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The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way Paperback – July 29, 2014

by Amanda Ripley (Author)

1,881 ratings

Editors' pick Best Nonfiction

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How do other countries create “smarter” kids? What is it like to be a child in the world’s new education superpowers? The Smartest Kids in the World “gets well beneath the glossy surfaces of these foreign cultures and manages to make our own culture look newly strange....The question is whether the startling perspective provided by this masterly book can also generate the will to make changes” (The New York Times Book Review).

In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they’ve never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy. Inspired to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, trades his high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland.

Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many “smart” kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Ripley] gets well beneath the glossy surfaces of these foreign cultures and manages to make our own culture look newly strange…The question is whether the startling perspective provided by this masterly book can also generate the will to make changes.” ― New York Times Book Review

“Compelling . . . What is Poland doing right? And what is America doing wrong? Amanda Ripley, an American journalist, seeks to answer such questions in The Smartest Kids in the World, her fine new book about the schools that are working around the globe ….Ms. Ripley packs a startling amount of insight in this slim book.” ― The Economist

“[T]he most illuminating reporting I have ever seen on the differences between schools in America and abroad.” ― Jay Mathews, education columnist, The Washington Post

“[The Smartest Kids in the World is] a riveting new book….Ripley’s policy recommendations are sensible and strong….The American school reform debate has been desperately in need of such no-nonsense advice, which firmly puts matters of intellect back at the center of education where they belong.” ― The Daily Beast

“The Smartest Kids in the World should be on the back-to-school reading list of every parent, educator and policymaker interested in understanding why students in other countries outperform U.S. students on international tests.” -- US News & World Report

“Gripping….Ripley's characters are fascinating, her writing style is accessible, and her observations are fresh….If you're interested in how to improve public schools, read Ripley's book today.” -- The Huffington Post

“In riveting prose...this timely and inspiring book offers many insights into how to improve America’s mediocre school system.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"If you care about education, you must read this book. By recounting what three intrepid kids learned from the rest of the world, it shows what we can learn about how to fix our schools. Ripley's delightful storytelling has produced insights that are both useful and inspiring." -- Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin

“This book gives me hope that we can create education systems of equity and rigor—if we heed the lessons from top performing countries and focus more on preparing teachers than on punishing them." -- Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

“This is a no-nonsense, no-excuses book about how we can improve outcomes for all kids, from the poorest to the wealthiest. It avoids platitudes and ideology and relies instead on the experiences of students.” -- Joel Klein, CEO, Amplify, and former chancellor, New York Department of Education

“Amanda Ripley observes with rare objectivity and depth. She finds a real and complex world ‘over there’—schools with flaws of their own but also real and tangible lessons about how to do better by our kids. The Smartest Kids in the World gave me more insights, as a parent and as an educator, than just about anything else I’ve read in a while.” -- Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion

“Such an important book! Amanda Ripley lights the path to engaging our next generation to meet a different bar. She makes an enormous contribution to the national and global discussion about what must be done to give all our children the education they need to invent the future.” -- Wendy Kopp, founder and chair, Teach For America, and CEO, Teach For All

"The Smartest Kids in the World is a must read for anyone concerned about the state of American public education. By drawing on experiences, successes, and failures in education systems in the highest-performing countries across the globe, Amanda Ripley lays out a course for what we must do to dramatically improve our nation's schools.” -- Michelle Rhee, Founder and CEO of StudentsFirst

“Ripley’s stirring investigation debunks many tenets of current education reform.” -- BookPage

“In lively, accessible prose….Ripley’s book looks at the data from a new perspective. Those stunned parents and teachers in New York State and elsewhere would do well to read this book first if they are inclined to blame their children’s/students’ poor results on a new test.” -- OECD “Education Today” Blog

“[Ripley] is a compelling storyteller who deftly plaits humorous anecdotes and hard data to whip you in the face with her findings.” -- Kristen Levithan ― Brain, Child Magazine

“Ripley’s evaluation of education in a changing world is revealing and thought-provoking.” ― Rocky Mountain Telegram

“A good read . . . . If you want to understand what goes on in other countries’ education systems, read [The Smartest Kids in the World].” ― Coshocton Tribune

About the Author

Amanda Ripley is the New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World, High Conflict, and The Unthinkable. She writes for The Atlantic, Politico, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

prologue

For most of my career at Time and other magazines, I worked hard to avoid education stories. If my editors asked me to write about schools or tests, I countered with an idea about terrorism, plane crashes, or a pandemic flu. That usually worked.

I didn’t say so out loud, but education stories seemed, well, kind of soft. The articles tended to be headlined in chalkboard font and festooned with pencil doodles. They were brimming with good intentions but not much evidence. The people quoted were mostly adults; the kids just turned up in the photos, smiling and silent.

Then, an editor asked me to write about a controversial new leader of Washington, D.C.’s public schools. I didn’t know much about Michelle Rhee, except that she wore stiletto heels and tended to say “crap” a lot in interviews. So, I figured it would be a good story, even if it meant slipping into the fog of education.

But something unexpected happened in the fog. I spent months talking to kids, parents, and teachers, as well as people who have been creatively researching education in new ways. Pretty soon I realized that Rhee was interesting, but she was not the biggest mystery in the room.

The real mystery was this: Why were some kids learning so much—and others so very little?

Education was suddenly awash in data; we knew more than ever about what was happening—or failing to happen—from one neighborhood or classroom to the next. And it didn’t add up. Everywhere I went I saw nonsensical ups and downs in what kids knew: in rich neighborhoods and poor, white neighborhoods and black, public schools and private. The national data revealed the same peaks and valleys, like a sprawling, nauseating roller coaster. The dips and turns could be explained in part by the usual narratives of money, race, or ethnicity. But not entirely. Something else was going on, too.

Over the next few years, as I wrote more stories about education, I kept stumbling over this mystery. At Kimball Elementary School in Washington, D.C., I saw fifth graders literally begging their teacher to let them solve a long division problem on the chalkboard. If they got the answer right, they would pump their fists and whisper-shout, “Yes!” This was a neighborhood where someone got murdered just about every week, a place with 18 percent unemployment.

In other places, I saw kids bored out of their young minds, kids who looked up when a stranger like me walked into the room, watching to see if I would, please God, create some sort of distraction to save them from another hour of nothingness.

For a while, I told myself that this was the variation you’d expect from one neighborhood to the next, from one principal or teacher to another. Some kids got lucky, I supposed, but most of the differences that mattered had to do with money and privilege.

Then one day I saw this chart, and it blew my mind.

The United States might have remained basically flat over time, but that was the exception, it turned out. Look at Finland! It had rocketed from the bottom of the world to the top, without pausing for breath. And what was going on in Norway, right next door, which seemed to be slip sliding into the abyss, despite having virtually no child poverty? And there was Canada, careening up from mediocrity to the heights of Japan. If education was a function of culture, could culture change that dramatically—that fast?

Worldwide, children’s skills rose and fell in mysterious and hopeful ways, sometimes over short periods of time. The mystery I’d noticed in Washington, D.C., got far more interesting when viewed from outer space. The vast majority of countries did not manage to educate all their kids to high levels, not even all of their better-off kids. Compared to most countries, the United States was typical, not much better nor much worse. But, in a small number of countries, really just a handful of eclectic nations, something incredible was happening. Virtually all kids were learning critical thinking skills in math, science, and reading. They weren’t just memorizing facts; they were learning to solve problems and adapt. That is to say, they were training to survive in the modern economy.

How to explain it? American kids were better off, on average, than the typical child in Japan, New Zealand, or South Korea, yet they knew far less math than those children. Our most privileged teenagers had highly educated parents and attended the richest schools in the world, yet they ranked eighteenth in math compared to their privileged peers around the world, scoring well below affluent kids in New Zealand, Belgium, France, and Korea, among other places. The typical child in Beverly Hills performed below average, compared to all kids in Canada (not some other distant land, Canada!). A great education by the standards of suburban America looked, from afar, exceedingly average.

At first, I told myself to resist the hype. Did it really matter if we ranked number one in the world in education outcomes? Or even number ten? Our elementary students did fine on international tests, thank you very much, especially in reading. The problems arose in math and science, and they became most obvious when our kids grew into teenagers. That’s when American students scored twenty-sixth on a test of critical thinking in math, below average for the developed world. But, so what? Our teenagers had performed at or below average on international tests for as long as anyone had been counting. It had not mattered much to our economy so far; why should it matter in the future?

The United States was a big, diverse country. We had other advantages that overwhelmed our K-12 mediocrity, right? We still had world-class research universities, and we continued to invest more in research and development than any other nation. It was easier to start a business here than in most places on earth. The values of hard work and self-sufficiency coursed like electricity through the United States, just as they always had.

But everywhere I went as a reporter, I saw reminders that the world had changed. The 2,300 days that our kids spent in school before high-school graduation mattered more than ever before. In Oklahoma, the CEO of the company that makes McDonald’s apple pies told me she had trouble finding enough Americans to handle modern factory jobs—during a recession. The days of rolling out dough and packing pies in boxes were over. She needed people who could read, solve problems, and communicate what had happened on their shift, and there weren’t enough of them coming out of Oklahoma’s high schools and community colleges.

The head of Manpower, a staffing and recruiting firm with offices in eighty-two countries, said one of the hardest jobs to fill anywhere was the sales job. Once upon a time, a salesperson had to have thick skin and a good golf game. Over the years, however, products and financial markets had become wildly more complex, and information had become available to everyone, including the customer. Relationships were no longer everything. To succeed, salespeople had to understand the increasingly sophisticated and customizable products they were selling almost as well as the engineers who worked on them.

Rather suddenly, academic mediocrity had become a heavier legacy to bear. Without a high-school diploma, you couldn’t work as a garbage collector in New York City; you couldn’t join the Air Force. Yet a quarter of our kids still walked out of high school and never came back.

Not long ago, zero countries had a better high-school graduation rate than the United States; by 2009, about twenty countries did. In an era in which knowledge mattered more than ever, why did our kids know less than they should? How much of our problems could be blamed on diversity, poverty, or the vastness of the country? Were our weaknesses mostly failures of policy or of culture, of politicians or of parents?

We told ourselves that we were at least raising more creative children, the kind who might not excel in electrical engineering but who had the audacity to speak up, to invent, and to redefine what was possible. But was there a way to know if we were right?

the mythical nordic robots

Education pundits had worked mightily to explain different countries’ wildly different results. They had visited faraway schools on choreographed junkets. They’d debriefed politicians and principals and generated PowerPoints for the folks back home. However, their conclusions were maddeningly abstract.

Take Finland, for example, which ranked at the top of the world. American educators described Finland as a silky paradise, a place where all the teachers were admired and all the children beloved. They insisted that Finland had attained this bliss partly because it had very low rates of child poverty, while the United States had high rates. According to this line of reasoning, we could never fix our schools until we fixed poverty.

The poverty narrative made intuitive sense. The child poverty rate in the United States was about 20 percent, a national disgrace. Poor kids lived with the kind of grinding stress that children should not have had to manage. They learned less at home, on average, and needed more help at school.

The mystery was not so simply solved, however. If poverty was the main problem, then what to make of Norway? A Nordic welfare state with high taxes, universal health care, and abundant natural resources, Norway enjoyed, like Finland, less than 6 percent child poverty, one of the lowest rates in the world. Norway spent about as much as we did on education, which is to say, a fortune, relative to the rest of the world. And, yet, Norwegian kids performed just as unimpressively as our own kids on an international test of scientific literacy in 2009. Something was amiss in Norway, and it wasn’t poverty.

Meanwhile, the Finns themselves offered vague explanations for their success. Education, I was told, had always been valued in Finland, going back hundreds of years. That explained it. But, then, why did only 10 percent of children finish high school in Finland in the 1950s? Why were there huge gaps between what rural and urban kids knew and could do in Finland in the 1960s? Back then, Finland’s passion for education had seemed rather uneven. What had happened?

At the same time, President Barack Obama and his education secretary said that they envied the South Korean education system, lauding its highly respected teachers and its demanding parents. On the surface at least, Korea appeared to have nothing in common with Finland. The Korean system was driven by testing, and Korean teenagers spent more time studying than our kids spent awake.

Listening to this cacophony, I kept wondering what it would be like to actually be a kid in these mystical lands of high scores, zero dropouts, and college graduates. Were Finnish kids really the Nordic robots that I kept reading about? Did Korean kids think they were getting such a sweet deal? What about their parents? No one talked about them. Didn’t parents matter even more than teachers?

I decided to spend a year traveling around the world on a field trip to the smart-kid countries. I wanted to go see these little bots for myself. What were they doing at ten on a Tuesday morning? What did their parents say to them when they got home? Were they happy?

field agents

To meet the Nordic robots, I needed sources on the inside: kids who could see and do things that I could never do on my own. So, I recruited a team of young experts to help.

During the 2010–11 school year, I followed three remarkable American teenagers as they experienced smarter countries in real life. These kids volunteered to be part of this project as they headed off for year-long foreign-exchange adventures, far from their families. I visited them in their foreign posts, and we kept in close touch.

Their names were Kim, Eric, and Tom, and they served as my escorts through borrowed homes and adopted cafeterias, volunteer fixers in a foreign land. Kim traveled from Oklahoma to Finland, Eric from Minnesota to South Korea, and Tom from Pennsylvania to Poland. They came from different parts of America, and they left for different reasons. I met Kim, Eric, and Tom with the help of AFS,

Youth for Understanding, and the Rotary Clubs, outfits that run exchange programs around the world.

I chose these Americans as advisers, but they turned out to be straight-up protagonists. They did not stand for all American kids, and their experiences could not reflect the millions of realities in their host countries. But, in their stories, I found the life that was missing from the policy briefings.

Kim, Eric, and Tom kept me honest. They didn’t want to talk about tenure policies or Tiger Moms; unburdened by the hang-ups of adults, they talked a lot about other kids, the most powerful influences in teenagers’ lives. All day long, they contemplated the full arc of their new lives, from their host families’ kitchens to their high-school bathrooms. They had much to say.

In each country, my American field agents introduced me to other kids, parents, and teachers, who became co-conspirators in this quest. In Korea, for example, Eric sent me to his friend Jenny, a teenager who had spent half her childhood in America and the other half in Korea. Jenny, an accidental expert on education, patiently answered questions that Eric could not. (Video interviews with my student sources can be found on the website for this book at www.AmandaRipley.com.)

To put the conclusions of these informants in context, I surveyed hundreds of other exchange students about their experiences in the United States and abroad. Unlike almost everyone else who proffers an opinion about education in other countries, these young people had first-hand experience. I asked them about their parents, schools, and lives in both places. Their answers changed the way I thought about our problems and our strengths. They knew what distinguished an American education, for better and for worse, and they did not mind telling.

When I finally came back to the United States, I felt more optimistic, not less. It was obvious that we’d been wasting a lot of time and money on things that didn’t matter; our schools and families seemed confused, more than anything else, lacking the clarity of purpose I saw in Finland, Korea, and Poland. Yet I also didn’t see anything anywhere that I didn’t think our parents, kids, and teachers could do just as well or better one day.

What I did see were whole generations of kids getting the kind of education all children deserve. They didn’t always get it gracefully, but they got it. Despite politics, bureaucracy, antiquated union contracts and parental blind spots—the surprisingly universal plagues of all education systems everywhere—it could be done. And other countries could help show us the way.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 29, 2014
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 145165443X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451654431
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #36,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9 in Gifted Students Education
- #14 in Education Assessment (Books)
- #17 in History of Education

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Amanda Ripley

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Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author and an investigative journalist for the Atlantic, Politico, the Washington Post and other outlets. Her books include HIGH CONFLICT: Why We Get Trapped & How We Get Out; THE SMARTEST KIDS IN THE WORLD--and How They Got That Way; and THE UNTHINKABLE: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why. Her work has helped Time win two National Magazine Awards. She writes about human behavior and change.

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Customers find the book thought-provoking, revealing deep truths about education, and appreciate its proper balance between readability and depth. The writing style is well-crafted, with one customer noting its gripping prose, while the case study method of storytelling is effective. Customers describe it as a well-researched look that's eye-opening, fast-paced, and hard to put down. They value how it provides insight into parenting, with one review highlighting its focus on high-achieving families.

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375 customers mention "Thought provoking"347 positive28 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and informative, revealing deep truths about education through well-researched content.

"...Amanda Ripley’s marvelous book suggests that we know more about good teaching and real learning than we may suppose...." Read more

"...Via these American kids, we get a first-hand view of public high schools in the three countries, plus we get to know the American kids, themselves,..." Read more

"...Here are some quotes in the book that are valuable for educating young kids: "Education was a national treasure." ~~~page 116 "..." Read more

"...When their teachers are smart, creative, and allowed to make decisions based upon the needs of the students in their classes, all students truly do..." Read more

269 customers mention "Readability"262 positive7 negative

Customers find the book readable and engaging, with one describing it as a fun and fast-paced read, and several noting it's a must-read for American educators.

"...stories and the data frame and interpret each other, clearly and effectively...." Read more

"This is a great book for folks who are interested in the state of American public schools, as compared with schools ranked higher than the U.S. in..." Read more

"...passionate about education, excited about education, this book is a treasure to behold." Read more

"...Just putting it out there. So, yes. I liked the book, I liked the investigation into this topic that Ripley did when preparing for the..." Read more

87 customers mention "Writing style"87 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, finding it well-written, easy to read, and concise, with one customer noting it is written with compassion and candor.

"...The stories and the data frame and interpret each other, clearly and effectively...." Read more

"...As an English teacher, I really appreciate the captivating writing style used by Amanda. Here are a few of them: "..." Read more

"This is a very well written narrative on why certain countries' students perform so well scholastically...." Read more

"...The author is a journalist and she makes it so easy to understand the issue that teachers and parent face...." Read more

49 customers mention "Storytelling"49 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's storytelling approach, noting that the case study method effectively weaves together real personal experiences.

"...Blending extensive data and focused personal stories, Amanda Ripley’s marvelous book suggests that we know more about good teaching and real..." Read more

"Amanda Ripley has an amazing story to tell and she tells it in a brilliant format, tracing the lives and experiences of several exchange students..." Read more

"...That is no hype. This book is a bone-rattling narrative of how America has lost her way (and edge) in the global education race as the education..." Read more

"...job of synthesizing the major trends out there and laying it out in a simple narrative...." Read more

18 customers mention "Look"18 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's well-researched approach and find it eye-opening, with one customer noting its direct writing style.

"...Pretty cool, huh? There is a wealth of interesting information in each of their stories, which makes it impractical to detail here...." Read more

"...The descriptions of the students' experiences are vivid and captivating, and Ripley leaves you as a reader to draw your own conclusions about what..." Read more

"An inspiring look at how education system should be for American students in every state...." Read more

"Very enlightening look at some real problems with American education that do not point to teachers or students so much as our culture as a whole...." Read more

15 customers mention "Pacing"15 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's pacing, describing it as fast-paced and riveting, with one customer noting its clear reasons for why America lags behind in education.

"This is quick and easy read...." Read more

"Riveting and eye opening. The author leads us into territory often populated by passionately uninformed arm chair educators...." Read more

"...Overall, it was a fast read that challenged me to wonder about what could be!" Read more

"I found this book riveting yet so complex because it's about a topic and stories that dint have Disney-sequel endings...." Read more

15 customers mention "Parenting"15 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate how the book provides insights into parenting, with one customer noting that each child is unique.

"...And parental involvement is very important, but not the parental involvement that comes from proctoring the class trip, or coaching the volleyball..." Read more

"...The equality is trained and motivated teachers, dedicated parents; reading to toddlers is significant in their intellectual development, and most..." Read more

"...This book is a must read for teachers, and parents...." Read more

"...the importance of parental involvement in our children's' education..." Read more

14 customers mention "Difficulty to put down"14 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and hard to put down.

"...the problems and provides the real solutions, which are usually quite simple...." Read more

"...The solution is relatively simple, but extraordinarily complicated...." Read more

"...of them; clear, concise, with a human element that make it easy for even non-educators/parents to relate to...." Read more

"...It is well-written and an easy, engaging read, thanks largely to the fact that the author follows several foreign exchange students as they sample..." Read more

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gary alan chamberlain
We Know How It's Done, But We Refuse To Do It
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2013
Verified Purchase

Sometimes I think great teachers represent a kind of genius—a command and love of their subject by which they inspire in students a vision of its power and beauty. But maybe student geniuses simply resonate to a subject that engages their hearts, and even mediocre (or worse) teachers can’t deter them from their quest. For our primary and secondary schools, however, the real question is how we optimize what most students learn, with competent teachers to take them there. Blending extensive data and focused personal stories, Amanda Ripley’s marvelous book suggests that we know more about good teaching and real learning than we may suppose.

Real learning means that graduates can “read, solve problems, and communicate what happened on their shift” (p. 5), and that’s for line workers who make the pies you get at McDonald’s. That American employer, and others, aren’t shifting jobs overseas only because of wages and benefits but often because they can’t find high school graduates who can do the work. “Better” jobs demand more; diesel mechanics must know geometry and physics, read blueprints and technical manuals, and understand percentages and ratios. Sales people have to comprehend engineering or chemistry or medicine (e.g. pharmaceutical reps) to communicate with their clients. Finance requires a command not only of markets and regulations but of financial analysis, statistics and probability. Ripley notes the extremely high recent correlation between nations’ educational accomplishments and economic growth, and America is slipping badly.

The data to my mind are irrefutable (and, to paraphrase a quote in the book, without the ability to understand and process complex data, in today’s world you’re just another schmuck with an opinion). In language and science we score poorly in relation to almost all other developed nations, but our mathematics outcomes are execrable—in the bottom five of around thirty nations. It’s not about money; we’re second in the world (!) in just one category, per-pupil expense. It’s not about students studying longer. True, Korea’s schooling sounds to me like an industrial-strength nightmare—long school days followed by homework followed by hours in costly private academies followed by more hours of homework. (Korea’s students, says Ripley, spend more time on schoolwork than American kids spend awake.) But Finnish students do less homework than Americans and have far more free time (with much less scheduling and supervision from their parents) while leading the world. Nor is it about the advantages of less diverse cultures or more prosperous families. Race and family background matter, says Ripley—but how much they matter varies greatly, and we’re just dreadful by this measure, too (poor kids in Poland are poorer than poor kids here but do much better in school). Conversely, Norway (with all the “advantages” of Finland and much higher spending) has fallen behind dramatically, now trailing us and all other nations among the fifteen with long-term data.

The heart of Ripley’s presentation lies in extended stories of three high-school students: Kim (from Oklahoma, who went to Finland for a school year), Tom (from Pennsylvania, to Poland), and Eric (from Minnesota, to Korea). She corresponded with them and traveled to interview them, their own and their exchange families, and the teachers and education administrators here and in the host communities. The stories and the data frame and interpret each other, clearly and effectively. America’s schools would do well to adopt “best practices” wherever we find them (as American companies do with their competitors), and I would suggest three benchmarks, from the Finns in particular.

First, we need very demanding requirements for teachers. In Finland it starts with admission to one of a handful of colleges for teacher training, with admission standards “on the order of MIT” and prestige comparable to admission to med school. Then come six years of training. Once the graduates begin teaching, they have much more accountability for results (national textbook standards and testing) but also much greater autonomy and flexibility in how they do their jobs (after all, their competence and commitment can be presumed). Second, schools, homes, and communities have high expectations for students. ALL students (“tracking” by “ability” turns out to be counter-productive and debilitating). Apart from clinical cognitive disorders, the hypothesis is that every kid can learn. The students see it happening, have a high estimate of themselves and each other (and they respect their teachers’ preparation and competence), and contribute peer pressure (and mutual encouragement) to the hopes their families and schools have for them. Third, every student is expected to—fail. Frequently, but not finally. Nearly everyone finishes high school. (We used to lead the world in graduation rates, but have dropped to around 20th, with a 20% dropout rate). Their diplomas demonstrate their fundamental competencies. But high standards and expectations mean that students have to be told when they’re not measuring up. “If the work is hard, routine failure is the only way to learn.” Then kids also learn to pick themselves (and each other) up, get help, dig in, and make it work. Praise and affirmation are effective only when they are “specific, authentic, and rare”.

I tremble to consider the cultural and political obstacles in our way. How can we get past our shibboleth (“hard-wired for inefficiency”, crossed purposes and compromised standards) of local control? How many of our public schools hire people more as coaches than teachers, with a Master’s in Phys. Ed. and (at best) an undergraduate minor in their teaching field? We do have some good teachers here, and Ripley has found a few of them; why can’t we learn from them as well as from other countries? In the book’s most moving story for me, an American primary student asks her teacher why he “gave” her an F in math, and he replies that an F was what she earned. Callous and harsh? Not as he works with her and believes in her, and she responds by doing the homework and forming a study group with other pupils. With a C as her year-end grade and a new sense of her own prowess and potential, she says to her teacher through her tears, “I cannot believe I did this.”

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George Fulmore
Fascinating Insight on Worldwide Education
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2014
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This is a great book for folks who are interested in the state of American public schools, as compared with schools ranked higher than the U.S. in international testing.

From the book, I learned about the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which, per Wikipedia, is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.

This, as it turns out, is how we find out that students in the U.S. ranked 24th in reading, 28th in science and 36th in math in 2012, in comparison with about 65 participating countries. Apparently, we were 17th, 23rd and 21st, respectively, in these rankings in 2009. And, back in 2000, when all this got started, we were 15th, 16th and 20th, respectively. A trend is obvious here.

In 2012, Shanghai, China, was the winner in all three categories, but the author choses South Korea, Poland and Finland as the democratically ruled countries that he trusts best to reflect equality with U.S. social components. Each of these three countries ranks very high in the international testing, each clearly higher than the U.S.

The author sets out to find an American high school exchange student for each country. Using the three students, she collects data and experiences to build comparisons. Via these American kids, we get a first-hand view of public high schools in the three countries, plus we get to know the American kids, themselves, pretty well. Pretty cool, huh?

There is a wealth of interesting information in each of their stories, which makes it impractical to detail here. So, what I want to do in the rest of this review is to give you some of more interesting tidbits I got along the way from the book. Then, I will go to the author's conclusions as to why U.S. students fall behind students from other countries.

Some interesting tidbits:
* The Korean public schools are a mess. The kids come primarily to sleep most of the day. Their learning, it turns out, happens mostly after their public schools close for the day. The kids then head out for private tutoring schools, where they may spend another eight or so hours in what sounds like grueling, exhausting "educational" experiences. No wonder the kids sleep during the day. But they do score well in international testing!
* Testing for high school seniors in most Asian countries is very, very intense, so intense that the same test is given on the same day for all seniors in the country. Airlines, commuters and businesses are urged to reduce any kinds of noise or distractions during the testing period. But after the results are given, and the kids find out if they are accepted to the best schools or not, this pressure cooker is off, for the most part. In college, the kids do not take their studies that seriously, nor do the professors. No, the pressure is to prepare for the single test in high school, as if the results of it will determine their options for the rest of their lives.
* American schools are crazy for sporting events, especially football. Nothing like this happens in any of the other countries that were profiled. There, sports are done via clubs outside of the schools, if at all. This element, in itself, is a huge variation for the American schools, which pride themselves on school spirit, supporting athletic competition.
* Most of the higher performing countries are more selective in choosing their teachers. For the most part, the best students in college are selected. In contrast, American high school teachers tend not to be high performers in college.
* Countries smaller than the U.S. are in a better position to control the training and development of their public school teachers. In Finland, for example, private high schools are not allowed, nor are charter schools. Finland does not encourage variances in the levels of excellence amongst its schools No, all the Finish schools are to be at the same level of excellence. In the U.S., states control their own training, oversight and curriculum of and for their teachers. And private high schools and charter schools are currently all the rage.
* South Korean parents spend a ton of money on private tutoring for their kids, to the point that the Korean government tries to limit the excess. And, one of the most successful leaders of the private tutoring schools has said that he wants to devote his life in the future to the elimination of the private tutoring system. He wants to improve the public schools, instead.

At the end of the book, the author gives us some insights into her struggles in writing the book. First, she admits that trying to make sense out of such a complex subject, even involving just three countries vs. the U.S., was overwhelming. Second, she tells us that, as a journalist by profession, she does not normally intend to lead readers to conclusions. She would rather report what she finds, then let readers make their own conclusions.

But she seems to be compelled to give us some reasons why high school students in other countries are doing better in the worldwide testing than are American students. Her reasons include:
* Students in other countries tend to be more engaged and to work harder.
* Parents in other countries are more interested in educational progress than in excellence in sports or the arts or such in their public schools.
* Schools in other countries invest far less in technology that does the U.S., which, perhaps, allows them to spend more money on teachers' and principal's salaries, instead.
* Other countries have better teachers and principals, overall.
* Students in other countries tend to better understand the consequences of failure; students in the U.S. tend to be told that they are doing better than they actually are, compared with students from other countries.
* Overall, schools in the better-performing countries are harder than schools in the U.S. And, overall, the students in the other countries learn to have more persistence and drive than their counterparts in the U.S.

Personally, I do not find the list above to be earth-shaking or alarming. I do find it educational, so to speak. But as Will Rogers famous remark goes, "The schools ain't what they used to be, and never was." The quest to be the best tends to be a never-ending, frequently redefined endeavor.

I also like the adage I heard somewhere that "America produces the worst 16-year-olds and the best 30-year-olds, and no one understands why." In other words, as an educator, myself, I'm in this for the long haul. I can always learn; but I tend to think that no one, anywhere, at any time, has all the answers.

American will rise again. I guarantee it!

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MANUELA J. CISNEROS
Muy interesante
Reviewed in Spain on August 7, 2017
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Muy interesante para el profesorado en general para hacernos reflexionar sobre nuestros estilos educativos y para qué enseñamos, y analizar qué cambios debemos hacer para caminar hacia una escuela de calidad

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GuilhermeX88
Great insight at education processes
Reviewed in Brazil on June 20, 2023
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Great reading for education professionals and polycy makers.

As a parent, it was insightfull as critical thinking has mostly one cause: rigor to make it or fail. Also that teachers quality is the key to profiecience at a fair system which qualify students progress.

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Marie-Josée Decker
The Smartest Kids in the World
Reviewed in Germany on December 18, 2013
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Eine aufschlussreiche, oftmals ernüchternde und dennoch spannende Reise in die Welt der Erziehung. Nicht nur für Lehrer und Eltern absolut empfehlenswert!

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Flatlander11
An excellent lesson on what works in education and what doesn't
Reviewed in Canada on October 26, 2013
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Ripley found a unique way of figuring out what to do with American's failing education system: find out what works in other countries through the eyes of American students. She followed three exchange students, one to Finland, one to Poland and one to South Korea. She chose these countries because they had scored the highest (or improved their scores the most) in international tests.

While each system is radically different, what she found in common was that they all found a way to get rid of bad teachers. Either by ensuring they don't enter the system (Finland), reforming the system to weed out underperformers (Poland) or by using a private system which is accountable to students and parents (South Korea).

Ripley is a true reporter. She reports what she saw, and lets the reader make up his or her mind. An enjoyable read, and an even better lesson for America's educators.

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Liam Kelleher
An awesome piece of journalism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2015
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Amanda Ripley begins this book explaining she is a meagre journalist who knows little of the parameters which define an efficient and well run educational system. Yet at the end of this book, she leaves the reader with an impression that she is close to mastering the matter such is the diligent manner in which she conveys information.

In the second chapter of this book Amanda Ripley spends many overly drawn out pages describing the life of a poor American student Kim, who is soon to be transplanted to Finland. This chapter seems overly detailed on the feelings of Kim and I feared that this book was going to be an emotive journalistic and anecdotal book with little int he way of facts to back it up. Gladly I was wrong. Amanda Ripley weaves both journalism and hard fact into an incredibly enjoyable book on immense flaws of the American education system and the superiority of the education in South Korea, Poland and Finland. However she translates a work-life balance to her arguments by demonstrating the inverse of sporting superiority of the States versus the soft South Koreans.

This book will leave one with a sense of what makes an education system great (mainly fantastic teachers) and what countries around the world need to do to ameliorate their own education systems in order to avoid The Great Degeneration as covered by Niall Ferguson.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Muy interesante

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5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent lesson on what works in education and what doesn't

5.0 out of 5 stars An awesome piece of journalism

We Know How It's Done, But We Refuse To Do It

Fascinating Insight on Worldwide Education

Muy interesante

Great insight at education processes

The Smartest Kids in the World

An excellent lesson on what works in education and what doesn't

An awesome piece of journalism