Public schools
Via Alternet:
New data reveals our public—not private—school system is among the best in the world. In fact, except for the debilitating effects of poverty, our public school system may be the best in the world.
The most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reveal that the U.S. ranked high, relative to other OECD countries, in reading, math, and science (especially in reading, and in all areas better in 4th grade than in 8th grade). Some U.S. private schools were included, but a separate evaluation was done for Florida, in public schools only, and their results were higher than the U.S. average.
Perhaps most significant in the NCES reading results is that schools with less than 25% free-lunch eligibility scored higher than the average in ALL OTHER COUNTRIES.
that’s quite a different reading than we got from the results of the international PISA tests:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248329823/u-s-high-school-students-slide-in-math-reading-science
Does this not represent the major problem with the American system of data collection, a lack of laws that would enforce ethical papers from our schools of higher learning, and the private sector.
If you read the original article we learn that much is taken from education to pay for private study of the educational system.
Is it possible that our poor performance may be the result of forced integration of special needs children in public schools.