Stay focused - New research on how to close the achievement gap

This also seems like a strong argument for Australian/Canadian skill points immigration. I don't think there would be a problem with 50mm immigrants who were one sigma smarter/richer/etc. than the current US population, provided they had to spend 3-7 years of residency before citizenship/voting, and ideally if there were some way to spread them out over time or geography to avoid overloading local services (which have funding which lags population growth). Maybe give the states a say in how many immigrant visas they will sponsor, on top of a federal pool. I can imagine Michigan would love to have a lot of high-skill entrepreneurial immigrants move in.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues. There is very good research on boosting student achievement in another charter school network, the Uncommon Schools network

http://www.uncommonschools.org/our-approach/thought-leadersh...

that produced the book Teach Like a Champion.

http://teachlikeachampion.wiley.com/

http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470...

Practicing the techniques in that book is improving my own teaching as a private-practice mathematics instructor.

There are a lot of stupid comments that suggest that the main disadvantage of the United States is its ethnic diversity, but the real disadvantage the United States has is low expectations all around, from the most advantaged students

http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/29/lo...

http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/

to the least.

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

The hypothesis that "race" differences matter most in the United States educational achievement profile is thoroughly discredited,

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdi...

and meanwhile there is abundant evidence--for the rare American who speaks or reads any language besides English--that school systems in other countries sometimes provide a better learning environment simply by expecting more of students,

http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd...

including, by the way, often learning a second language just to receive school instruction or a third language as a core part of the secondary school curriculum (both of which were part of my wife's experience in Taiwan when Taiwan was still part of the Third World). If further research on KIPP and on The Uncommon Schools network continues to alleviate the effects of the de jure racism in United States public schools that survived into my lifetime, and also gives the lie to ongoing excuses for racism, so much the better.

AFTER EDIT: One more point on the subject of international comparisons in education is that the TIMSS and PISA series of tests don't wholly agree in methodology,

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts...

and hence don't wholly agree in conclusions, although the United States plainly doesn't do as well in educational achievement as its high level of spending on public schools would warrant.

P.S. Every time I see a Hacker News discussion of this subject I reflect that my occupation (supplemental mathematics lessons for advanced learners in mostly suburban school districts in one of the states in the U.S. with the highest academic achievement) wouldn't exist if United States schools were really doing so well for the brightest. See my user profile for more details.

Schools have extensive experience developing "grit". Go out to the football field or basketball court and those same knuckleheads are showing more 'grit' than anyone in the chess club. The reason they don't have 'grit' with respect to academics is because they aren't interested. Getting them interested is mainly fodder for cliche-ridden Hollywood claptrap.

It's good to see someone that is much better read on this topic than I. You comment implies that you reject a hypothesis that I find interesting and I'd like to get your thoughts on it more directly.

A blogger pointed out that American racial groups score better on PISA than their countries of origin. Asian Americans do very well compared to Asian countries, White Americans outperform every European country except for Finland, and Hispanic Americans outperform every Latin American country. Subsaharan African nations aren't included - the only real "black" country is Trinidad and Tobago, and African Americans do better than that.

I am aware of the scientific weakness of the concept of race (there is a ton of diversity that is obscured by a simple label like "black" or "white"!). But I think the data can support the statement that Finland does well because it is populated by Finns - with all the cultural advantages that Finns enjoy. Whereas America has many cultures, some with a stronger evaluation of education than others.

Surely a country that receives an immigration equal to 10% of its population over a few decades from a country that performs lower than the country's average on the PISA is going to see its PISA scores go down.

Here are some interesting graphs from his blog:

http://www.vdare.com/images/121910_ss002.jpg

http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize...

And yes, I know Sailer is racially obsessed and not a creditable source. But his analysis holds up to reason, and maybe we could check his numbers to make sure they are true? I do not read Sailer's blog, but I found a link back to this from a more mainstream source that I normally enjoy.

I'm going to be reading through your other links. I'm browsing and there is lots of great material here.

What's the accepted explanation behind the vast racial divide in scores? Is it a proxy for poverty? Is it a cultural issue? My understanding is that white + asian Americans, on PISA tests at least, perform at a level that would put them in the top 5 countries in the world, were they alone. I'm not interested in race-based theories -- those seem obviously wrong to me -- but that fact does seem to stick out. Can you explain what the prevailing theory is? Or should I be ignoring that data?

Also, do you have data to support your "rare American who speaks or reads any language besides English" gibe, or was it just offhand snark? The famous Arne Duncan bit cited people who speak more than one language in their home, and the only other data I could find was a gallup poll (suspect already) about people "able to have a conversation in a second language" -- about 25% of Americans.

EDIT: I should stress that my natural bias is irritation at arguments that try to layer European policies over American populations. Forget race -- I don't think it's interesting -- but it seems a lot easier to to design an education system for a culturally homogenous society than a culturally diverse one. This is akin to when people were exclusively blaming the American health care system for a higher mortality rate rather than, say, the massive obesity rate in this country.