For a socialistic country, Belgium & some other Western European schools are conservative when it comes to their schooling.
QuoteAmerican schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids -- it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education -- at many different kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."
Last week Florida's Supreme Court shut down "opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of "uniform . . . high-quality" schools. Government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
From the article "John Stossel's 'Stupid in America'" http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
Mr Dare....
ANything to back that accusation up??
http://www.youtube.com/v/zrX9Ca7LSyQ
Now that we have thouroughly bitchslapped John Stossel can we get to the issue of supporting or refuting the story?
Checking Stossel's claims against actual facts. Using the Politifact ranking it isn't exactly "pants on fire" but rather "Barely True". He takes a few actual facts and stretches them into something unrecognizable.
Putting aside Stossel's creds on education matters, the description of school funding in Belgium is incomplete. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Education at a Glance, Belgium does allow a parent to choose any public school or government-dependent private school without geographical restriction. 44% percent of students attend public elementary and high schools, 56% attend government-dependent private schools.
However, the publicly-funded dollars do not follow students in every case. There is nothing like American-style school vouchers in Belgium. The OECD specifically identified countries where "public funding follows students when they leave for another public or private school" and "funding does not directly follow the student, although adjustments can be made over time". In Belgium funding does not follow the student although adjustments can be made over time. Stossel's claims are partly correct.
Regarding Caroline Hoxby's (a school voucher/school choice supporter) statement that parents would never be trapped in a school as he or she would in the US, some European systems allow free choice, others do not. Children are assigned schools by geographical area in the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Slovak Republic and many others. Parents do not enjoy a general right to choose any public school they wish in Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Korea, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia. Parents are free to choose a school in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, and others. A mixed bag. Hoxby's claims are partly correct.
When we look at education spending we find that the U.S. spends 3.7% of its GDP on public school education. Korea spends 3.1%, Poland 3.4%, Belgium 3.9%, the Czech Republic 2.5%. We spend more than all but Belgium.
Test scores -- I looked at results of the TIMSS (Trends in International Math and Science Study) and PIRLS (Progress in Reading and Literacy Studies). TIMSS results for 2007 are available and 2006 for PIRLS. Not all the countries Stossel cites participated in these two tests. For TIMSS the US outscored the Czech Republic in 4th and 8th grade math and science tests but was significantly outscored by Korea. Only Poland and Belgium participated in the 4th grade PIRLS and the US outscored Poland and French Belgian schools. Flemish Belgian students scored slightly hire than US students in reading.
PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores generally are lower for US test-takers than other European and Asian countries. Korea, especially, invests many more classroom and out-of-school instruction hours to reading and math than does the United States.