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Roadmap to Improving Education Outcomes in the United States
J. Bradon Rothschild
TPOLS 496
Research Paper
The results are in and the United States did not fare well on the PISA 2012, dropping 6 places to a dismal ranking of 31 out of 65 participating nationsi. The new ranking highlights the ongoing debate in the United States over how to “fix” our K-12 education system. Some wish to vastly increase teacher pay while breaking unions by doing away with many long held teachers “rights” such as tenure in order that principals may fire “bad teachers” or “lemons”ii. Others, including the unions, wish to increase teacher pay and reduce testing. Many politicians have pushed forward charter schools and private school voucher systems as a means to increase school choice, arguing that, like any good, education needs competition for the best resultsiii. Some states and communities, including Washington State, have begun to move from the traditional school system we have in the United States towards “charter schools”iv.
By viewing simply the rankings on PISA scores, one gets the clear impression that the American public school system is, in fact, failing. Yet a deeper look at the scores, not ranking, suggests another scenario altogether. Over the course of PISA testing it is true that the United State has dropped in ranking. However the scores themselves have not dropped and in fact, in some fields, have risenv,vi,vii,viii. The 31st ranking the United States receives may be below average, but it is tied with many other nationsix. One primary reason for the drop in PISA rank is a significant rise in scores of other participating nations. This does not paint a failing picture of

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the United States education system at all, it simply points to the incredible success of the other nations such as South Korea, Japan, and Finland who top the charts and have improved greatly since the inception of PISA. Indeed, over the past several iterations of the PISA, scores for the United States have barely budged from a few points above or below average, which in 2009 was 493, a year in which we scored 500x. The lag in standings, therefore, has more to do with successes abroad than failures ashore.
Taken alone, the nearly stagnant scores and dropping rankings have often been cited as indicative of a failing public education system. When put in conjunction with NAEP – National Assessment of Education Progress, a nation-wide, participant blind assessment – proficiency rankings, high dropout rates, and a persistent demographic achievement gap, one can easily paint a fairly negative picture of the American education system. As is often pointed out by many in the reform movement, proficiency ratings – which grade students based on expected rates of proficiency for students in relation to their grade level – tend to be average or low; however some claim that there is a mischaracterization on this note as high NAEP proficiency scores are intended to show students who perform well above grade level, not simply at grade level xi, xii. In other words, according to NAEP scores, nearly 1/3 of all students in fact perform well above expected grade level, while another 1/3 score at grade level. This is hardly damning evidence.
As for drop-out rates, Diane Ravitch rightly points out in her book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools that, though the number of dropouts remains high, they have in fact been dropping for the past 70 years. In 1940 the high school completion rate for the first time rose to 50 percent, and by the early 90’s it had risen to 74 percent; as of 2012 that number had continued to increase and now sits around 78.2 percent xiii. Ravitch also points out that this number does not include individuals who take

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more than four years to complete a high school diploma – students who are held back a grade or more but continue with their education are not included as having “completed” and are calculated as having “dropped out” – or students who complete a GED instead, numbers which she contends would bring high school graduation rates up to 90 percentxiv. Though this information may change one’s opinion and alleviate some desperation and fear of the failing system, it certainly does not mean that there is no room for improvement.
How does one make sense of all of this conflicting information? It is fairly clear that the education system in the United States is not functioning optimally and that children are falling through the cracks. Moreover, falling ranking worldwide may not mean that the overall quality of education attained in our schools has depreciated, but it does mean at the very least that our system is not improving at the same rate as others. At the same time, high school completion has continued to rise amongst most demographic groups.
In this paper I will argue that in order to improve academic and scholastic success, rather than focusing all of our efforts on completely reforming our education system, most of our efforts need to be focused on poverty alleviation and helping children in the most dire of socioeconomic situations. A second priority would be to level the financial playing field for schools by centralizing school budgets away from district and state control, and towards federal control in order to ensure all children have healthy, safe, well-funded schools to attend. We also need to cultivate stronger role models through organizations which pair up at-risk children with respected members of their community in order to stabilize and enrich children’s lives. Standards, especially for educators themselves, need to be raised to ensure that they are experts in their fields and experts in education. Finally we should experiment with how we teach – to be

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distinguished from how we administer education – to find the best practices for classroom organization.
Though most of the numbers on the subject show a varying degree of either success or failure, the overall trends show that our schools are in fact stuck in the sense that they are not improving at the rate of those in other nations. The largest lag here is in the achievement gap – the education attainment level difference between various demographic groups, primarily between wealthy and poor, Caucasian and racial minority – which is still relatively wide in the United States and only shrinking very slowly according to NAEP scores and college completion rates. In an effort to improve our PISA standing, our primary focus must on shrinking the ever present achievement gap.
One may define the achievement gap as the education status difference between racial groups, though a more accurate description places the gap achievement – and social mobility – between income groups. Generally speaking, children from economically disadvantaged families tend to have lower education attainment rates – be it finishing high school, or going to college – than middle and upper income earning familiesxv.
The truth is that many of the most underperforming schools and school districts can be singled out demographically from the rest in large part due to poverty, socio-economic status, and race xvi, xvii. School districts with higher proportions of African, Latino, and Native American families – and thus students – tend to have lower scores via NAEP, SAT, ACT, and PISA tests xviii. A foregone conclusion of poor scores and poorer overall education in these

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districts is higher unemployment, lower college enrollment, and lower social mobility. This is the essence of the “achievement gap” which continues to plague the American education system.
Poverty is therefore one of the first things which must be addressed in fixing public education. Support low income families with poverty prevention programs aimed at providing stable housing, health care, healthy food, and the basic amenities in order to stem the cycle of some of the worst problems associated with povertyxix. Such a system could certainly be very complex; enough so that to go into any great detail would require several books. Suffice it to say, in many of the developed European nations, the very nations which out-perform the United States’ education system, strong welfare systems have long played a prominent role in reducing povertyxx.
To be sure, this leads to a “chicken and the egg” paradox: many problems associated with low education quality; problems such as inability to sustain work, and domestic instability; stem from poor socioeconomic standing and poverty, one of the best and most lasting methods to fight poverty is better education. However generally speaking, one of the best ways for an individual or family to escape such socioeconomic stagnation is attaining a better education. Individuals with better educations tend to have higher incomes and levels of lifetime productivityxxi. Though there are some ways by which we as a society may stop the vicious cycle, wherein poor families beget poor families, with some welfare reform and social supports.
Many of the reform mind-set claim that poverty is simply an excuse for schools with poor achievement and poor test scoresxxii. They claim that it is largely an excuse employed by principals, teachers, and superintendents “who fail to substantially raise the performance of low- income minority students”xxiii. To be sure, there are some schools in poor neighborhoods which accomplish seemingly impossible turn-arounds with little added money, using a wide variety of

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tactics to engage students in the learning process. However, these schools remain the exception to the rule. The truth is that most of the “failing” schools; or the schools with the highest drop- out rates, lowest test scores, and lowest college admission rates; tend to be those in the poorest neighborhoods.
Some of the most basic environmental factors stem from home life, stress at home, and stimulation of early childhood developmentxxiv,xxv. Highly stressful home environments; home environments wherein there is frequent abuse or neglect, be it willful or through absent parents due to long working hours or other stress-inducing factors, often stunt both the emotional and psychological/intellectual growth of a child as well as potentially altering neurological systems to always keep the child in a state of high anxietyxxvi. These children tend to have more health problems, which can stunt any academic progress, and shorter attention spans and innate psychological abilities needed for long-term concentrationxxvii.
The claims of Ravitch and Tough are in fact borne out in many studies of the sociological and medical backgrounds of low socio-economic families and children. Ravitch makes the point that many women of low socioeconomic status have little or no access to pre-natal care, and once born their children have limited access to health care as wellxxviii. Lack of prenatal care can lead to a wide range of physical and mental disabilitiesxxix. Having a high number of children born to poor parents concentrated in often urban school districts sidles those school districts with a higher proportion of developmentally disabled children, thereby burdening the school with the extra task of caring for their needs.
Beyond the concerns caused by a lack of prenatal and neonatal care, many of the most impoverished neighborhoods are often the most heavily polluted. New research has linked toxins in the environment to a wide variety of acquired mental and psychological disabilitiesxxx.

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In the January and February 2013 cover article, Mother Jones revealed the surprising link between a variety of chemicals and elements and mental and psychological including mental retardation and violent crime, even murder and rapexxxi. According to the article, IQ rates in areas with high concentrations of lead pollution tend to be far lower than areas without such high concentrations. The trend can be traced even over time as an increase in use of leaded gas correlated nearly exactly with an increase in violent crime. Presently, areas with high levels of lead and arsenic in the groundwater or soil have elevated levels of violent crime and higher numbers of people suffering from ADHD and mental retardation. Unfortunately many of these areas are heavily populated by socioeconomically disadvantaged.
As if these two problems weren’t enough, poorer neighborhoods tend to be concentrated in poorer school districts. For some states, such as Washington, the district provides a large portion of the local school’s fundingxxxii. Throughout the country, the largest source of funding for schools comes directly from the state budget. What this means is that poorer districts, and poorer states, have a higher burden placed on them via poverty induced disabilities, and often smaller school budgets due to lower tax revenues. Mississippi, for instance, has a median income of nearly $15,000 below the national medianxxxiii, their state education budget is far lower (per student) than other, wealthier states such as Connecticutxxxiv. This further burdens the schools in those states and districts by underfunding instruction and capital.
This leads us to the most mechanical of the solutions is to level the budget playing field by federalizing funding for schools and significantly decreasing the role school districts play with regards to funding. As discussed earlier, many states rely heavily on state and local level funding for education, putting poorer states and districts at sometimes severe disadvantages. Schools in poorer districts and neighborhoods are quite literally falling apart and are often

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understaffedxxxv,xxxvi. Unlike their counterparts in suburban districts, many urban schools lack the facilities for many extracurricular activities associated with high quality schools such as computer and science labs, gymnasiums and pools, theaters, and audio-video departments or radio stations. These departments help to engage students in learning different disciplines and subjects, offering opportunities to explore technical and professional fields otherwise not explored in most urban high school settings. Moreover, there is plenty research to indicate mathematic education value in learning music – one has to understand rhythm and how to calculate beats and measures to read musicxxxvii,xxxviii.
Consider this scenario: Two school districts both with 100,000 people, one with a median income of 100,000, the other with a median income of 20,000. The first district represents a wealthy one, for instance Bellevue Washington. While the latter represents a poorer one, for instance, Wenatchee Washington. If both districts instituted a levee based system to pay for their schools and leveed a 1% property tax on homes to pay for it, the tax in the Bellevue school district would generate far more revenue than the one in Wenatchee. This would in essence double the negative effect seen in the poorer district of the previously mentioned disadvantages poorer students arrive at school already having.
Now consider both school districts again, but this time, rather than presupposing every- body within the district lived at or around the district’s median income, add variety, maybe bring the medians closer. Say 80,000 and 40,000. We already see that one district still has an advantage, though maybe not as serious. However over time, as the schools in one district out- perform the other, the residents more financially fit for mobility will likely move from one district into the other; why pay the same tax rate when getting a far worse result? Perhaps the second school district may raise its levee in order to level the playing field by adding new

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revenue to the district. Rather than paying a 1% tax, the residents now pay a 2% tax. The schools may improve, and managed properly likely would. However, many residents may find this new tax-rate unbearable and leave to another with lower taxes. These most likely would be those who are financially fit for relocation (i.e.: wealthier, and certainly not poor; people who can afford to purchase or start rent at a new location and cover moving costs). They would likely move to districts with lower tax-rates while maintaining decent schools; districts where the median income is likely far higher than their original.
In this way, districts become demographic mono-cultures. Wealthier districts attract and retain wealthy residents, while poorer people are immobilized and relegated to poor districts often with high tax-rates in an attempt to compensate for the abject poverty. This has many negative side effects, notwithstanding the simple financial aspects. Firstly, it prevents children for diverse demographic groups from mingling and socializing on a regular basis. As is readily apparent throughout the United States, unfortunately socio-economic demographic groups still maintain themselves along racial lines; wealthier people tend to be Caucasian or Asian, while poorer people tend to be African, Native American, or Latino. Or, more accurately, Caucasian and Asian people tend to be wealthy, while African, Native American, and Latino people tend to remain poor.
This scenario also cuts off growth of social capital for poorer children and their families. Social capital describes connections an individual makes with others. These connections can be family based; brothers, sisters, parents, etc.; or friendships of multiple types; close teachers or bosses, or friends (think Fraternity or Sorority). Often these connections are more valuable than we realize. In many sub-Saharan nations, impoverished individuals with HIV/AIDS have a significantly longer life expectancy when they have family or close friends for support than those

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who lack such support systemsxxxix. Similarly, individuals in impoverished communities who have a greater number of personal connections – i.e.: social capital – are less likely to languish long or suffer homelessness; if your family and friends are not alienated, you likely always have a home somewhere.
To that end, for the sake of many poorer areas we should more heavily finance organizations which grow social capital such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and YAP (the Young Advocate Program) and offer them permanent positions in our public schools. As mentioned above, social capital is one of the most important facets of personal success and stability. Pairing children, especially at-risk children, up with responsible role models not only encourages positive behaviors, but grants those children to invaluable social capital which they may use to better their lives in the futurexl. Paul Tough tells two stories of children who got involved with the YAP program in Chicago’s south side. Both were at-risk and failing out of high school, and likely getting involved with gang activities which would have landed them in jail, and certainly not in stable careers. Through these interventions, though, both children stabilized their lives and have found moderate success, one in the salon industry, the other in auto-work. In the local schools, some principals have invited YAP to participate actively with the students in order to help stabilize their lives. The result has been a decrease in drop-out rate, and, for YAP students, higher academic successxli.
Likewise we need to increase access of afterschool and extra-curricular activities to engage students in building social capital as well as creativity. At many of the more successful, and privileged schools, afterschool activities, such as baseball or Science Olympiads, are routinely offered and plentifulxlii. Many studies have shown that children engaging if afterschool activities under teacher supervision have higher test scores, grades, and college admittance

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ratesxliii. Paul Tough writes very extensively at afterschool activities, such as the chess club, helping underprivileged and underserved children achieve astounding academic and professional results. Again, it is unfortunately the poorest schools which need this help the most, but also are most likely to lack the programsxliv.
Though much of what has been suggested in this paper to better our nation’s PISA scores and overall improve our education system has focused on support of at-risk students in order to close the achievement gap, this does not mean we have no room to improve the system for everyone including those who are already achieving academic excellence. To this end we do indeed need to look to the schools and system itself.
We need to raise the standards for teachers and educators. Far too many teachers are ill- prepared to teach their own subjects and a growing body of evidence suggests that lack of subject knowledge by teachers can undermine other education efforts. To that end people wishing to be educators should be required to hold degrees in the subjects they wish to teach along with the master’s degree in education and certification. Moreover rather than requiring only the one-year certification degree, all teachers should be required to complete the two year Master’s Degree course in education appropriate for the expected grade level and subject they will be teaching, which should include a basic education in child development and psychology in order to better ready them for the classroom. Many other nations, most notably Finland, in recent years have dramatically raised the academic and professional requirements for educators and have found a high level of success with such programs both via PISA scores and economic growth and stabilityxlv,xlvi. In other words, educators should truly be experts both in their field – math, science, chemistry, literature, etc. – and in the practice of education.

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We should more fully utilize well regulated and educator driven charter schools. In the past decade, charter schools have been given a fairly bad name by large for-profit entities which have had a history of cherry-picking students and dataxlvii,xlviii. At the very least, claims of wild success within the modern charter school format are dubious. This certainly does not mean that charters have no place in education reform. The original purpose of the charter schools as envisioned by their theoretical founder, Ray Budde, was a school format free of local and federal government regulations where teachers could control curriculum and in-class activities in order to try new methods of teaching; charter schools were to be a laboratory of education practices to be used by school districts to find best practicesxlix,l. Though some modern charter schools, often privatized and entirely separate from all levels of government, have shown significant improvements with regards to student achievement and success later in lifeli, many have failed to show such results and may in fact be detrimental to their students futures, who unfortunately often stall in their professional lives, if not drop out of college earlylii.
However, with highly trained education professionals working within a self-regulated and guided environment, new solutions to old problems may more readily be found using a scientific approach. It could be viewed in this respect: All of education is a social science experiment. Using different methods and comparing results, we may find better ways of teaching and administering education. In this regard, charter schools would be the test subjects and traditional schools would be the control group. Ideally a wide array of students from varying demographic backgrounds and abilities/disabilities would enter a charter school at a young age and be tracked through the system, routinely measuring progress with non-judgmental tests, in other words, tests which do not dictate success or failure by the student or teacher, simply assess progress. The information gleaned from such practices could be used to find effective and ineffective teaching

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styles which could then be applied to larger groups of students through the traditional public schools, similar to how psychological studies find effective and ineffective treatments for a wide array of maladies.
A secondary use of charter schools would be a training ground for teachers, both new and veteran. In Washington State, like many other states, part of the course of earning a teaching certificate is completing a practicum as a teacher in a public schoolliii (OSPI, Washington State Teacher Certification Requirements, n.d.); this approach should be fully integrated by requiring first a term at a charter “teaching” school followed by a term at a traditional public schools in order to stream-line new teaching techniques.
In order to better our education system, we need to take a multi-pronged approach and address issues which may seem to have little if anything to do with education. One of the first priorities must be to keep children in schools, even if the schools are not themselves perfect. Building stable home-lives and communities which can more readily foster children is a key component to improving our education system. It is a component which is sorely lacking in the United States; one which, in many ways, sets us apart from the rest of the OECD worldliv. Many of the countries with the highest PISA scores laud their poverty alleviation programs for part of their successes, and it seems they may be right to do solv.
Though higher standards in our schools could lead to better results, those cannot be attained without more highly qualified teachers and more evenly funded schools. Again, other nations attribute much of their success to standards; not just for students, but for teachers and course contentlvi,lvii. By universalizing what we teach and, to a degree, how we teach it is possible to at the very least attain more unified results. Likewise, universalizing funding for

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schools so that no school is crippled by lack of funding will raise the achievement rates in the most at-risk districts, and help lower the achievement gaps.
When considering the education of our children, we must always remember that every child in unique and has different needs. Though trends appear and as a system we can assume that most children will have many needs in common, they are hardly universal. At the very least, each child arrives at school at different levels of preparedness. It is our job as a society to ensure that even the children who have not had all the advantages of life are afforded every opportunity to succeed and all the support needed for them to accomplish such a task. Many may argue that it is the responsibility of the parents to ensure the welfare of their children; though this is true, it may not always be possible, especially for those parents who struggle with their own roadblocks in life. In short, education should be viewed as a system not simply of schools, but of institutions including schools, community projects, non-profit organizations, and families. But most of all education is not about buildings and teaching, it is about growing healthy, successful, productive, and informed children who will then become valued citizens. In short: it takes a village to raise a child.
i Wojcicki, Esther. “How Will U.S. Policy Makers Respond to Our Failing PISA Test Scores?” The Huffington Post. Dec. 19, 2013. Accessed Dec. 20, 2013 via http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther- wojcicki/how-will-us-policymakers_b_4475397.html
ii Haynes, V. Dion. “Rhee Seeks Tenure-Pay Swap for Teachers” The Washington Post, Jul. 3. 2008. Accessed Jan. 16, 2014 via http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/07/02/AR2008070203498.html
iii Paley, Amit R. “Bush Proposes Adding Private School Vouchers to ‘No Child’ Law” The Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2007. Accessed Jan. 16, 2014 via http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/01/24/AR2007012401982.html
iv Shaw, Linda. “Charter Schools Narrowly Win Approval in Washington” Seattle Times, Nov. 12, 2012. Accessed Jan. 16, 2014 via http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019670471_charter13m.html v OECD. (2001). PISA 2000 Results: Executive Summary. vi OECD. (2002). Learning for Tomorrow’s World: First Results from PISA 2003.
vii OECD. (2010). PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary

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viii United States Department of Education. (2012). Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Mathematics, Science, and Reading Literacy in an International Context: First Look at PISA 2012. ix Ibid. x OECD. (2010). PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary xi Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. Knopf. xii NCSE. (2012). NAEP Achievement Levels.
xiii Ravitch, 2013.
xiv Ibid.
xv White, Margaret. (2010). “Poverty and Education: A Teacher’s Perspective”. BCTF Research Report. xvi McLaughlin, Kate A., Jennifer Grief Green, Margarita Alegria, E. Jane Costello, Michael J. Gruber, Nancy A. Sampson, and Ronald C. Kessler. (2012) “Food Insecurity and Mental Disorders in a National Sample of U.S. Adolescents.” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. November, 2012. xvii Raver, C. Cybele (2012). “Low Income Children’s Self-Regulation in the Classroom: Scientific Inquiry for Social Change.” American Psychologist. November, 2012.
xviii Ibid. xix Wang, C., Caminada, K., & Goudswaard, K. (2012). The redistributive effect of social transfer programmes and taxes: A decomposition across countries. International Social Security Review, 65(3), 27–48.
xx Ibid.
xxi Ravitch, 2013.
xxii Ibid.
xxiii Joel Klein, qtd. in Ravitch, 2013
xxiv Ravitch, 2013. xxv Tough, P. (2012). How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (Reprint edition.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
xxvi Ibid.
xxvii Ibid.
xxviii Ravitch, 2013.
xxix Ibid.
xxx Bell, Michelle L. and Keita Ebisu. (2012). “Environmental Inequality in Exposures to Airborne Particulate Matter Contaminates in the United States”. Environmental Health Perspectives. 1699-1794.
xxxi Drum, Kevin (2013). “Criminal Element”. Mother Jones. 28-35.
xxxii Washington State Senate Ways and Means Committee. (2012) “Citizen’s Guide to Washington State K-12 Finance 2012”
xxxiii United States Census Bureau. (2010) “Mississippi Quick Facts” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28000.html xxxiv Dixon, Mark. (2011). “Public Education Finances: 2011” Government Division Reports. United States Department of Commerce: US Census Bureau.
xxxv Ravitch. (2013)
xxxvi Tough. (2012) xxxvii Southwest Education Laboratory. (1998). “Teaching With Math”. Classroom Compass. 1998. V. 4. No. 2. xxxviii Rogers, G. L. (2004). Interdisciplinary Lessons in Musical Acoustics: The Science-Math-Music Connection. Music Educators Journal, 91(1), 25–30.

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xxxix Masanjala, Winford. (2007). “The Poverty-HIV/AIDS Nexus in Africa: A Livelihood Approach,” Social Science & Medicine, 1032-1041.
xl Tough. (2012)
xli Ibid. xlii Durlak, J.A. and R.P. Weissberg. “The Impact of After School Programs that Promot Personal and Social Slills”. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. 2007.
xliii Ibid.
xliv Ibid.
xlv Sahlberg, Pasi. (2010). “The Secret to Finland’s Success: Educating Teachers.” Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.
xlvi Hancock, LynNell. (2011). “Why are Finland’s Schools Successful?” Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed Mar. 17, 2014 via http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful- 49859555/?all
xlvii Ravitch. (2013)
xlviii Bifulco, Robert and Helen F. Ladd. (2004) “The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina”. xlix Klonderine, Ted. (2005) “Ray Budde and the Origins of the ‘Charter Concept’”. Education Evolving.
l Ravitch. (2013)
li Booker, Kevin, Tim R. Sass, Brian Gill, and Ron Zimmer. (2008) “Going Beyond Test Scores: Evaluating Charter School Impact on Educational Attainment in Chicago and Florida”. Rand Education.
lii Tough. (2012) liii O.S.P.I. (n.d.). Washington State Teacher Certification Requirements. Accessed Feb 12, 2014, From http://www.k12.wa.us/certification/certapp/4031.pdf
liv OECD. (2010). Factbook 2010: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics: Quality of Life: Income Inequality and Poverty: Poverty Rates and Gaps.
lv Ravitch. (2013) lvi Baird, Ktherine. (2012). Trapped in mediocrity: why our schools aren’t world-class and what we can do about it. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
lvii Sahlberg. (2010)