Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is because Asian governments want their populations to more educated and American governments want their populations to be less educated. For the former I'd guess its because they have very strong control on people's behaviors so they just want them more capable to innovate, grow economy, etc. For the latter I'd guess its because they fear a more educated population will be harder to manipulate and hence…
> I think this is because Asian governments want their populations to more educated and American governments want their populations to be less educated. On the American side it’s not that they want people to be less educated. It’s the adversarial system of education being run by people whose interests are not aligned with students excelling. Teacher’s unions, which predominantly exist in the public school system, are…
I'm always surprised and disappointed to see such lazy thinking on HN. If teachers' unions were responsible for poor educational outcomes, you would see an inverse relationship between strong teachers' unions and K-12 rankings.
But New Jersey and Massachusetts consistently rank in the top 2 K-12 rankings in the US. And they have ~100% union density among K-12 public school teachers!
Let's test the rest of your little theory. If you believe that pesky teachers' unions are responsible for poor outcomes, then surely states with less teacher's union density and union power will be the epitome of strong K-12 outcomes.
But who ranks at the bottom? New Mexico at #50, Alaska at #49, Oklahoma at #48...
You might, at this point, sensibly say that's due to residents having less money and other disadvantages. But at that point you have to admit that teachers' unions have no correlation to K-12 outcomes.