“We’re Number Umpteenth!”: The myth of lagging U.S. schools
How many times have you heard about how lousy American students perform on international assessments in comparison to their counterparts in other countries? Here to talk about why the comparisons are nonsense is Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education and human behavior, including “The Schools Our Children Deserve,” “The Homework Myth,” and “Feel-Bad Education… And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling.” He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.By Alfie Kohn
Beliefs that are debatable or even patently false may be repeated so often that at some point they come to be accepted as fact. We seem to have crossed that threshold with the claim that U.S. schools are significantly worse than those in most other countries. Sometimes the person who parrots this line will even insert a number — “We’re only ____th in the world, you know!” — although, not surprisingly, the number changes with each retelling.
The assertion that our students compare unfavorably to those in other countries has long been heard from politicians and corporate executives whose goal is to justify various “get tough” reforms: high-stakes testing, a nationalized curriculum (see under: Common Core “State” Standards), more homework, a longer school day or year, and so on.
But by now the premise is so widely accepted that it’s casually repeated by just about
Beyond the education wars: A case study in collaboration
Here’s an excerpt from a new e-book titled “Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools,” which looks at how struggling schools make improvements by collaboration between labor and management. It was written by Greg Anrig, vice president … Continue reading →