fortunes elsewhere, a drain for russia because the more the russian government appears to be hostile to entrepreneurship, the less ability it has to compete on the world stage, and that's why we see this mass out migration of russians because those with the means to do so are increasingly looking for economic alternatives. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] thank you for a wonderful participation, and conversation, and we have copies available if you want to purchase one, here to sign them and carry op the conversation following dismiss sal; otherwise, thank you for your attention and hope to see you soon again at heritage. we are dismissedded. [inaudible conversations]

>> next, profiling three american students who moved to three different countries, finland, south korea, and poland, where education has taken hyperseriously. this is a little over an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> hello, everyone. very boisterous crowd of avid readers of education books. everyone, if i could --

[inaudible conversations] call your attention to the front of the room. we don't get this animated creed for books about education. i'll chalk that up to a great book and amanda. i'm rachel white, the executive vice president of the new america foundation, and it's a pleasure to welcome you all tonight. if you have not been here before, this is new america nyc, our new york outlet, a place for story telling and bringing policy stories alive for different audiences, and we're the out let of a think tank called the new america foundation that works across a range of issues, everything from health care to education, foreign policy, technology policy, and that's just a broad source of what we do. what we really are is an idea factory and a house and home for some of the most amazing thrercht out there, lucky to have amanda here with the book tonight, an emerson fellow at the new america foundation, the best example of talent, but our

mad rater, also, a former founder of the new york foundation, and both of you are submitting applications at the end of the night for your fellowships and welcome you next fall at this time. you're in for a real treat. handing it over to do the formal introductions, but we could not be more proud of amanda and impact of the book and reach of the book. when you workday in and day out on complicated issues of policy, particularly, around education, it feels entrenched, lonely, and hard to convey sort of bigger implications of what you are doing, and a book like what amanda has written so succinctly and appealingly through stories and narratives that make sense and connect to help you understand immediately what the challenges are, and start to point you in the direction of what the solutions might be, and we're forever in debt to people like amanda to who this for us, always looking for people to do

it as well as she does, and it's a real pleasure. this is televised by c-span, so anything you say or do in the room, just be aware it's on television. [laughter] thanks. >> i'll remember that. well, thank you, rachel. i'm from bloomberg business week, delighted to be here leading the conversation and this celebration of my friend, amanda ripley, and her book, "the smartest kids in the world," and we have the added fortune of having two other experts in education, two people with deep experience and insight into education, how not just here, but around the world. let me briefly introduce both of them, and then i'll start the conversation with amanda, and we'll spend time talking about her book and then bring wendy and ben into the conversation, but wendy 1, of course, the founder and chairwoman of teach

for meek, doing more, in my view, to transform teaching and education in the country of any organization in the last couple decades. she is also the ceo and co-founder of teach for all, which is an organization that's helping social entrepreneurs around the world set up organizations models on teach for america, and they are not working in 29 countries and more to come. we're thrilled, honored to have wendy here, and an educator with almost 15 years of experience working in the new york city public school system. he was part of the first cohort of new york city teaching fellows, and receivedded a number of honors for his teaching including the full bright distinguished award in teaching during which while he was on the full bright, spent nine months working and studying classroom practices in fin land, which, of course, is a country heavily featured in amanda's

book, and we'll have the opportunity to hear more about your experiences there as well. later, and amanda, you know, what can we say that's not already been said. in fact, i'm not going to bother saying anything more. [laughter] i will just say that amanda is, as you know, a writer for the times and the atlantic, and if you have not seen her cover story in this month's "atlantic," it's worth checking out, even if you're a football fan, as i am, made my think a little bit differently -- >> but not a lot? >> has not yet changed my mind. [laughter] amanda, of course, has been working on this book for several years now, and we've been talking about it over that period, and it really is a remarkable achievement, and as you know, has been reviewed with raves just about everywhere, and i want to quote from the "new

york times," and convenient how that works, but anny wrote, she succeeds in making our culture and choices seem alien, which is quiet a feat for an institution familiar and fiercely defended as high school. the question whether the startling perspective provided by the masterly book generates will to make changes. amanda, i want to pick up on that and ask a basic question which why hasn't someone written this book already? what i mean, by that is there's evidence by that that our students lag behind other countries for two decades now, and yet it's not prompted any kind of push by policymakers to study what other countries are doing better. i wonder if you could just give us your opinion having spent time in the subject on why is it that we're reluck at that

particular time to learn from others when it comes to education? >> well, i think the united states has gotten better about this recently, and there's books about this that i have, you know, really relied heavily upon, and they tend to be focused on policy and experts, and data, which is important, but one trick that i had learned as a reporter is that, you know, this is a hard subject. i don't need to tell you that that education is a hard subject to make interesting, and come to life, and it can feel very hopeless, but i found that if i could spend enough time with kids in the classroom, i could kind of avoid that dreadful feeling, like, oh, my god, this is the most boring story i've ever written in my life, that feeling. [laughter] the kids don't have the full picture always, but they have very strong opinions on what they see in their classrooms, and they spend a lot of time there, and so that combinedded

with the research and the experts, and the data can make it really come to life, and so it's a pretty simple thing actually, but you'll find there's not that many education books that do that, that talk to kids so it's not like, you know, it's not rocket science, but it's a basic way to make -- fill in the blind spots of all the research that feels very abstract, the reason i wanted to write the book because i kept reading about finland and korea, and i couldn't quite believe it, you know? it just didn't seem real, and i wanted to know what it was like to be a kid in these places, you know? was everything perfect? i knew it couldn't be. following the kids, the american teenagers for a year who were studying abroad there, made sense. >> one thing you point out early in the book is that for a long time, we really didn't have a particularly, i guess, robust

benchmark for measures student performance across countries. the test that traditionally were given to our students and students around the world in which, you know, we would be compare against them tended to measure, you know, very basic rogue skills and didn't necessarily, you know, empathize critical thinking. now, that changed the beginning of this century with the add vent with the pisa test which stands for something i can't remember. why don't you tell us about that test, its importance, and what you famed as you dug into the result and how that helped launch this whole project. >> yeah, so, i mean, no test is perfect, obviously. there's a lot it can't measure, but in combination of what percentage of kids graduate from high school, college, and fairly easy to count, this test is interesting because it really was designed to measure

abilities to apply knowledge and solve problems not seen before, ability to think critically in math, reading, and science which is different from the other tests. it's given at age 15 to 70 million kids every three years. you can see the arc of their schooling career compared to the younger years. i was skeptical because how do you measure critical thinking with a test? i asked them to take the test which was great because, fist of all, i've never been so excited to take a test, ever. >> you took the test yourself? >> right. >> right. >> which they didn't want me to do. >> right. >> which made me want to take it all the more. [laughter] they never had a reporter take the test, and they reuse question, and you know how it

goes, they don't want to rewrite all the questions every sing m time, which makes sense, so i had to sign an affidavit swearing i would never reveal the exact questions and get it know tarrized which was -- know tore rised, and then i could take the test. there's questions they did make public so i could share those, but i went to the place, sat, they had a poor young woman sit there to make sure i was not cheating or anything. [laughter] for hours she sat there. it was the weirdest thing. it is the only time in my life i took a standardized test where i had to actually slow down and do that thing that adults don't do enough, think. i had to say, you know, wait, wait, what is it asking me? i had to come up with an argument. there were many questions that had lines underneath that i had to write something and make an

argument so many of the questions you didn't get full right or wrong answers, but depends on how cogent your argument was which is is a lot like life as a knowledge worker in the 21st century, a lot like the work we do every day, so it was fun and convincing this was different. that was a long answer. sorry. >> among other things, you found when you looked at the results and established that, you know, this is is a test that does something a little different, what did you find when you looked at the comparisons across countries? >> right. >> and what is it that surprised you most and sent you on this journey that you went on in the book? >> there's some good news which is american teenagers do decently in reading, and that doesn't get said quite enough, and it's easy to get hyperbolic about how terrible everything is so i want to say that. there's a still too big a gap between the most affluent and

least affluent kids in reading as well, but where you see the problem in every socioeconomic level is math and science. 26th in the world in math, 17th in science, and 12th in reading at age 15. again, not a perfect measure, but compelling when lined up with other metrics. one other thing that you see that's interesting is, for example, depending how you displace data, the most affluent 15-year-olds, the top core tile of most advantaged american kids ranked about 18th in the world in matt on this test compared to other most affluent kids in the world who are, by the way, less affluent on average so there seems to be something systemic going on that is exacerbated by our poverty and the size of our country and, in some cases, our diversity and all these other things we're aware of. >> the book focuses on three

countries in particular, south korea, finland, and poland, and i think we'll talk about finland a little bit later, and we can talk about south korea and things found there as well, but poland i want to focus on because poland in some ways, at least in my view in reading your book, seemed to be the most surprising success story, and in some ways seems to have come the furthest the fastest, and so i just wonder, you know, what you can tell us about the polish example in particular. i mean, poland is the butt of a million jokes as we all know, and yet this is a country that's now outperforming the united states on the exam, so what is it that we can learn from poland is i guess what i want you to discuss. >> no, i'm glad you asked. this conversation remine me of how many times we talked about

this over coffee and drinks and you listened to it for years. that remind me to thank you publicly for doing this and talking about it again. >> amanda wrote out the questions before we got here for me to ask. [laughter] she also brought her own music. this is -- >> that's a whole other -- >> anyway. >> anyways, to answer the question, poe land is interesting because there's a high child poverty rate at 15%. it's a big complicatedded country. nip been to poland? yeah. it's a long history of trauma and trouble of all kinds, a lot of distrust for the central government, not up like in the u.s., and, you know, it's not not fin land i'll say. i found it to be such an interesting mystery.

they were scoring at or above average, and they made changes during this period, and as often happens, some of the changes led to other changes that they didn't necessarily anticipate, but it was really fascinating to see what that looked like. they still have a ways to go. poland is not performing at the level of finland, but spend 50% on k-12 education, and there's great growth which is really exciting, and, you know, just spoiler alert, the thing that matters the most in poland is they delayed -- there's different things, but delaying tracking dividing the kids into academic and vocational schools, and they delayed it by just one year, which from 15 to 16 seems like how can that matter, but there were all these ancillary effects of that, so they had to

open 4,000 new schools in order to absorb kids in the same place, and there was a lot of changes, a lot of teacher training around that, and they adopt the a core set of standards similar to the fights we are having in the drink right now with the common core standards, and somehow keeping kids together longer in academic settings lifted everyone's academic performance. >> i'm sure you read the book, but others are probably just getting around to it, the people watching on c-span are deciding whether to buy it, but i want everyone to know this book is the story of three really remarkable american teenagers, and, to me, that's the genius of the book, what brings it to life and makes it different and fresh compared to the other books in

the genera and the field. i, you know, i know a little bit about how you found the three field agents or moles, whatever you call them. [laughter] i would love for you to talk to everyone here about how you found them, you know, sort of what their experiences were like, and the mechanism, how did you go about actually communicating with them and getting such an intimate look at their experiences while they were studying abroad? >> right, no. i knew i needed kids to follow, but i wanted them kids to compare in a narrow, but profound way what they were seeing in the countries to the homes and schools back in the u.s.. luckily, there's 30,000 teenagers who every year essentially switch places, come to the u.s. on high school exchange programs or leave the u.s., and so through groups like asf, rotary clubs, youth for understanding that set up the programs, i was able to find

students on their way, getting ready to go to countries i was most interested in, finland, the utopia model of education, carerra, the pressure cooker model, and poland, a country in transformation, and, you know, i started out, honestly, they would make the book interesting, desperate for characters; right? as i often, unfortunately, do, i totally underestimated how insightful the kids would be. like, once you actually sit down and talk with kids, you think you know what they will say, and they don't say what you think they are going to say, and they had -- they had these incredible insights into what they were seeing. the cool thing was not just in their schools, but in the homes, the bus, you know, in a pizza restaurant. you know, they don't make these silos that we do as adults. i ended up, you know, spending a lot of time communicating with

them over skype and e-mail and other things, and then visiting each of them in their countries, and then visiting their homes back in the u.s., and meeting, you know, their families and teachers, in some cases, in the u.s.. they were so insightful, these kids, that i end up serving hundreds of other exchange students with the help of asf to try to see if there were patterns in what they were saying, and there were. i mean, you know, it's -- it's remarkable. nine out of ten exchange students said, for example, that classes were easier in the united states than back home, and interestingly, seven out of ten americans exchange students agreed that classes were easier in the united states. nine out of ten agreed sports #w-r more important to kids in the u.s., maybe to be expected, but a high number. seven out of ten, surprising, thought they saw more technology in their u.s. classrooms than back home, and these were almost all coming from the developed

world, something the kids i followed noticed as well. >> i mean, that gets to the last question i want to ask before we bring in wendy and ben, but the world that comes up repeatedly in your book is "rigor," the common denominator is they succeed in ways we are not. e all agree we want rigor in the schools, want our kids to have rigorous classrooms, but we probably have it impossible to agree on what that really means. what are the common iningredients that make up a rigorous education that you found in the three countries you studied. >> interested their thoughts on this as well. rigor is not eye of the beholder. the thing that i saw that was --

i mean, these are different countries, but the things that were consistent was that kids were being pushed in not only their class work, but home work and tests, so finland is an example of this where kids take far fewer standardized tests, but the tests taken are harder. there's an exchange student who went to public school in michigan here, and she said, you know, she had a great experience, on the yearbook, went to dc, saw the monuments, ran track, all the fun stuff, but she was frustrated because she was assigned homework like the home work she had in elementary school, cutting peasing and posters, and, obviously, some classes this was not the case, but she was struck by the fact she didn't have to think, and you hear this from exchange students to the u.s. from high performing country, not all countries, that they are

just on, like, automatic doing -- i mean, our kids do a lot of home work actually, you know, compared to kids around the world, but it's not particularly demanding on average. she did have one teacher who was a journalist teacher who she loved and all kids respected her, felt they were learning from her, and she asked at the end of term project to write ten articles, and that was required for the class, and so the girl did this, and she was the only one who did it. the teacher was frustrated, but, you know, nothing happened. again, she was struck by this, that there seems to be -- and, obviously, there's variations from school to school, state to state, classroom to classroom, but this was something that i heard a lot as well, that there didn't seem to be -- a lot of rhetoric and not, like, a there

there. >> i want to bring wendy into this and focus a little on the teachings component of this whole issue. hog is the gap in teacher quality between the united states and the education superpowers as amanda calls them, and, you know, given your experience of the last, you know, 25 years, are we getting better at recruiting the best and the brightest to not only go into the teaching profession but stay in it? >> well, one thing, and i just been thinking this, that i think there are going to be some serious forms in my knowledge space as it relates to the broad zags because all our experience is literally working in the highest poverty communities, you know, all across the world, and

we're not in london, korea, or poland, and so, in fact, honestly, the similarities in the issues in the communities that we're working in across the world are far more striking than the differences actually mean when you get down to the level of the kid, and their circumstances, like, they are facing massive extra challenges in schools never set up to meet their extra needs, and, typically, they don't have teachers who, you know, are throeing themselves in doing whatever it takes to overcome the circumstance, so is a lot of that all over the world, obviously. i will say, i mean, bun thing i sort of wonder about -- can i -- i have a question, sorry -- >> sure. [laughter] i'll get a drink. >> no, no. [laughter] i mean, this is a little bit, but so it's just interesting. so i was in korea where there

are, in fact sessions over education where there's four or five teach for koreas, they are not exactly what we are doing, but i'm a celebrity in carerra as far as i can figure out. there's an obsession over this, but it was fascinating to be there and talk with a bunch of, actually, college students who went through the korean system back there on their -- in college here, back on their break, talking about what they saw as the dysfunction of the actual system, and you write about this unless book where you have the school system where at least in the estimation of the 40 kids i was talking to, they were learning precious little, but then they went to the hard ones, you know, at 11 p.m. at night, get out and go home and study, but what was fascinating is, you know, they get the top r5 -- 5% of students academically to teach in the regular system, so,

you know, and i was talking to others there, and, yeah, start out fine, but they are sucked in by a dysfunctional system. it was res -- resinating in a tern way, but you spent more time. >> korea is a laboratory, an interesting place. they are selective about elementary schoolteachers, that 5% you talked about, and not so much with high school teachers. it's like in the u.s., they educate more high school teachers thran they need. we educate twice as many teachers as we need in over a thousand education colleges of wildly varying quality and selectivity. that's what korea does for the upper grades because they have a teacher shortage at some point and decided to throw open the door to anyone, and once you do that, college is dependent on the revenue, and it's hard to change it, and so they have a

strangely by forkated situation, and as kids are older, they spend more and more time, getting more and more focused on the tests they take like the sat, but will determine, you know, the rest of their lives in some ways, and so it is a dysfunctional system that no one in korea particularly seems to like, but there was -- it was hard to disrupt that demand as it is in many countries around the world. the united states, thankfully, below arching in the percentage of kids seeking after school tutoring like this, but it is growing and exacerbates income inequality. in korea, 70% of the teenagers actually get the second school system after dark, and they kids, in surveys, prefer those teachers. there's interesting things to learn from that second system

which is very different from the state system. >> it is. to the original question, i mean, there was a study not long ago that was done that found one of the biggest two differentiators of the school systems making, you know, getting the best results is the fact that they actually select teachers based on a very rigorous standard before they then invest in training and support. we have a different system here, you know. we've got lots and lots of people majoring in teacher education, schools of education notoriously don't attract the most talented of our folks academically, on average, of course, there's exceptional folks who go into the schools of ed, and so we have a different system in terms of who is drawn into the profession. >> yeah, which i kind of underestimated -- i mean, i realize it mattered if you have a great education, it's easier for you to teach the subject,

but that's not enough; right? >> right. >> we all agree having a high gpa is not a predicter of great teaching. what surprising to me is the signal that sent to everybody else, you know, to the parents, taxpayers, and the kids about the profession and education in general, you know, when we say teaching is hard, education's important, but we don't act like it in many cases so it adds correct that i think has many implications that are had to imagine. >> good opportunity here, i mean, are you feeling changes in the way in which their role with a teacher changed. i mean, do you feel that people are more supportive, an era of

school reform since you became a teacher? how has that changed what you do every day, and do you feel that you have the kind of support, not just from your colleagues, but, really, from the society at large to do your best work? >> we can talk about the career in the free school right now, and the pope, and when i first joined the teaching fellow, there's a certification program, there was no support. we have flee weeks of test prep for the two tests we take, and after that, you know, i was, you know, put into a classroom, and so it was sink or swim. we were maybe 12 in the school, and by the end of the second year, we were three. it's changed a lot because i have no real professional

development or understand the basics for a really long time, and so i had to seek my own professional development. when i went to the new school, however, it, you know, it's a completely different paradigm. you know, it's like administration is pushing you to be better, and teacher teams are better, and we hold each other to really high standards. we innovate. we do a lot of things that when i was in finland, i was like this is not good teaching, is it? like, it's really, like, traditional. that was a shock to me, the most shocking thing to me about fin land. i just felt like i was down, you know, i was down a little bit for a while because i visited schools all around finland, probably been to more classroom than anyone in the country had ever been to, and sort of kept the upper levelers, but in the elementary preschools, the

quality of teachers was fantastic, and so i don't think as a nation we value teachers, at least good teachers, i suppose, anne i don't know what that means necessarily, but that discourses is teacher bashing for a while, and when i was in finland watching the indiana fiasco and just what is going on here, you know, and having these hour long debates and discussions with friends in finland, just what are you doing with the teachers? we don't understand. i think that the momentum for teacher bashing slowed down somewhat, but, yeah, i don't think we hold the profession to the regard that other countries do. it's definitely damaging. >> how partible were the things

learned in finland and how easily have you been able to kind of apply them in the class room here? i mean, i guess one criticism that you hear a lot is that of any kind of international comparison, is that the united states has a far more diverse, economically diverse, socially economic diverse population seen than anywhere else in the world, and borrowing the best practices from finland are not going to work here. have you found that to be the case? what worked and what hasn't? >> i mean, structurally finland is in the funding; right? there's poor schools, poor districts, you know, places where, you know, it's rural, and the median income is probably near poverty, and so the distribution of the funds were fairly equal, and schools and districts were able to make their own decisions in terms of

spending, and so diversity in terms of income not as great as the u.s., but what i was -- i went to finland, you know, very like centeredded on the cognitive aspect of what they did because i based research on pisa itself, so, you know, when i went there, i was looking for all these, you know, magic bullets that i could come back using that would increase students' cognition and high level thinking and all that, and i thought i really did use that stuff, but i brought it back, and i made my class for rigorous, just modeled from the finish inquiry and things like that, and i was running into a lot of difficulties since, and the problem is that poverty changes the aspects of the brain, and regardless of how

much support they received, they just didn't have skills they talked about like the conscientiousness and ability to -- >> noncognitive -- >> right, the nonacademic skills and developing them with the kids so reading a lot of research on some of those noncognitive skills and trying to support the kids in changing the way they view own intelligences and changing the way in which they respond to really difficult and really challenging tasks, so, i mean, i understand that at the end of the day we're aiming for really challenging, high, cognitively demanding high tasks we want the kids to do, but if the obstacle is the ability to start the task, what are ways in which we change the way in which they view themselves, view intelligence, they relearn and start that process.

a lot of the kids today. >> can i ask you -- >> yes. [laughter] >> did you find that there were things you saw in your research in finland where you noticed those soft academic skills? >> yeah, yeah, absolutely. i mean, i didn't see them then, but a process of reflection; right? >> no. i remember having a beer with you and both, like, what? it was -- it's hard in the midst of it to make sense. >> right. >> because you see antidepressant dote after antedote. go ahead. >> yeah, no, so in the two years since, i've been following, and they don't start school, and that's not true. they start preschool right away sort of, you know, and i think that is where those thoughts or academic skills are developed. by law, whether, depending on the age, they have a 1-3 or 1:4

student ratio learning and talking to kids how to fail, teaching them resiliency, teaching them how to play with each other, make rules, but creative, be curious about learning. we don't have that. the moment the kid is 4 #, they are pushed into the system, learning to read, write, spell, and do math where finish kids are nurtured and, i believe, if the research is correct, it's changing their own way of -- their self-perception of what their own intelligences are, and how they can respond to stress and how they respond to the challenges that academic, you know, they face in their academic lives translating to the real life eventually, not something we value. we learn that more and more. it does not exist -- >> tell them --

>> c2 -- there's no translation other than grit and resiliency and picking yourself up despite challenges. i think that's the closest we get to their concept. >> something core to the story as they tell about themselves. >> yeah. >> which partly comes from being -- i mean, it's fin land, cold, dark, miserable. [laughter] you have to -- >> always surrounded by enemies, always attacked. >> not having a lot of natural resources. it is a really cool -- on the one hand discouraging because it's culture, but on the other hand, we know you can teach these skills, and it helps if you have that, but in some ways, certainly teachable, would you agree, some of the skills, especially if you start early? >> highly teachable. i'm doing it now with 6th and 7th graders. it's harder. they don't necessarily believe everything you talk to them about, but, you know, when you

build trust in relationships, that's the finnish thing, you knowings trust and relationships, they are apt to believe what you are doing, and when you as teachers create learning opportunities where they feel successful and build on small successes, then slowly, slowly, you can really choose the way kids view themselves. >> lastly, you know, building on that before we open it up to questions, one of the big appointments on the book is that it's not necessarily about policy, but about culture or psychological change that needs to take place in our, not just in our school system, but society. since this is a think tank, what are some policy changes that are not happening that we, you know, that are -- that need to take place either in the local level or national level or -- and do

you feel there is the urgency that is necessary to make the kind of changes that finland, south korea, and poland made to catapult themselves into the category of high performers? do we have thatceps of a mission here? >> right. i mean, there's tremendous emotion, a lot of good will, and there's a lot of money in the united states on education and education reform even though it feels there's no money, we spend more than the three countries per student on k-12 education, and i think we have some real assets. you know, one of the things of the kids i surveyed mentioned repeatedly on their own is how much they like their american teachers because they talk to them, interactive, you know, classrooms had more dialogue. the kid from germany and italy really, especially, loved it, and, you know, that is a huge

strength if you are trying to teach higher order thinking skills and noncognitive skills for interplay if combined with rigorous work and other things which is encouraging. i think an area that we have not spent capital on to do better is parents. i think parents want to do the right thing, and sometimes there's so much noise about what that is so our parents do a lot so they work a lot to redirect that and help parents to be conducive especially to developing the skills you talked about. i think that would be a great fertile ground. >> wendy, do you have any thoughts? >> well, i was thinking about

another question that sort of emerges. [laughter] sorry again. no, you know, it was just so interesting, like, so you just said that when you switch schools, it was just a different world, and it's, you know, you are getting an administration and a level of team work, a lot of focus on helping teachers develop in all this, and, you know, i guess i think about -- i was just in shanghai, actually, and, you know, this is a system that's undergone a huge transformation as far as i can gather over the last one to two decades. it's now got the highest level of excellence in the world, and to hear the story from the man who seems to have, you know, led the charge, you know, there is all the basics, first of all, all the basics we all think in my mind that drove the change, but one of the most fundamental things is focusing on creating well-managed schools where you

got very engaged school leaders who are absolutely determined to get a building full of good results who create a culture and set of systems and set of supports that lead to a tremendous focus on team work and professional development and all this. back to the topic of teacher quality and this is really a question for you, amanda, i wonder, i mean, i've seen this through your work too where i start thinking, you know, i don't think the solution is necessarily changing schools of that to get to teacher quality, but i think it may be about changing our schools, like, i don't know how we are really going to get there until, you know, all of our teachers come into schools that are just much more functional places than the average school is right now. ..

retirement in the 80s that the best educated teachers in the world, just stating a fact. imagine if you could say that. we have some awesome teachers but there wasn't that institutionalized respect. your note teacher america is the most elite teacher prep program in the country that elevated proceeds to the point where everything at ivy league souls, teachers are new thing.

so in the reason you do it, it is of limited commitment. an interesting challenge of how to shift that. once you have that trust, they did not get into education college and one guy on his second try, doing famous, and the kids that i know, teenagers in particular, every country i went to there's some kid texting in the back of the room, they are not perfect intellectual heavyweights. they knew this was not a joke. those teachers had to work hard and want to be there to get there and not all our great and

not all of them are here but once you have that truck in any concept, they have the autonomy, to take chances. >> before we start talking about the job. and please be brief on your statements. why don't we start? >> when we talk about teacher education and the quality of teacher education, what you think that is, a good quality teacher education, how you select the people who get in and teacher education should be or is doing that is good in this

quality. >> the selected ready is important in signalling effect for everybody else, i don't think that leads to great teachers but that is possible for paying teachers that give more autonomy. and a barrier entry at the beginning. >> it is key on the keystone for the quality of the teacher but it is lacking although it is essentials and barely had -- it becomes a snowball effect when it is local and the teacher doesn't get much professional development, they are kind of stuck and some one wants to get better but the emphasis on getting better might be far away

because you are dealing with 30 kids. once you are in the trenches it is hard to find ways to satisfy yourself. >> i think you're point on the signaling affect which you made through this whole thing is fascinating. it is true, you got to start with personal characteristics that you alluded to. we have done so much starting, one of the characteristics that differentiate the folks, that predict success at the back and literally number one, grit, perseverance in the face of challenges and personal characteristics so i do think starting with a certain person, it is important but we have also seen firsthand there is a lot to successful teaching and the mindset, the skills, the

knowledge that you need to truly succeed with your kids, the question is how do you get that? everything we have seen is actually made all the more convinced that what we really need is to do a lot better job as you said on going coaching and professional development, whether we call it professional development, a good manager is good at developing people. i am not sure i would not just put people in classes about 3 service training, there are a lot of folks trying to figure out what we need to do at the 3 service level and what has to happen in an ongoing and never ending day. >> i am curious about your perspective on taking the global perspective on how unions fit in? can it work? are they impediments to change?

any lessons learned? >> everywhere i went there was a strong teachers union and everywhere i went the principles complained about the union and education officials complained and teachers complain about the principal. there was a certain commonality which may be windy can speak to as well. there were differences in how adversarial that relationship was between the union leadership, and would never say they got along great but there were big disputes on how to change the curriculum and they think of this as a huge fight but not a huge fight comparatively. the other extreme would be mexico where kids have been out of school for weeks in a travesty of a situation where teachers have been in heralding their right to teach, passed down from their family and the union is very powerful and it is

not very balanced historically. snow that relationship which seems to be born of our unions developed and when they developed and why they developed, that is a complex question but doesn't seem to be the present of the unions that the germans as in all of this stuff like the quality of the homework, of the testing, the teaching, the management as opposed to the amount of its or the presence of it. >> the gentleman had his hand up. >> i wanted to say i wanted to echo the sentiment that you have written a wonderful book that is clear and crisp and grounded in research. it is also very optimistic, particularly the case that change is possible, public policy matters so i want to pick up on that theme. can you talk a little bit about

why americans should dislike football little bit more and what public policy can do about that given the all the changes you talked-about were very driven from the center and required strong central government or public policymakers to move those changes? >> i think you have to let the united states as 50 different countries because states and locals define most of education and then you do start to see they do have some leverage peer over education colleges which they regulate the heck out of already and over what is allowed and what is not allowed. the sports example, i think, is something i never was really thought about but the kids i've followed kept bringing this up. in fact it was a little bit -- the object was a little bit

stacked because one reason kids go on exchange programs is they are not into football and their high school is super into football and kim for example, one of many reasons, kim is from rural oklahoma, she tried to fit into her account, tried to be a cheerleader and she is a little girl, scared to do a cartwheel and you can't get past that. so she had to quit that in third grade. that cheerleading filter is early. she joined the marching band. all these things around the center of town life which is football so she tried to join the band, practiced the flu, she tried, at seventh share. she just didn't find, she was curious about the world, she never left the united states but

wanted to, must be some place out there where she would be in to whatever was the central driving life force of the town, the kids kept bringing it up and it was something i realized i underestimated the distractions for its creativity is symptomatic of a larger kind of fog about rigorous work in school and what it is for. american principles all over the country have to continue whether a teacher candidate can coach before they hire them because they have cutting demands and most meetings with parents are around sports. playing or not playing or coach or this and then they have to manage ten different upright budgets and have to deal with hiring substitutes because the coaches gone away games and

there are a thousand things we don't think about. >> it starts earlier. >> the school day starts early as though there will be daylight time, many places are having team practiced during the school they. there are all these things we allowed to happen that signal again to be repetitive to our kids what matters, right? and obviously more matters in this world than math, but when you tell kids in a thousand ways that basketball or football is where it is at, they are going to believe it and they are going to find out eventually that it is not true and so i think those signals that kids pick up on are really powerful and we should at least stop, not saying man football, but we should have a

conversation. when football -- costs two to three more than that may be is worth it but let's have the conversation, is the trade-off worth it and is it worth the majority of kids who don't play football? >> to bundled the last few here, in the back and over here, we will take all three of them. >> would it be possible to give an example of teaching than a quality way. >> you want to come to my school? >> an example of what is quality and what is football. >> it is an incredibly dynamic thing that is hard to understand. i know is hard but -- >> what does it take --

>> taking over. >> back there. >> hi. getting back to the unions, what is your view on tenure and the effect that it has on the teaching and also the role of standardized testing and the move to everybody just taking these tests and not really thinking i guess, is a better word for it. >> that gentleman there. >> thanks. you mentioned a little bit as far as parents and football i wonder what other cultural aspects at home, parental support and culture that is different, how do they support their children differently than other countries? >> let's start with the tenure

and the testing. >> did you see tenure all over the world? is that pretty standard? >> six different contexts. >> you do in top performing countries. >> we are not in less-developed countries but you see it and the systems we are operating in are honestly we are not operating in the places we are talking about. we are operating in places with situations that look very much like ours. >> from your experience here, i am sure -- >> in my experience the way to get truly outstanding results for kids is to have really high quality schools, and generally those are schools led by principals who are determined to get their kids to a place of

excellence and to build their own teaching teams like they are obsessive about ensuring that they have the people they need in each and every classroom, it is hard to do that in a system like we have in this state and some states have moved to different situations in the u.s. and we are am powering, some states or principals to hire the teachers they need and put a lot more into it, they have a powerful culture, and provide mentoring and support professional development, to the extent that the tenure system ties principles and their most ingredient success and this is a mess the system. and we forgot to free people of in terms of figuring out how to spend their budget or who they hire to put on their team and

sub. >> you want to take the question? >> a huge amount of data on this. 13 different countries and regions looked at parents and practices connected to tease results and they took them home to the survey for their parents. and studies in the u.s. consistently all around the world, there are a of few things that helped raise children who are critical thinkers and close readers and enjoy that kind of work even if you control socioeconomic backgrounds, some of which are cliches at this point. not just that. as they get older talk to your child's about the news of the world, about what they are

reading. one of the coolest things, parents who read for pleasure on their own even after controlling everything else tend to have children who by age 15 enjoy reading more and better critical thinkers when it comes to reading so you see how there is complicated interactions that happens, conversations that parents are having with their kids in it helps to know a few tricks it turns out. what do you think is going to happen next? i didn't know that and my kids teacher told me and started having an interesting conversation. this is what i mean. i guess rabat calls from the public school telling me to go to chipotle because there's a burrito on a certain day. i don't get robot calls and i hope this will change if i keep saying this. i don't get calls that say don't forget to read to your kids tonight as when you are reading

ask your kids why do you think that is going to happen? will happen next? teachers feel that is obvious they don't need to tell you but i'm even to tell me and that leadership is helpful and that priority setting, turned out the same study parents who volunteer in their kids' schools and do pta meetings and sports is inversely related to reading performance by the time their kids are 15. the more they are volunteering in extracurricular activities but worse kids are doing in reading with his outrageous on every level. it speaks to the point that parental involvement works depending on where it happens and where it works best honestly is at home. >> real quick. it is common knowledge that finland has the shortest year in the world in the developed world

and whatever is put in actuality because of standardized tests and i get it, accountability and all that. i can tell you at least anecdotally that anywhere between three and four weeks of instructional time, i had to implement mandated diagnostics, had to implement all these ridiculous -- i had to give two or three days of field tests. why are my kids losing so much instructional time? so they can still screw up? [applause] >> the trust -- you don't have from the beginning that level of trust and autonomy, you end up with ridiculous, a ton of standardized tests most of which are not very smart so it is quantity over quality.

>> i think we have gone over time here. do you want to talk about this? >> we can probably describe what teaching was like. >> in a nutshell -- >> like one tiny -- >> this comes from different -- i would love if my kid had a teacher like this. the story is memorable because i had a fifth grader at the time i visited a fifth grade teacher in east san jose and when i walked in i saw these kids, this was in one of the more hard-pressed communities and when she first got them in fourth grade were reading at the first grade level so i see the kids and i wish i remember what they were reading, they are in the midst of an intense discussion, the level of

rigor of this, critical thinking, kids pushing, good answers like high energy and i was sitting there realizing oh my gosh, on the upper west side of man hadden is nowhere near this and i spent more time with feedback on their leadership. no snickers like my kids's class. people were taking this so seriously, learned characteristics, it was a serious conversation. once you spend more time you realize this teacher has the tournament, when she got on the mission she got her kids and kids' parents on a mission and she is thinking i am going to make sure my kids come out of my room with academic skills, personal characteristics, determination, the sense of personal agency and advocacy to

get a great education. one day she walked in her room, sit down at the desk, handout the worksheets, not her normal dynamic engage itself, the kids are totally confused and that that end of the day she says does today feel any different and the kids are like yes and one kid said i had something that felt like this and she said you may have one again. let's spend the next hour brainstorming. what are you going to do if you ever find yourself in a class like that? honestly what differentiates, i think of her as a great leader. in our context, teachers windy are incredible leaders. this woman came in, saw her fourth graders at a first grade level and was like what am i going to do to make sure that my kids end up getting to and through college? she had a vision like that is where we are going to go, got her kids on parents on their to sit down one on one and say here is where you are.

if you work with me we are going to get there and she did what great leaders do, on every level so determined. that is a truly great teacher. >> the book is "the smartest kids in the world". join me in congratulating amanda and thanking her for this wonderful -- [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with guess and viewers. watch the rich and information

on events, facebook.com/booktv. >> every weekend since 1998 c-span2's booktv has shown 40,000 hours of programming with top nonfiction authors including dd myers. >> if there are more women in politics, more women across public life, more women in power in the world this would change and so i am going to write a book about that and she said of day. >> all of us in the working class are subjected to punitive taxes, being ignored by the elite media, not getting any special interest held in washington like the fat cats get. we are all in the same boat no matter what color we are and that is the real problem. >> we are the only national tussle television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. jerrod the fall earmarking 16 years of booktv on c-span2.

>> when i was in the fourth grade the little girl in my class got killed. a few weeks before wanted to ask her to dance but i was too shy. i show up monday morning and randy dugan was telling me all about it, did you hear about jenny sugar, she got killed in a car crash yesterday. tractor-trailer hit her mom. they are both dead. i didn't believe him at first because randy dugan was always making the stuff like this, going on about how dad lived in england, this was something his mother told him because his dad left him for another woman and never came back, kept going on and on about it. my mom saw the move/night, she is dead. not knowing what is going on wondering whether it was true or not it was true, found out a couple minutes later from fourth grade teacher mrs. morgan, sat down at her desk and put her head in her hand, we were supposed to be working on spelling words like friends and mother but everybody stopped and watched her.

she sat for a second and started to cry. i listened to her cry and thought we are not going to have to do any work today. another girl started crying too. miss morgan walked over and asked if she needed to go to the that the man she nodded her head yes. miss morgan asked to go to the bathroom with her, leaned over and told my friend match, she didn't even notice that well. i was jealous because i wish i could be freed too. she was able to compose herself and i know this is a horrible accident, there will be a funeral tomorrow and i hope we can all go. you have permission forms, if you wish to go. i will be calling each of your parents tonight. she said of the was too much for anyone, you can stay behind and be shown in movie. someone raise their hand and said what do the? mrs. morgan said she did know. maybe a superman movie. i didn't say anything but i was thinking superman or the funeral, i picked superman. next day at school it seemed everybody else picked the funeral, dumb kids.

they got on a bus dressed up in a nice shirt and tie, church address and churches and church smells watching the window as they got on the school bus, only a couple didn't go, me and a special needs groups, the kid who proves his pants, he wanted to go because he always proves his pants and a teacher may of the excuse he couldn't go. after they left he sat down in the classroom and the superman 4 in the vcr the part of me was saying this is great, two days in a row we haven't done any work. you go to a funeral -- after watching a half-hour of superman 4 i realize something important. superman iv was horrible. you could see the wires holding christopher reeve in the air and a microphone in one shot and all the sudden special needs girl started crying and i said they're going to turn of the movie. she quit crying but superman iv wasn't getting better and i started smelling something. i sniffed my nose a couple times and then sit you prove your pants, didn't you? >> you can watch this and other

programs online at booktv.org. >> booktv's online book club selection for october's representative john lewis's walking with the wind:a memoir of the movement. >> as a young child i tasted the bitter fruit of segregation and racial discrimination and i didn't like it. i asked my mother and father, my grandparents, my great grandparents why segregation? why racial discrimination? they said that is the way it is. don't get in trouble. don't get in the way. in 1955 when i was in tenth grade, fifteen years old, i heard of rosa parks. i heard the voice of martin luther king jr. on the radio and the words of dr. king inspired me to find a way to get in the way. in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and first cousins we

went down to the public library in a little town in alabama trying to get library cards and checks and books out. .. it is the story of hundreds of thousands of countless men and women blacks and whites who put their body on the line during an difficult. making a history of our country to end segregation and racial discrimination.