Reviewing a new book on education, The Economist verifies a U.S. skills gap and then examines how Poland has so dramatically improved its students' academic performance. The book is "The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way," by Amanda Ripley, and the review is entitled, "Education Standards: Best and brightest":

BAMA Companies has been making pies and biscuits in Oklahoma since the 1920s. But the company is struggling to find Okies with the skills to fill even its most basic factory jobs. Such posts require workers to think critically, yet graduates of local schools are often unable to read or do simple maths. This is why the company recently decided to open a new factory in Poland—its first in Europe. “We hear that educated people are plentiful,” explains Paula Marshall, Bama’s boss.

Poland has made some dramatic gains in education in the past decade. Before 2000 only half of the country’s rural adults would finish primary school. Yet international rankings now put the country’s students well ahead of America’s in science and maths (the strongest predictor of future earnings), even as the country spends far less per pupil. 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.

And as the states, parents, lawmakers and educators from around the United States ponder the Common Core State Standards, consider what The Economist gleans from the book:

Ms Ripley credits Poland’s swift turnaround to Miroslaw Handke, the former minister of education. When he entered the post in 1997, Poland’s economy was growing but Poles seemed destined for the low-skilled jobs that other Europeans did not want. So he launched an epic programme of school reforms, with a new core curriculum and standardised tests. Yet his most effective change was also his wooliest: he expected the best work from all of his pupils. He decided to keep all Polish children in the same schools until they were 16, delaying the moment when some would have entered vocational tracks. Poland’s swift rise in PISA rankings is largely the result of the high scores of these supposedly non-academic children.

This is a lesson Ms Ripley sees throughout her tour of “the smart-kid countries”. Children succeed in classrooms where they are expected to succeed. Schools work best when they operate with a clarity of mission: as places to help students master complex academic material (not as sites dedicated to excellence in sport, she hastens to add). When teachers demand rigorous work, students often rise to the occasion, whereas tracking students at different cognitive levels tends to “diminish learning and boost inequality”. Low expectations are often duly rewarded.

 Related...

• The New America Foundation, an excerpt from her book's introduction.
• U.S. News and World Report, "Learning From the ‘Smartest Kids in the World’"
• The Diane Rehm Show, "Amanda Ripley: 'The Smartest Kids In The World'"