Education: Western Nations React to Poor Education Results

This includes an unusual concept: Learn from another country.

A respected international survey that found teenagers in Shanghai to be the best-educated in the world has prompted officials elsewhere across the globe to question their own educational systems, and even led the British education minister to promise an overhaul in student testing.

In Britain, where results showed students falling behind peers in Estonia and Slovenia, Education Minister Michael Gove promised to overhaul the examination system to make it tougher, using tests from China and South Korea as benchmarks. Britain will explicitly borrow from these education tiger nations, Mr. Gove said.

The survey also showed Finland and South Korea far ahead of the United States in reading comprehension, mathematics and science, ...

The report also included a finding that in every country surveyed, girls read better than boys — a gap that has widened since 2000. Also included was a finding that the best school systems are the most equitable — where students do well regardless of social background.

For more, see Western Nations React to Poor Education Results by D.D. Guttenplan, December 8, 2010 at The New York Times.