Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
Are American schools getting a bad rap?
Jay Mathews
That’s what Jay Mathews of the Washington Post says. Mathews looks at the often-cited international comparisons and finds lots of apples-to-oranges problems and other issues. In some cases, popular knocks on American education, he says, are flat out wrong.
Yes, China and India put out a lot of engineers, Mathews writes. But not as many as the U.S. and the best of theirs were largely educated here. Meanwhile, the millions of poor kids in those countries would envy the quality of education offered to everyone here.
And Mathews argues that the bad American schools make up only a small portion of the nation’s public schools, most of which are doing very well. It’s the fact that the bad schools do very badly that drags the overall numbers down.
Give Mathews essay a read and let us know what you think. Are you buying his argument that the problems in American education are overblown?
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