??

I keep hearing this advertisement on the radio in the morning while I get ready for work. It's the voice of a child reading off a list of countries that are scoring better on standardized testing than the United States. Jamie Lee Curtis then chimes in that parents may become angry while listening to this message. What I find unfair about this commercial is that it makes Americans sound like idiots.

In no way are the size of each of these countries or their educational philosophies injected to give a clearer picture. The ad doesn't sponsor either presidential candidate. It just sponsors stronger schools. If you go to their website at least there they say that parents need to be involved. But when you look at the countries that are beating us, they are primarily Asian or small European nations. Here's my take on this: America is not only 10 times larger than many of these countries, but we also deal with the greatest "melting pot" of students and parents. We are not only trying to educate children on math and science and reading, we are also trying to educate them on life. In some cases, we are better parents to these kids than their parents are.

Example: Just last week we pulled a kid into talk to him about the fact that in the first two weeks of school he had done little to no homework for his classes. When we looked at his permanent record it showed that he has achieved nothing over a D or F in the last THREE years in our building. He has barely passed each school year and yet, these grades are not an accurate reflection of his abilities. It's obvious that he is a bright child. Spending just 8 days with him I could already tell that. When we asked him what his parents said to him about these grades he responded, "Nothing. They really don't care about grades." He wasn't lying. So tell me how I am supposed to match the graduation rate of Sweden when I have a kid whose parents don't even care that he's practically failed every school year since the 5th grade?! His test scores were actually fine. He can take a test. But how is that helping him in life? There are only 9 million people living in Sweden. There are 301 million people living in the US.

Here are the other top ranked countries and their populations.
Finland- 5.2 million
Canada- 33.3 million
Japan- 127.4 million
New Zealand-4.1 million
Australia-20.4 million
Netherlands-16.5 million
Korea-72 million
Germany- 82.4 million
United Kingdom-60.7 million
Czech Republic-10.2 million
Switzerland- 7.5 million
Austria- 8.2 million
Belgium- 10.4 million
Ireland-4.1 million
Hungary-9.9 million
Poland- 38.5 million
Denmark - 5.4 million
France-61.8 million
Iceland- 301 thousand

Not even one of these comes close to the size of our population. There are more people in the freaking greater Dayton area (over 800 thousand) than in the entire nation of Iceland. I didn't even have TIME to research their income/welfare/economic status in relation to ours.....

Sorry for the tirade.