[lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School Rankings

[Carrol Cox]

When I say "X is superior to Y," I am implicitly saying that both X & Y have
the same function, purpose, goal etc.   It makes no sense to say the New
York Yankees are superior to or inferior to Belgium, or to say that this s
tone is better than that bowl of oatmeal. I would like to see the evidence
that the school system in Nation A has the same function/purpose as the
School System in Nation B. Until this is established (and no one has tried
in this thread to establish it) comparisons are meaningless.

Andre Gorz visited one of the elite Tech Schools in France, which qualified
its students for very good jobs. One of the functions of hose tests referred
to in this thread  is to establish grounds to admit students to these
schools. He asked "What do students learn here that they could not as easily
learn on thejob?" The answer he got, after some thought, was, "Calculus."
The next question was, "Will they need calculus on the job?" The answer was
, "no." So the French tests are not relevant to much except for their
usefulness in ideological justification of the school system.

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Michael Pollak
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 7:04 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School
Rankings

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:


> The OECD says that U.S. schools do a worse job compensating for poverty 
> than do other countries'. A major reason is the dependence on local 
> funding, which reinforces rather than counters inequities.

That makes perfect sense.  And it also suggests an explanation for why our 
high scores are so high (which surprised me): that local funding amplifier 
works in both directions.

Michael
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