Everything.

If you hunt for the ECRP study, or a similar one, you'll find that when we're talking parent expectations we're talking home support and the expectation that the child will succeed according to the school's determiners. In other words, a parent who has learned what the standards are (insert self-yanking smiley here) and is encouraging their kid to, I dunno, improve their descriptive writing skills is not necessarily helping their kid as much as a parent who doesn't understand them but simply refuses to accept things like low grades and misbehavior, and who expects studying to continue outside of school. If I remember right, parental support in times where discipline was required was the most influential....it's also a place where the US gets slaughtered by countries who rank above us. We are the record holders for lawsuits designed to contest or repeal disciplinary actions, which is not a very noble title.

I struggle more with gullibility, personally. Things like telling mom that Jamie is missing four assignments, and when they haven't shown up 2 weeks later I call again and she goes "Oh, well, he told me he turned those in." "Was he able to show you my signature in his planner, like we talked about?" "No. He said you told him you were too busy to sign it."

A few things I was going to include there, but forgot:

1. School age children spend 70% of their waking hours (including weekends and holidays) outside of school.

2. I forgot to mention this with the above details, but family participation in education was twice as predictive of student academic success as family socioeconomic status.

3. Struggling students who are put in highly effective schools but experience low parental involvement tend to continue struggling, while struggling students put in low achieving schools but provided with high family support and expectations tend to improve significantly.

The amount of information covered in an education today is 27% greater than it was just 4 years ago. And that doesn't count the amount of information now available to curious minds. I showed a student Wikimapia today and ended up with no less than 5 others coming up to get the addy. And these are 12 year olds.

Our students' main Science project for the year is to invent something that makes their life easier using a series of simple and complex machines. They have to design, propose, request materials, build, and present it (showing that it does, in fact work). When I was in 7th grade, I looked in a microscope. And I drew what I saw.

However, it is worth noting that American upper-middle class students outperform the entire world minus Singapore (which is the world leader), where the very poorest students underperform almost everyone. Furthermore, these performance differences remain when programs are instituted that bus poor students to the wealthy-area schools, or allow them access to private institutions...and students from wealthy families perform just as incredibly no matter what school you send them to. In other words, the defining factor here isn't the schools, it's social class...and we need to figure out why before we do anything at all with our schools.

If you choose private school, be careful which one. A study called "Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling," which is fairly indicative of other studies, found that when you discount the effects of special ed scores and other notable factors, private schools score equally with public schools in reading. Furthermore, the average private school actually scored below the average public school on math tests. As I said, this was indicative of other studies, but it's notable because it is by far the largest attempted on the subject.

I'm overpaid. I've got my classroom set up in a way that makes it very much driven by the students. They identify their weaknesses, interests, and strengths as writers and then using that to select projects, assist each other's work, coach each other through challenges, and even present findings to the class. They operate a scientific study laboratory and host a school-wide Wiki. I spend the first month preparing and training, and after that I'm bored to tears. Best thing is, I almost never have any trouble with missing work and I never have behavior problems. And these are poverty-level middle schoolers.

I'm definately one of those on the side that says teachers don't need to be paid more

When people talk about education reform they think of more money, or tougher standards, or more computers, when what they should be talking about is the fact that education as a system has remained fairly unchanged over the last 130 years in spite of the growing amount of cognitive research, long-term behavioral studies, and child psychology documentation that proves it faulty. And that remains truer for private schools than public ones, where at least you have things like magnet schools and extended opportunity buildings.

It's interesting to me how, in America, when we look at the success other countries have with education, one of the first questions we have is whether it's a federal government thing, local government thing, or private education issue. I'm far more interested in what these places have in common with us, and what major differences I can find. It seems to offer far more interesting results.

About Finland's education system

The Finnish education system is an egalitarian Nordic system. Attendance is compulsory from ages 7 to 16, and free meals are served to pupils at primary and secondary levels. The first nine years of education (primary and secondary school) are compulsory, and the pupils go to their local school. In the OECD's international assessment of student performance, PISA, Finland has consistently been among the highest scorers worldwide; in 2003 Finnish 15-year-olds came first in reading literacy, mathematics, and science, while placing second in problem solving, worldwide. In tertiary education, the World Economic Forum ranks Finland #1 in the world in the enrollment and quality and #2 in math and science education.

There are private schools, and they are given a state grant comparable to the state grant given to the municipal school of same size. However, even in private schools, the use of tuition fees is strictly prohibited. Because of this, existing private comprehensive schools are mostly faith-based or Waldorf schools.

While nearly 100% of Finland's population graduates from the primary schooling that ends at 16, only about 50% graduate from the trade-focused secondary schools.

Disruptive behavior and violence are uncommon in Finnish schools, and parental involvement in the system ranks above other Western countries in every category. If you're ever there, swing by a public Junior High. A majority of students ride their bikes to school, and fewer than 7% say they lock their bikes up during the day.




About Japan's

More than 99% of children are enrolled in elementary school. All children enter first grade at age six, and starting school is considered a very important event in a child's life.

Virtually all elementary education takes place in public schools; less than 1% of the schools are private. Private schools tended to be costly, although the rate of cost increases in tuition for these schools had slowed in the 1980s.

Junio High covers grades seven, eight, and nine, children between the ages of roughly 12 and 15, with increased focus on academic studies. Although it is still possible to leave the formal education system after completing kindergarten and find employment, fewer than 16% did so by the late 1990s.

Like elementary schools, most lower-secondary schools are public. More than 80% of teachers graduated from a four-year college. Classes are large, with thirty-eight students per class on average, and each class is assigned a homeroom teacher who doubles as counselor. Unlike elementary students, lower-secondary school students have different teachers for different subjects. The teacher, however, rather than the students, moves to a new room for each fifty-minute period.

Even though upper secondary school is not compulsory in Japan, 63% of all lower secondary school graduates entered upper secondary schools as of 2000. Private upper-secondary schools account for about 50% of all upper-secondary schools, and neither public nor private schools are free.

Discipline is incredibly strict in Japanese schools, with a heavy emphasis on conformity. As a result, Japan estimates less than .5% of its classroom time is devoted to addressing misbehaviors (compared to nearly 10% in the US). A secondary result is a large exodus during the middle grades of students who struggle with this controlled environment.

in 10 sentences or less.

McP, I am interested in learning more about how you set up your classroom. Is it based on a theory (montessori?) or book I can read more about.

in 10 sentences or less.

. Classes are large, with thirty-eight students per class on average, and each class is assigned a homeroom teacher who doubles as counselor. Unlike elementary students, lower-secondary school students have different teachers for different subjects. The teacher, however, rather than the students, moves to a new room for each fifty-minute period.

a lot of kids simply do not care about learning. there are other factors such as teachers, parents, etc, but if someone does not want to learn and pay attention in class, how do you reach them?

Wihout parent support or the child having an exceptional teacher there's not much hope until the kid matures. Why let these kids drag down a whole class? This is the main reason I'd like a school voucher system. Let me ensure my kid is in a school where the parents care, usually supported by mandatory volunteer time at the school by the parents.

not that i don't agree that a lot of parents don't seem to care about their kids and something needs to be done about that, but i really don't see many parents that work full time jobs that are going to be willing to volunteer their time at school functions. most hold the idea that it's the teacher's job to educate their children, right or wrong, and are going to blame the school when something goes wrong.