Side. So just go up to the mic for your questions. It is my sincere honor to introduce main da ripley. This is the first time the book festival has had a formal science pavilion and its completely fitting the first book were causing here is devoted to education and competing visions of how children learn. Amandas book takes to us finland, south korea, and poland, and observes how three highscoring, highly successful educational systems work, and what is unique is she does it through the eyes of three American Kids who are spending a year at each of those school systems. So it makes for a unique combination of her analysis and the insights that the High School Kids provide. Were doing the book in the washington post. Jay matthews wrote this is the most illuminating reporting ive seen on the differences between schools in america and abroad. The New York Times said in the best tradition of travel writing she gets beneath the glossy surface of cultures and makes our culture look strangely new and as the dad of a first grader, the conclusions have insights for kid of all ages and for the parents. Amanda is an investigative journalist with the Atlanta Atlantic and time. Also the awe thundershower previously of holiday pi the unthinkable, who survives when disaster strikes and why. Please join me in welcoming amanda ripley. [applause] thank you very much. Its great to be here on many levels. One of which is this is the city where i live. How many people live in washington, dc . I assume almost all of your, or in the area. The other reason is that i wrote much of my first book, or at least any of the parts that were decent in the library of congress. It was the only place where i could find some focus and peace. I had a new baby at the time. This is my first book, the unthinkable. And i would go there to this beautiful space and theres part where you cant get on the internet, which is a wonderful luxury, and it was really a salvation, and to have such a beautiful place we can all access is a privilege. So, im very glad to be here for all those reasons. Very psyched i got put into the science pavilion. You never know where youll end up when people categorize your book. What i want to do today is talk a little bit about a mystery. And its a mystery that starts with data and has implications for the lives of millions of kids around the world. But what i also want to do is to hear questions and thoughts from all of you. So were going to make sure to save some time for that at the end and turn this into a more conversation if we can. It is, after all, saturday morning, and you have come out here, and you deserve to have more of a conversation rather than just be spoken to. The mystery that i mentioned is a mystery that i think we have all sort of heard about. Its kind of in the eager, and ther. It appeared there were a handful of countries who were managing to it indicate all their kids to high levels of Critical Thinking in math, reading and science, and i would hear various theories why that was so. And i would buy into one or the other of them for a while. And then i would encounter some inexplicable barrier to that theory being true. Let me give you an example. One of the reasons i heard for why these other countries were doing so great was that we dont spend enough on education. Right . And in fact, we spend more per pupil on k through 12 education than all but four countries in the world. If you look at those four countries thaw dont line up with the Top PerformingEducation Systems in the world. So, it became clear its not that we werent spending enough. Its that we werent spending it the same way, maybe, werent spending it wisely, maybe. Other reasons, we were too big and diverse of a country to compare to a place like finland, whiches totally fair. Really, findland . This is a huge country we live in, and i stuart think about our country as 50 different countries, particularly when it comes to education, because so much educations locally controlled. And is very different when you go from texas to vermont to california. So that satisfied me for a while. Then one day i trade looking at the data on a statebystate basis and seeing how our kids were doing compared to other countries. Imagining all of our states were countries, and when you do that, you see north, only huge variations from state to state, but you see that not even some of our smallest, most homogenous states like those kids were performing at the level of kids in portugal, which is right around average nor developed world. So we were seeing the kinds of high flyers you would expect. But two exceptions were massachusetts and minnesota. Anyone from massachusetts or minnesota . There we go. So we have two states that really were maybe not in the top ten but certainly the top 15 to 20 countries in the world. So that was encouraging. But then the most convincing theory i heard for why we werent doing so great overall or in some of these smaller states, was poverty. And that made a lot of sense to me. We know that all over the world poverty influences education outcome, and we know that we have a realup accept blue high Child Poverty rate, given our wealth as a country. Right around 20 , depending on how youre measuring it. So that made a lot of sense to me. Then i started looking deeper into the data, and now we are, for better or worse, awash in data right now. In education. More data than we know what to do with. Sort of like health care. And if you look at it more deeply you see that, well, look, there are actually countries that have very low Child Poverty rates, like norway has a six percent Child Poverty rate, which is close to finland, fours are four percent, as low as it gets all over the world and what you see is that norways 15yearolds are performing at the same level as american 15yearolds, chris which is to say average for the developed world in reading and science and below average in math. Youll see math its recurring weakness for the u. S. And then if you look within our data set for the u. S. , you see something really astonishing, which is that if you look at our top 25 of most affluent 15yearolds kids kids who he lots of advantages, highly educated parents, hightech schools, resources, and by the way this data set includes private schools. If you look at those kids, you see that they are scoring below their affluent peers in 27 other countries in math. They do better in reading, although not at the very top of the world. And if you look at our lowest group of kids socioeconomically speaking, and compare them to underprivileged kids around the world, theyre scoring below 27 other countries in math. So there seemed to be some systemic problems that interacted for sure with poverty. That interact with diversity, interact with our history of institutionalized racism. But it wasnt just one of those things. And no single one could fully explain what we were seeing. So, i stopped Everything Else i was doing, writingwise, and decided to spend a year trying to undet was really going on in these countries, and i admit i did part of this sort of cynically. I didnt i just didnt believe it, actually. I kept hearing about these brilliant kids in finland and singapore and korea, and everyone was perfect, and and there were no tests and everything was awesome all the time. The teachers were geniuses and the parents were involved. It just didnt pass the smell test to me. Just didnt seem like any country is that simple. So, i wanted to visit these countries, but i knew to have any remote chance of seeing what was really going on, needed to try to see it through the eyes of students. Ive learned in my reporting in the u. S. That until you talk to students, you really dont know the half of it. And students are experts in their particular classroom. They sit there all day long, thinking about what could be better, what they like and what they dont, and they have strong opinions if you ask them. Luckily there are tens of thousands of teenagers who every year essentially trade places. They leave the United States and go attend public high schools abroad and live with a host family for a year. So i want teed follow these kids in particular because they could to some small degree see the water they swam in. Night they could have some they didnt know everything. None of us do. But they knew their schools and homes and neighborhoods. Back in the states and abroad, and they were essentially amateur anthropologists. Part of the reason kid goes abroad is because theyre interested in the differences between cultures and places, and actually have strong opinions about what they see, what they like, dont like, what is surprising, not surprising. So in addition to all this data, which is totally fascinating and im happy to geek out on that more in the q a after wards. I had to have these kids to see in the blind spots that the data couldnt answer, that the data didnt get into. So i knew from the data which places i wanted to visit. There are lots of International Tests these days. One thing we dont have, especially in the u. S. , is a shortage of test. Not a problem we have. But there is a test i found to be most useful when thinking about the future of the economy, which was called the psa test, tests a merchandize to half a million 15yearolds in 70 countries every three years by the oecd. And this test is not perfect. None of them are. What i liked about the test is it tried to get at not your ability to regurgitate information but your able to apply information to solve a problem you have never seen before that comes right out of real life. Its the kind of thing that we all have to do every day. Not just in our jobs but if were picking a Healthcare Plan or trying to figure out a credit card bill, all the kinds of things we have to do given we have an excess of information, and a dearth of real insight sometimes. So we have to macombs, we have to solve problems, make arguments, higher orderer skills which is what the p test tries to do. So this test is interesting. Its a test ill be referring to i looked at other test data as well, and you obviously want to look at metrics Like High School graduation, college attainment. But this test i found to be compelling because we dont actually know what jobs will be available in 20 or 30 years. But we do know that those skills, those abilities to solve problems to make judgments to make argumentswill be valuable. So i took the psi test to see what that was all about because it seemed, again, the cynic in me didnt believe it was possible to assess Critical Thinking. I still think its hard. But i did find the test to be far smarter than any standardized test id ever taken, for whatever thats worth. I routinely realized there was not right answer and i had to write out my answer and make the case, and i would get different points depending on how cogent and compelling my argument was, which is a lot like my actual life, my actual work. So i was impressed with this test, realizing its not perfect, and if you look at the outcomes on the tests you see something, first of all, something awesome. If theres nothing else that you take from International Education comparisons, this is the one thing are you ready . The one thing is that all over the world, you see incredible amounts of change. We have not seen that. At scale. But we are actually the outlier. So, theres been 60some countries that have taken this test since it was introduce ned 2000. Four of them have seen significant improvement in at least one subject. Just because we are not one of them, dot not mean we could not be. Right . When you see the dramatic gains that some countries have made, fairly recently, it gives you should give all of us a surge of hope, because once you know it is possible for countries like estonia, canada, vietnam, poleland, countries with significant poverty rates to make those kinds of gains, that not only should that be encouraging and we would want to learn from what the country did, but theres a moral imperative. Once you know its possible, it can be done, its not merely an act of faith, then you nuss do it. Right . Another thing is that poverty matters in all of these countries, of course, but matters to different degrees. So if you look at country like the United States you see that 15 of our kids scores can be explained by socioeconomic status. A little bit of math magic, right . So were trying to control for everything and see how much is influenced by what, and imperfect. But 15 . If you look at place like estonia, which has anyone been to estonia . Okay. Surprising number of people have been to estonia. This is not finland. This is still a fairly complicated place. And in estonia, socioeconomic status can be explained explains nine percent of teenagers scores on the test. So you see variances. And by the way, france is worse. So some country does worse, not only on average but in fairness and how much socioeconomic status matters. So when you look at the really highflying countries, the education super powers, what you see is they could be roughly divided into two categories, very roughly. This is i made this up for my own brain to think about this. One category is the utopia category, of which the best and most clicheed example is finland. Finland is a country where there truly are very few standardized tests, which teachers have roosevelt autonomy. Student does not work night and day, and in fact very few of them attend afterschool tutoring and that sort of thing. And theres almost no variation from one school to the next in finland. National if you could just live wherever you wanted without regard, because schools were just basically as good as the next. So thats incredibly cool about finland, and thats the utopia version. Turns throughout are multiple ways to get to the top of the mountain in education, right . Just like an actual mountain. You can do switchbacks and take breaks and drink water, which is finland, or you can just slog right up the mountain, like a vertical line, which is south korea. So the other model would be the Pressure Cooker model. Where kids are getting to the same place, very impressive levels of Critical Thinking. Now i know people, especially in korea, saying theyre not raising creative kids, its memorization, and i think theres some truth to that. But when you look at what their kids are capable of doing, its impressive level of Critical Thinking in math, and science, but their getting there through enormous pain and suffering. 77 of korean 15yearolds attend some kind of afterschool tutoring session, and by that i dont mean what kids in long island do for the s. A. T. Thats the same universe but not on the same planet. The market for education in south korea is not unlike the market for sports in the United States. Its it verse sophisticated, very lucrative. It plays upon peoples greatest hopes and fears and if you think about sports, and you think about education, and you just switch countries, you will understand perfectly what is going on in south korea. So, this is a place where theres a lot of anxiety around test scores, around getting into a great university. A lot of countries like this. South korea is maybe the extreme version. There was singapore Education Minister who was asked about kids going to tutoring sessions in singapore, and he said, well, at least were not south korea. So, this is kind of the extreme case for various reasons. And that is the Pressure Cooker model. Where kids are not just going theyre going to school all day for fairly long school day and then going, most of them to some kind of private safer Afterschool Academy which literally mirrors everything they need school, after school. So all the subjects again, which i think we can all agree is pretty inefficient, and also inequitable way to get to the top of the world because the best teachers in korea charge the most money in this after School Market which leads to the incobble phenomenon of their being millionaire teachers in south korea which, while very cool, even they will criticize this system that nobody seems to be able to disrupt. Once the anxiety machine gets going. So, you have the Pressure Cooker you have utopia. I found, luckily for me, very quickly, American Students who agreed to be my are my fixers on the ground, who were going to these places kim was going from oklahoma, to finland. Now, you may ask, why finland . I mean, i dont know about you but if i had the chance to go somewhere when i was 15, finland would that have been on the list, even at number 75 or 80. It wouldnt have even cleared the list. So, kim this remarkable young woman who had never left the United States, actually. She was born in oklahoma. Her mother a single mother wholes had never left the United States. Was a teacher, actually. And yet kim always felt this kind of craving to see the world, this curiosity about what else there was beyond oklahoma, and so she would complain, as teenagers occasionally do, she would complain about her down and the small town and the onlying there was was a walmart, and this and that. And finally her half sister, who livers in texas can said she called her bluff. Said, just go live in some other country if you think its so great. And she said, what would you mean . She said can like one of those Exchange Programs where kid goes to another country. She said, well, thats for rich kids. Thats not for me. But that night the seed was planted, and kim began googling, which is how all great and terrible ideas begin. And she started googling Exchange Programs and found there are these organizations that will literally help you go live in another country for a year. So this captured her imagination. She started research ago countries and she found many of them to be very interesting, and when she read about finland, she read they had the smartest kids in the world, and she said thats where i want to go. So the told her mom the next day, im going to spend a year in finland. And her mom this is her last child at home. And again, kim had never left the country. And of course her moms first overriding instinct was to say, the hell you are. But instead, very cagily, because she new kim was stubborn and was a teenager and sometimes you have to be clever. She said, okay, well, how much does it cost . And kim looked it up and said it costs 10,000. And she said, well, if you can raise the 10,000 yourself, and do all the paperwork and everything you need to do by yourself, then you can go. So kim spent her freshman year of high school in oklahoma raising 10,000. Nobody, including kim, thought she would succeed. She started with a bake sale. Stayed up all night making cookies and quickly discovered that for all of its charms, bake sales are not a highly profitable way to raise money and the would need to have Something Like a thousand of them before she was able to go to finland. So then the she tried other things. Ordered a keys of beef jerky off the internet and sold it door to door which actually turned out to be very lucrative can just as a side note. Then she wrote a letter to all 60 businesses in the citys chamber of commerce, asking them for money, sponsorship to support this crazy American Girl with a dream. Very sweet. Create adulated and everthing. No one responded. No one. Remember, this is at the tail end of the recession, the businesses in the city had other things to worry about. What i love about the story and which is why im dwelling on it almost unreasonably, is that she didnt give up. She didnt give up. She created a blog and she asked strangers for money, and bizarrely some of them gave her money. She applied for scholarships, which she got. But what i like about the storier is that its a story about a particular kind of American Girl, an american young person who doesnt quit. Who is entrepreneurial, has a dream, who is curious. So as much as we are critical of our education system, its important to hold in our head at the same time all of the strengths we have, which are embodied in kids like kim all over the country. So, kim raises 10,000, and because god has a sense of humor, she is placed in rural finland on those of infinland, and actually placed with another single mother. The mother of two fiveyearold twin girls. So, off she goes to the utopia. And what will she find . Is the question. She has all kinds of ideas, of course, about what finland will be like and what it wont be like and how it will be different from her school in oklahoma, which she didnt really like, and she struggled to fit in and all these things. Before we get to what she found, i want toll you about the other student who went to the other extreme. To the Pressure Cooker country. Now, interestingly, this kid, eric, in some ways grew up in a different country than kim for all intents and purposes. This kid was from minnesota. He had the good fortune to attend one of the highest performing, tricked out, most beautiful suburban high schools in the state. He had an intact family. He had lots of advantages. He did theater. He did the International Baccalaureate program. He did all kinds of things. He had some Great Teachers that to this day he tears up talking about. He is kind of dramatic, eric. But he as senior year approached he realizes he was burnt out and just wanted to change. He just wanted a break, like a break from all the academic intensity of minnesota. So this is where he makes his one big mistake, which is he decided to take an academic break in south korea. Which is litll lay i cannot think of a worse place to take an academic break. So he makes this decision. We all make decisions for in reasons in retrospeck look questionable. The went to an Exchange Students fair and there are booths with kids from different countries, and the korean kids were so fun, they were superjoyful, and it is actually true, while im making sweeping stereotypes, the korean kids are super joyful. I have never met a kids who are more exuberant, and in fact when he first arrived at his high school in south korea, big, booming city on the coast of south korea, and walked in, the kid startedded screaming the way kids streamed for the beatles, high pitched oh, my god, something is terribly wrong, until he realized that was for him. So, in some ways he was writing. In other ways he was very, very wrong. And so he ends up in south korea. So what did they find . I think there are lots of things, obviously, some things they found that i want to tell you about, since we have limited time ill talk about things that surprised me, and then well open it up for questions. Some things they found were obvious on the very first day. Which i didnt expect. Because they were esthetic. When they got to their schools in these countries, and there war a third student ill talk more about him. He went from pennsylvania to poland, all three of them, when they went to these countries in their first days of school, they found the schools themselves to be rather lackluster. To look at. And anecdotally when you go around the world to countries that is generally true. Not only are the schools not super impressive esthetically but inside anywhere not a lot of technology compared to Many American schools. Actually, on average, american secondary schools, high schools, have a one to one ratio of students to computessers at this point, and that is way above the average for the developed world. So, finland and south korea have more like one computer for every two students. So, you didnt see a lot of the digital white boards you see in classrooms in america you didnt see a lot of that. You didnt see certainly didnt see a lot lot of greenlh field ford playing sports. Toms school in poland didnt even have a cafeteria. There was a sad vending area that kids used. But that was one thing that was fairly obvious to the kid right away. Another thing they didnt see was parents. Almost never say saw parents aaron. You dont see parents hanging around, selling things, handing things out, signing thing, whatever it is you see in Many American schools. And i turns out there are different parenting styles. Oning there we know is that all around the world the more time that parents spend on Extracurricular Activities in their kids schools so the kinds of things classically american pta activities. In. Each team even after socioeconomic status. This is something the american teenagers notice. Fla they had a lot more autonomy in these countries. I ended up serving hundreds of teenagers to see if there were patterns and what they found and there were remarkable patterns. One thing they said seven out of 10 international Exchange Students felt like it less freedom in the u. S. Then back home in seven out of 10 also far more technology in the u. S. Classroom sendai called. I mention this not because i think technology is a bad thing, but because it comes up again and again when you look at the data and also talk to people. Kids and teachers. What you see is not so much the technology is up is the problem that there is a lack of focus in american schools on actual learning. So if you are very focused on learning, if its a kind of urgent economic imperative, which he became in these countries, then you do things a little differently, right . So there is no evidence that the enormous investments we have a country have made in Education Technology have led to learning on average. Quite the opposite in many cases. I have great hopes for what we are seeing in blended learning in that kind of thing. However, there is maybe sometimes a tendency for us to be enchanted by shiny objects in this country. I think thats fair to say. You see that in all parts of the country, but also in school. Nec school is about so many things here. That is part of the beauty of it. But if something went Exchange Students come here they notice right away. School is about tracking your book and definitely football. Thats huge, rightclick they are kind of amazed by this because in most countries school is about learning, which is much less fun. When they be totally clear about that. However, if you think about any big complex organization trying to do something hard, whether he thought that hillary school, one of the number one thing they need is focus. And in this country, i didnt even know this, but i eventually found out in this country are High School Principals spend sometimes half of their days dealing with mediums about sports, athletic budgets to make getting referees, getting people to mind the fields, meeting with parents that are excess because their kid has been benched. We did with the school board member, but theyve heard from this person for the first time. These are all true stories in the detected principles, principals, this is what you hear. This doesnt happen in these countries. Just takes half of your play off and we just focus on learning. So this is something that came up again and again. The most important thing the kid notice, which in some ways is more profound and took them longer to notice once they got the hang of the language and other things. They notice these countries is harder. It was certainly harder in korea even for eric is gone to a highperforming school. Sometimes harder bad. One of the things eric noticed of course for the kids were going to school night and day and they have no time to socialize and explore the city with them because they were going to afterschool tutoring and so this was incredibly depressing to eric. He could see how much stream they were under. Its true. The korean kids have not had lots of energy, joyful culture and as soon as they started talking about school, olfactory and from their faces. They talked about how terrible the system was, how are they pitted against each other. I didnt realize it was going to actually make an alarm. This is a new stopwatch on trying now. It did get my attention and yours. Im trying not to go over my time for q a. It loads the amount of time they had to put in. At the same time, he left his korean mass class. This is something that really struck him. For the first time he was learning trigonometry, geometry and calculus all in one class. By the way these kids for two years younger than he was and he was astounded at how much more interesting it was. You know, he had no idea those things connect it and in fact theyll may make fact theyll may make sense when they are connected. So for him, this was a true breakthrough. Another case is one of the scene noticed in finland is the kids have less homers and kids back in the u. S. The homework they had was much more demanding. It required them to think for themselves. There was a girl i interviewed who came from finland to go to Public School in exchange for a year and it was similar to her school in many ways in finland. One thing she notice was not much was asked of american kid. She felt like she was doing a lot of posters, the kind of thing she had done in Elementary School in finland. A lot of cutting and pasting and it was a little frustrating. Luckily she had tracking your book and things that she really did enjoy. But she tells the example of one journalism class sheets, where she loved the teacher and everyone was learning from the teacher and respected her. At the end of the project in this class is to write 10 articles which made sense. And when that day came, the finnish girl was the only one who did all 10 articles. And she was amazed by the end the teacher was disappointed. But life went on. So somewhere along the way, different methods have been communicated to a lan up into her american peers about not only what they needed to do, but what they could do. So this is a big issue and something that came out in the surveys as well. Nine out of 10 international answered and said the classes in the u. S. Are easier. So if you get a group together from all over the world living in the u. S. , they will disagree on many things can have very different impressions. One thing they all agree on is school in the u. S. Is super easy. This is a complicated subject. But it is so pervasive. Not only tell us. Either way, half of American Police say they are challenged in their classes. This data is so worth note that even our most privileged kid are not doing not at the level of privilege keeps in other countries. So we are systematically underestimating what our kids can do sometimes out of the goodness of our heart, which is to me the most poignant part. And then i want to open its questions. But i just want to say in this country we have got a long 30 wow by letting kids graduate from high school with a sort of nonmanila not a contribution. And man, once they are 18, we let them find out what the world has in store for them. Thats no longer works because they are finding out too late that the world has changed and may need skills. They need to be able to think. They made. They made a mental lift shall it be that they didnt need before because all of them for not only have to audition for their jobs in ways that are much harder to fake, that they will have to readdition over and over and over and they will have to adapt and change. Click way. As many of us in this room have had to do as well. So there are lots of things they notice. Theres a lot here, but the overriding print full was that school was harder in ways that made them have to think and that this is possible, which is best represented by the country didnt get to, but is in the book, which is poland. A country that is his 16 of poverty rate from below average on the test to above in 2012. Theres a greater percentage of polish 15yearold interference level of math and there are to two girls in finland. Which is remarkable because you spend paul and click poland is a complicated place. This is a big sprawling country with a long history of trauma and dislocation in distress for the central government. Thank you for being patient. Now lets open it up to questions. If you have any questions, thank you. [applause] i like to followup on that. Secondly, did you find the gender difference in American Students. I can only relate to my 29th graders who both girls never had the entire life in a difficult school, one explaining the entanglement eerie of physics to me in the eighth grade. He now come interestingly first of all take the easy question. It is spelled pisa. In the developed world, their differences here between developing countries in the developed world what you see as the most consistent pattern is actually the girls are pulling ahead, particularly in reading. Theres still in some places gender gaps in math and science, but just as an example, finland has a worrisome gender gap between boys and girls on the pisa test. Girls are doing significantly better than boys. They have full conferences trying to figure out. Luckily, the average boy is still doing way better than the average american. But that gap is still worry some and something that i think should worry all of us as we start to see that gap growing in the Different Directions all over the developed world. First, the money spent for decades in education, thank you for your book. Heres my question. Suppose on your walk to your book signing your phone rings as barack obama and he says amanda, i read your book. It gives me are three suggestions for american schooling. What do you think we should do quite he could do any of them. I will tell him. So one thing that i think we have underinvested our energy in is the selection and training of teachers. You know, we have some fantastic teachers all over this country and the profession still is not treated like are acting like a real profession. One of the things i always heard was teaching is hard, teaching his face. The more time i spent in classrooms, the more i start to viscerally understand not. It is not hard like working at a soup kitchen is hard. It is hardly easy surgeon is hard, like being a judge is hard. It requires and the moment complicated dynamic changing and thinking that is extremely, extremely difficult to master. So we have right now 1400 education colleges of wildly varying quality scattered across the country. U. K. Twice as many teachers says we need and we dont come for any real serious rigorous training and expectation among many of the students until they are in the classroom and sat in my not support a man or treating it like a real master profession in most places until never actually. That is something other countries have been through. I talk in the book about how finland shut down its education colleges and reopen them in the most elite universities and today getting into Education School is like getting into m. I. T. In the United States, which is important not only because you have highly educated teachers. Part of his sunday signal to everyone else in the country that youre not just saying if you are barack obama that education is important in teaching is hard but youre acting like it. If he could just do that, that would make you happy. Focusing on education colleges at the beginning of a challenging career that needs to have the europeans on student teaching, and i would be a much more elegant reforms and a lot of the things weve tried to do. Thank you. Thank you. My favorite question is how did we put a man on the moon without standardized tests. And i would answer we got it with everything with a laminated. So, my questions are one, in the education databases before standardized tests took over and hundreds of millions of dollars were diverted from the classroom budget to pay for the task to companies that had nothing to do with education, the databases document and the gifted and talented curriculum is by far the most effective end of every classroom could have become a gifted and talented classroom with the high expectations, low student teacher ratio, that we would have what we should be looking for. Were almost out of time. I may just answer that. Youve asked a really good question, so i dont want to run out of time to answer the question. You know, if you look at the International Data to the greek various derrida, what she sees there is never a time when American Kids were on top of the world when it comes to these higher order skills, even before we had the extreme level standardized testing we have now. It is true we do a lot of testing and most of the tests are not very smart. So what you see running through the conversation is quantity over quality. Part of that is because the federalism. The only thing barack obama can do is keep demanding results in a cant do much to help kids and students and teachers get there. So they keep pushing the test a mother and now we see where it has got a because you have this kind of crazy quilt of testing. If theres something positive to say, it is the 47 states that have adopted a common core state anders are doing something all the education superpowers have done. It is very, very hard to inject rigor into a system. One way to do it is to set clear, rigorous, more coherent targets for what kids should know at every grade level than what you have before. Coherence and consistency and clarity is really lacking from the u. S. System partly because the federalism. Cc huge fights over the standard in some of those fights need to happen. Some of them do not and would not happen in another country. Those documents are living documents in finland, korea, poland. For every subject youre not just math and reading, but home i can phys ed in history and this is the thing that is right within our draft if we could continue down this path, keep tweaking the standards, that is fine. The assessments are a whole another thing that is owing down this spring. Having clear rigorous can distance standards is probably the smartest reform we have made in 20 years. Thank you so much for having me here. Its great to have the audience. [applause] [inaudible conversations] heres some of the latest news about the publishing industry