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I would add that rich kids have more advantages and fewer stressors

Sure, and they also face different social pressures. Studies have shown that white/Asian kids become more popular, and have more friends, as their grades improve. Black/Hispanic kids become less popular. By the time they reach high school, too many poor kids have figured out that the best way to make friends and attract the girls, is to be an anti-intellectual smartass. That is a difficult culture to change.

Very cute trick you used there, going from a study proving women have an advantage in hiring commensurate with their phenomenal institutionalized advantages in education to claiming that said recorded facts don't exist. Very cute indeed.

Then again when your entire worldview and ideology, to say nothing of millions of dollars for massive lobbying efforts, is hinged on the idea that women are oppressed it is of course necessary to do everything possible to ensure that nobody ever admits women are not in fact oppressed and actually doing very well.

By the way going by your own link my study is both newer and more methodologically sound than yours since it's a randomized study with an N of nearly 1000 that actually controls its variables properly.

He signed it, but the Clinton administration wrote it. It was held up by Republicans until G.W.B. got into office. The Politics of No Child Left Behind

1) we've previously established that you dont actually know anything about the DoEd or what it does

2) No, that rate isn't down. It's actually at all time highs. What you stated is a myth. A popular one, but a myth. http://educationnext.org/gradu...

Essentially that means that classes need to slow down to the pace of the slowest pupil

That's called detracking and it began long before Bush.

...and 'critical thinking skills' (which, without context, means nothing).

I'm not sure what kind of detail you read the article in then, because it describes the students being given an essay-question test. And if you read the links given you'll find out how the test was blindly scored looking for certain specific techniques as evidence of critical thinking: “observing, interpreting, evaluating, associating, problem finding, comparing, and flexible thinking”. They even built in a test for their system, having separate researchers score overlapping samples so that they could make sure they were producing consistent results.

And here's a little bonus:

A large amount of the gain in critical-thinking skills stems from an increase in the number of observations that students made in their essays. Students who went on a tour became more observant, noticing and describing more details in an image. Being observant and paying attention to detail is an important and highly useful skill that students learn when they study and discuss works of art. Additional research is required to determine if the gains in critical thinking when analyzing a work of art would transfer into improved critical thinking about other, non-art-related subjects.

I'm not sure why the summary doesn't include a direct link to the study, as is present in the NYT article, but there you go. There's more detail in there about what they mean by empathy and tolerance (specifically including a measurable decrease in the student's support for government censorship).

That's not true at all. The study was conducted by education policy researchers from the University of Arkansas. They posted their methods here. Did you read them?

It seems like you, any many others, just made a snap judgement based on a misinterpretation of the summary.

The huge numbers of students are only going to the colleges to get worthless sociology and literature degrees, or go into law, etc.

If that is the issue, then the solution is to not fund those particular subjects, rather than not fund all subjects. Withholding education funding for subjects that add real value to the economy is not wise. Increased education for science and maths would generate significant economic growth:

Assuming past economic patterns continue, the country could enjoy a remarkable increment in its annual GDP growth per capita by enhancing the math proficiency of U.S. students. Increasing the percentage of proficient students to the levels attained in Canada and Korea would increase the annual U.S. growth rate by 0.9 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points, respectively. Since current average annual growth rates hover between 2 and 3 percentage points, that increment would lift growth rates by between 30 and 50 percent.

When translated into dollar terms, these magnitudes become staggering. If one calculates these percentage increases as national income projections over an 80-year period (providing for a 20-year delay before any school reform is completed and the newly proficient students begin their working careers), a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests gains of nothing less than $75 trillion over the period. That averages out to around a trillion dollars a year. Even if you tweak these numbers a bit in one direction or another to account for various uncertainties, you reach the same bottom line: Those who say that student math performance does not matter are clearly wrong. - Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?

"But what if we wanted to draw a higher-quality pool of candidates to teaching? Are we paying too low a price to accomplish that? I argue that the market for teaching has failed--in the sense that we are paying low salaries for low-quality teachers when we would prefer high-quality teachers. This is the result of two main flaws in the market: the difficulty of identifying who will be a good teacher and the reliance on an obsolete conception of the pool of potential teachers." For more, see Education Next.

Actually there are a lot of poor countries who have made great strides in education, especially in Africa, and continue to be poor.

The problem is with an over-regulated economy, no combination of education or aid can lead to economic growth. For example, Cuba (with a very regulated economy) has a very high literacy level, compulsary education up to age 15, and almost anyone in Cuba can go to college if they pass a test, yet most people in Cuba are lucky if they make the equivalent of $10 a month.

This reference shows that despite pouring massive resources into education systems, many poor countries have seen a steady decline in economic growth.

On the other hand, advancing economic freedom is a much better way to achieve economic growth.

http://reading.uoregon.edu/scope/trial_scope_index .php http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=23709 http://www.educationnext.org/20061/23.html

Ahh, you've nailed it my friend. The kids don't want to learn. That's the problem! In a cross national comparison of curriculum and learning the study found, "As in previous surveys, the results suggested that the typical U.S. student knows less math and science than do students in many other industrialized nations".

No amount of money injected into the school system could change that but incentive on the teachers part could fix the problem. In other words, a teacher whose school is on the verge of losing money unless that kid improves his/her test score will most definitely strive to enrich the student. Either the teacher lays out ultimatums to the children to learn or the school loses money. I believe, under those circumstances, the intensity in the class room will increase.

In light of the previous situation, the real problem lies in the home. The initial reason the student doesn't care is because he's not being encouraged/disciplined by the parents. That's where the real problem lies however fixing that is another debate entirely.

I respect your opinion but I refuse to do the same thing when its not working and other things can be tried. American schools aren't good enough. We've tried fixing the problem with money. It didn't work. Hopefully teachers and schools get the message when they have to make a decision between slapping little Joey around so he focuses or lose money by settling for mediocrity.