards and expectations mean that students have to be told when they’re not measuring up. “If the work is hard, routine failure is the only way to learn.” Then kids also learn to pick themselves (and each other) up, get help, dig in, and make it work. Praise and affirmation are effective only when they are “specific, authentic, and rare”. I tremble to consider the cultural and political obstacles in our way. How can we get past our shibboleth (“hard-wired for inefficiency”, crossed purposes and compromised standards) of local control? How many of our public schools hire people more as coaches than teachers, with a Master’s in Phys. Ed. and (at best) an undergraduate minor in their teaching field? We do have some good teachers here, and Ripley has found a few of them; why can’t we learn from them as well as from other countries? In the book’s most moving story for me, an American primary student asks her teacher why he “gave” her an F in math, and he replies that an F was what she earned. Callous and harsh? Not as he works with her and believes in her, and she responds by doing the homework and forming a study group with other pupils. With a C as her year-end grade and a new sense of her own prowess and potential, she says to her teacher through her tears, “I cannot believe I did this.”

It took me about three months to finish the Inferno by Dan Brown. But when I received Amanda's book sent by Amazon on 23 August 2013, I didn't start reading it until 25 August. I was hooked when I opened it. I finished it on 29 August. Five days! Congratulations to Amanda Ripley! She is the new Dan Brown of non-fiction writing, or the new J.K. Rowling in the world of education! Amanda's book is really a page turner. It weaves the three fascinating stories of American exchange students, Kim, Eric and Tom seamlessly into a coherent whole. I couldn't put it down as the suspense about the miracles of South Korea, Finland and Poland in PISA test was killing me! She wrote like a season fiction writer that tantalized and teased my taste buds. My hunger to know more became voracious and insatiable. Well done. Amanda! If I were to write a one-word book review about Amanda's book, that very word would be "RIGOR". Yeah, `RIGOR' is the theme and the driving force behind the successes of Poland, Finland and South Korea in PISA test. As an English teacher, I really appreciate the captivating writing style used by Amanda. Here are a few of them: "The seniors trudged past them, heads down, like boxers entering a ring for a fight that would last nine hours."~~~page 115 "Education acted like an anti-poverty vaccine in Korea, rendering family background less and less relevant to kids' life chances over time. "~~page 60. "Sitting in the DePaul class, his notebook empty, he felt himself deflate, like a freshman balloon drifting back to earth." ~~page 188 "As soon as young kids showed signs of slipping, teachers descended upon them like a pit crew before they fell further behind."~~~page 139 Here are some quotes in the book that are valuable for educating young kids: "Education was a national treasure." ~~~page 116 "She dealt with her own kids the way a coach might treat his star players. Her job was to train those kids, to push them, and even bench them to prove a point." ~~~page 106 "More involved families had children with higher grades, better test scores, improved behavior, and better attendance records."~~~page 107 "A student's home environment dramatically affected scores." ~~~page 107 "Read to your kids."~~page 108 "The teachers. Everthing is based on the teachers. We need good teachers - well-prepared, well-chosen. .." - Miroslaw Handke , page 147 "Wealth doesn't mean a thing. It's your brain that counts..."~~~Heikki Vuorinen, Finnish teacher1, page 63 "If you want the American dream - go to Findland" ~~~Ed Miliband "Great vision without great people is irrelevant."~~~Jim Collins 215 "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~~~ Winston Churchill, page 72 As I am writing about this review, Malaysia has just launched an education reform with its National Education Blueprint, courtesy of its dismal results in the 2009 PISA tests : reading ranked 55; Math ranked 57, Science ranked 52. Well, the book is just the very elixir everyone in the Ministry of Education in Malaysia should consume to cure the debilitating diseases that have been wrecking the Malaysia educations system for the past ten years or more. Our education blueprint stated that we need 15 years to propel Malaysia to the top third of the PISA world. However, in Amanda's book, she wrote that the reform taken by the Poland's ministry of education took only 3 years to achieve dramatic results. Amanda also highlighted the single best predictor of success in PISA test is "conscientiousness" when professor Erling Boe et al found out this by evaluating students' diligence in filling out the survey forms after their PISA tests. It's an eye-opener for me when I read that Polish kids really dressed up in their most beautiful clothes when sitting for their graduation test. It's fascinating to learn about the obsession the Koreans have during their big test. The day before, younger students cleaned the classrooms, getting rid the walls of posters, covering the flag to enable test takers to concentrate in the test. Before the test, parents bought their children talismans, performing prayers in temples and churches, the Korea Electric Power Corp sending out crew members to check power lines. On the morning of the test, the stock market opened an hour late, taxis giving students free rides, police officers patrolling the school surroundings to prevent cars from honking and distracting the students, airplanes grounded during the English language listening test. Wow! The Koreans treat their test as the most sacred thing in life. After reading the book, I was relieved that I hadn't been born in South Korea. The school life of South Korea, to me, is a living hell. I would prefer Finland education system to South Korea. One point I would argue against in her book is that she wrote that PISA test was to measure students' ability to think critically and creatively. If that was true, Finland's smartphone giant, Nokia wouldn't have been sold to Microsoft in the US. I think PISA couldn't measure students' creativity in its entirety, and the US still has a few tricks up its sleeves when it comes to creativity! Anyway, if you are serious about education, passionate about education, excited about education, this book is a treasure to behold.

By her own admission, journalist Amanda Ripley used to go out of her way to avoid writing articles about education. She'd rather cover almost anything else. But after she was assigned a story on a controversial educator, she became intrigued. What types of education helped children become smarter? Did particular skills help them tackle learning challenges better? During her research, Ripley happened to see a chart compiling half a century of student test scores and performance rankings, gathered from a variety of different countries and cultures. She was intrigued - and puzzled. The data in that chart (collected by economists Ludger Woessmann and Eric Hanushek) greatly changed her perspective and upended her assumptions about what children need to reach their learning potential. The research revealed that in a handful of countries scattered across the world, kids seemed to be gaining critical learning skills, outpacing many other countries, including America (especially in math). From their earliest years, the students in these select areas learned effective and innovative ways to tackle reading, science, and math problems. Their skills also helped them master not only familiar but new information more quickly and easily. What accounted for these differences over time? How on earth did Canada go from having a mediocre educational system to one with impressive results- even rivaling Japan? Why did a country without child poverty, Norway, end up with students who still received inadequate schooling? Why did American teenagers (even those attending elite schools) rank 18th in math compared to kids in New Zealand, Belgium, France, and other countries? These questions are part of what Ripley calls "the mystery" and it is at the heart of this book: the reasons why some kids learn so much in some countries and so little in others. As part of her attempt to gain more insight into how a select group of countries excelled at educating their children, Ripley sought the help of three American teenagers - Kim, Eric, and Tom - who were sent to live and learn in "smarter" countries for a year. Much of this book is based on first-hand accounts of the teens' experiences while living and learning in another culture.Without them, Ripley notes, she "never would have glimpsed...the scenes that make it possible to understand why policy works or, more often misses the mark totally." The three American students have very different backgrounds. There is Kim, who left her rural area of Sallisaw, Oklahoma and a relatively mediocre school system to travel to Finland. Eric attended a high school in Minnetonka, Minnesota which was regularly ranked among the top schools in America by Newsweek. He traveled to Busan, South Korea to experience the "Korean pressure cooker" of education there. Tom left behind a high school culture in Gettysburg,Pennsylvania, one which was focused on sports and the Future Farmers of America and traveled to Wroclaw, Poland. I was fascinated by reading about these students' lives abroad and the challenges they faced when navigating different school systems and cultural traditions. Many of the descriptions are vivid, from Eric's sense of dread when he realized that Korean students attended school a staggering 12 hours a day to Tom's recollection of his first humiliating attempt at a math problem (in front of the class) in Poland. But this book is more than a series of personal perspectives from three teens. There is also plenty of hard data interspersed between their anecdotes. This does make for a certain scattered quality to the book at times. A description of Tom's initial struggles with math in his Polish classroom leads into a long section on math education in the United States before coming back round to Tom as he picks up the chalk and attempts to solve a math equation. When Kim struggles to understand a Finnish novel, her teacher brings her a children's book which simplifies the plot details. This section is the jumping off point for contrasting Finnish teacher training with that in the United States before returning to Kim and her discussion with some classmates. In spite of an occasionally bumpy flow, this book was still very engaging. It not only gave me a cross- cultural perspective but new insights into ways to help children become innovative and effective learners.

The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley is most likely one of the must read expose books of 2013. That is no hype. This book is a bone-rattling narrative of how America has lost her way (and edge) in the global education race as the education divide between the advanced and developed world has rapidly narrowed, and three much smaller countries, Finland, South Korea and Poland have sprinted past according to the results of the OECD developed and administered PISA test. What I liked best about this book was how the author carefully backed up her hypothesis that the current American public school system lacks rigor, focus and motivation with reams of very readble and seemingly credible statistics and studies. Clearly, Ripley knows the difference between fact and opinion. I also liked how the author drew on the personal narratives of the three American teenagers who went abroad to go to high school for a gap year. Their narratives brought the book to life in a nicely personal way, which balanced out the more technical (read dry) technical parts of the book. The author clearly identified a thesis and she clearly and painstakingly backed it up with quantitative and qualitative evidence to make her point. that America has been losing the global education race and that American high schools lack real world purpose, focus and rigor. One thing I did not like about this book was that it was based upon the results of the PISA test given in 2011. I am not a person who believes that quantitative (statistical) tells the whole story, thus data is not everything to me. As an EFL teacher, I am very aware of what is called qualititative data, which is based upon one's (hopefully) objective observations hence the authors inclusion of the three teenagers compelling personal narratives. Personally, I have never been to Finland, though it has been something I have wanted to do for a long time, nor Poland but I am aware of their historical roles in world events. A second thing I did not like about this book was that the author's descriptions of Finland, South Korea (especially since I live here) and Poland were functionally adequete for the book's purpose and narrative, but berefit of other, important deeper, contextual details. Third, why didn't this author include comparisons of America's private schools? It seems that America's private high schools, to be specific, were averaged in with the statistical results. Fourth, the author did not include any comparative accounts and description of America's own "hagwon" industry, which I know is strong and thriving in the larger cities like New York City and others. Soutn Koreans are not the only ones who thrive on private education--wealthy Americans seem to do so, too. Amanda Ripley, in my opinion, definitively pinned the tail on the (American educational) donkey. She has been criticized for not presenting a prescription like an educational doctor or surgeon for improving our schools other to say that they need to be more rigorous, focused and globally purposeful in todays globalized world, which I think is more than enough to start changing the status quo in America.

Amanda Ripley has an amazing story to tell and she tells it in a brilliant format, tracing the lives and experiences of several exchange students who decide to attend high school in other countries--countries that far surpass the U.S. in test scores. How do those countries--Poland, Finland, and South Korea--do it? That is the question this book purports to answer. The answers are not terribly surprising, perhaps, but they do shake up the educational world as we know it. Imagine an educational system where teachers are not necessarily schooled in education per se, but are experts in their respective fields--at the very top, in fact. Imagine teaching being one of the hardest professions to enter, where only an elite few qualify--and where the potential for earnings is virtually unlimited. Also imagine a society in which teachers are revered, not just tolerated or faintly respected. That's only the beginning. In order to achieve these top scores, parents and students have to buy into education--totally. It has to be priority one. More important than family, entertainment, personal time, sleep--even sports. You can almost hear America gasping on that last one. No more Friday night football? No more basketball tournaments? That's right. Because those things get in the way of studying, and studying (until you drop, until you cannot do it any more) is what produces high test scores. One has to wonder, of course, if there is some sort of land of compromise--where teachers would indeed receive the respect they deserve (and the pay), where teaching would be a profession of considerable status, and where students would study hard but still have a life. Perhaps such compromise is not possible. Maybe that's like having just one small doughnut when you're on Atkins. Either way, this is a great book for stimulating serious discussion about education--and what it means to be an educated person. The descriptions of the students' experiences are vivid and captivating, and Ripley leaves you as a reader to draw your own conclusions about what is working well and what is not. Clearly a 24/7 study schedule does not lead to happiness--but in the end is it worth it? We're talking about creating students with high levels of skill--in other words, people who are employable. We learn many fascinating things in comparing high schools in other countries with our own. For example, both U.S. and international students agree that parents in America give their children much less freedom than parents in other countries. This would seem counter-intuitive, given that U.S. students spend a great deal of time with friends and/or playing video games, etc. But virtually everyone saw it this way. International classes are generally viewed as far more challenging--but U.S. teachers AND parents are more demanding when it comes to sports. Throughout the book, patterns emerge, patterns that might point us to a better educational system for the Twenty-First Century. Clearly, we are not being nearly as innovative, edgy, or demanding of our students as we need to be if we wish them to succeed. And testing alone is not the answer, though it is often touted as such, especially by publishers who stand to make fortunes on testing materials and remedial instructional aids. The answer--which has yet to be spelled out by anyone with power to make serious changes--lies in a fundamental revision of our educational culture. This book would make incredible required reading for America's high school students--who will have, I suspect, highly diverse and highly intriguing opinions about it. I strongly recommend this book to every teacher, parent, grandparent, and secondary student.

Ripley does a fine job examining the sociological, economic, cultural, and educational factors that impact students' academic success across the globe. Her in-depth analysis makes the book well worth reading. I find it strange, though, that some of her statements are so irresponsible and unsubstantiated. She writes: "What did it mean, then, that respected U.S. education leaders and professors in teacher colleges were indoctrinating young teachers with the mindset that poverty trumped everything else? What did it mean if teachers were led to believe that they could only be expected to do so much, and that poverty was usually destiny." No ed. professor I know teaches this to future teachers. Based on my experience, ed. professors help teacher candidates understand the factors that shape students' lives and education in underserved communities. They teach candidates about students' cultural wealth and funds of knowledge as well as the structural/institutional factors that undermine students' opportunities. They teach them to see students' unlimited potential and to accept responsibility for teaching students. The ed. professors I know do NOT teach candidates that children in underserved communities can "only be expected to do so much." How absurd. Ripley should not get away with making such erroneous claims.

Muy interesante para el profesorado en general para hacernos reflexionar sobre nuestros estilos educativos y para qué enseñamos, y analizar qué cambios debemos hacer para caminar hacia una escuela de calidad

Great reading for education professionals and polycy makers. As a parent, it was insightfull as critical thinking has mostly one cause: rigor to make it or fail. Also that teachers quality is the key to profiecience at a fair system which qualify students progress.

Eine aufschlussreiche, oftmals ernüchternde und dennoch spannende Reise in die Welt der Erziehung. Nicht nur für Lehrer und Eltern absolut empfehlenswert!

Great read provide a different perspective on how best to educate a child. Need to read again but a lot of good for thought

Ripley found a unique way of figuring out what to do with American's failing education system: find out what works in other countries through the eyes of American students. She followed three exchange students, one to Finland, one to Poland and one to South Korea. She chose these countries because they had scored the highest (or improved their scores the most) in international tests. While each system is radically different, what she found in common was that they all found a way to get rid of bad teachers. Either by ensuring they don't enter the system (Finland), reforming the system to weed out underperformers (Poland) or by using a private system which is accountable to students and parents (South Korea). Ripley is a true reporter. She reports what she saw, and lets the reader make up his or her mind. An enjoyable read, and an even better lesson for America's educators.