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My son reminded them that it wasn't so long ago when teachers and politicians in America were told that Japanese schools were the future. Why can't we do as they do? Before that it was Russian schools. And since then it's been Singapore and now Finland. We were told Japanese children were obedient and hard-working, although listening to them talk it was clear that they were having virtually all the same problems we were and are moving in the same direction we are. There's a lot of educational turmoil as two "factions" battle for the future: those wanting a more rigid, centralized, exam-driven, top-down approach, and those who believe the Japanese have to move in a progressive direction if they are to become innovators as well as followers, economically and politically.

The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

America does not have a general education crisis; we have a poverty crisis. Results of an international student assessment indicate that U.S. schools with fewer than 25 percent of their students living in poverty rank first in the world among advanced industrial countries. But when you add in the scores of students from schools with high poverty rates, the United States sinks to the middle of the pack. At nearly 22 percent and rising, the child-poverty rate in the United States is the highest among wealthy nations in the world. (Poverty rates in Denmark and in Finland, which is justifiably celebrated as a top global performer on the Program for International Student Assessment exams, are below 5 percent). In New York City, the child-poverty rate climbed to 30 percent in 2010.

American teachers unions are increasingly the target of measures, authored by friends and foes alike, intended to limit their power, or even eviscerate them. Looking at this scene, one would never guess that the countries that are among the top 10 in student performance have some of the strongest teachers unions in the world. Are those unions in some way different from American teachers unions? Do unions elsewhere behave differently from American teachers unions when challenged to do what is necessary to improve student performance? To explore these questions, I compare teachers and their unions in Ontario, Canada and Finland with their U.S. counterparts.

In a post over a year ago, I discussed the common argument that dismissing the "bottom 5-10 percent" of teachers would increase U.S. test scores to the level of high-performing nations. This argument is based on a calculation by economist Eric Hanushek, which suggests that dismissing the lowest-scoring teachers based on their math value-added scores would, over a period of around ten years  (when the first cohort of students would have gone through the schooling system without the "bottom" teachers), increase U.S. math scores dramatically - perhaps to the level of high-performing nations such as Canada or Finland.* This argument is, to say the least, controversial, and it invokes the full spectrum of reactions. In my opinion, it's best seen as a policy-relevant illustration of the wide variation in test-based teacher effects, one that might suggest a potential of a course of action but can't really tell us how it will turn out in practice. To highlight this point, I want to take a look at one issue mentioned in that previous post - that is, how the instability of value-added scores over time (which Hanushek's simulation doesn't address directly) might affect the projected benefits of this type of intervention, and how this is turn might modulate one's view of the huge projected benefits. One (admittedly crude) way to do this is to use the newly-released New York City value-added data, and look at 2010 outcomes for the "bottom 10 percent" of math teachers in 2009.

McKinsey's experience with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests that this is an important gap in the U.S. debate. In a new report, "Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching ," we review the experiences of the top-performing systems in the world-Singapore, Finland, and South Korea. These countries recruit, develop, and retain the leading academic talent as one of their central education strategies, and they have achieved extraordinary results. In the United States, by contrast, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14 percent in high poverty schools, where the difficulty of attracting and retaining talented teachers is particularly acute. The report asks what it would take to emulate nations that pursue this strategy if the United States decided it was worthwhile. The report also includes new market research with nearly 1,500 current top-third students and teachers. It offers the first quantitative research-based answer to the question of how the U.S. could substantially increase the portion of new teachers each year who are higher caliber graduates, and how this could be done in a cost-effective way.

"Billionaires like privately managed schools. Parents are lured with glittering promises of getting their kids a sure ticket to college. Politicians want to appear to be champions of "school reform" with charters. But charters will not end the poverty at the root of low academic performance or transform our nation's schools into a high-performing system. The world's top-performing systems - Finland and Korea, for example - do not have charter schools. They have strong public school programs with well-prepared, experienced teachers and administrators. Charters and that other faux reform, vouchers, transform schooling into a consumer good, in which choice is the highest value."

"This paper is the answer to a question: What would the education policies and practices of the United States be if they were based on the policies and practices of the countries that now lead the world in student performance? It is adapted from the last two chapters of a book to be published in September 2011 by Harvard Education Press. Other chapters in that book describe the specific strategies pursued by Canada (focusing on Ontario), China (focusing on Shanghai), Finland, Japan and Singapore, all of which are far ahead of the United States. The research on these countries was performed by a team assembled by the National Center on Education and the Economy, at the request of the OECD."

There is much to admire in the schools that lead international assessment results. Finland, Singapore, and South Korea have nurtured a teaching profession that encourages the most able college students to consider teaching as a rewarding and noble career (Darling-Hammond, 2010). China, home to world-leading Shanghai, hosts a thousand-year tradition of reverence for teaching (Reeves, 2011).

Since 2008, the Pearson Foundation, the nonprofit arm of one of the nation's largest educational publishers, has financed free international trips - some have called them junkets - for education commissioners whose states do business with the company. When the state commissioners are asked about these trips - to Rio de Janeiro; London; Singapore; and Helsinki, Finland - they emphasize the time they spend with educators from around the world to get ideas for improving American public schools.

What is the responsibility of the state to the education of its children. What should it do in response to continued failure? The debate about privatization-about charters and vouchers and increased aid to private schools-really is a consequence of the failure of what was one thought to be the ultimate school reform: The state takeover of failing schools. One panelist, Michelle Fine of Montclair, an author and professor at City University of New York, called privatization "just an exit ramp for some people.'' Because charters and other forms of privatization don't take in all children, she said, they "cannot be considered a systematic, equitable strategy'' for reform. Just a way to help some children.

West: From PRI, Public Radio International in Princeton I'm Cornel West and this is Smiley & West. Duncan:  All of us have to move outside our comfort zone. All of us have to change.  Unions have to be continuing to evolve. School superintendents have to show more courage. Boards have to not micromanage and be supportive of the process. And when unions are showing great courage and creativity we're going to lift that up. West: My dear Brother Tavis is away this week. I will be joined by education secretary Brother Arne Duncan.  He and I have been in dialogue in his office but today we'll get him on the record. Plus, we'll go inside Finland's renowned education system with school improvement activist Brother Pasi Sahlberg.

Presentation by Pasi Sahlberg.

Michelle Rhee on improving mobility, the gap between the U.S. and other developed countries, and why she's optimistic.

Finally, and just to prove that asking for evidence does not mean I am anti-charter, Joe Nocera's op-ed piece in The New York Times on the success of the partnership between The Learning Community, a charter school, and the Central Falls, Rhode Island, elementary schools. If ever there was a model for how charter schools are to work - successful with the same students the pubic schools have and sharing their results with public school partners - this is it.

Harvard professor Tony Wagner explains how the nation achieved extraordinary successes by de-emphasizing testing

The country's achievements in education have other nations doing their homework

What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission. Their own teachers design their tests, so teachers know how their students are doing and what they need. There is a national curriculum-broad guidelines to assure that all students have a full education-but it is not prescriptive. Teachers have extensive responsibility for designing curriculum and pedagogy in their school. They have a large degree of autonomy, because they are professionals. Admission to teacher education programs at the end of high school is highly competitive; only one in 10-or even fewer-qualify for teacher preparation programs. All Finnish teachers spend five years in a rigorous program of study, research, and practice, and all of them finish with a masters' degree. Teachers are prepared for all eventualities, including students with disabilities, students with language difficulties, and students with other kinds of learning issues.