Editorial on Education

From today's NY Times editorial section:

The national education reform effort has long suffered from magical thinking about what it takes to improve children's chances of learning. Instead of homing in on teacher training and high standards, things that distinguish effective schools from poor ones, many reformers have embraced the view that the public schools are irreparably broken and that students of all kinds need to be given vouchers to attend private or religious schools at public expense.

...

This point was underscored last week when the United States Education Department released a controversial and long-awaited report comparing public and private schools in terms of student achievement as measured on the federal math and reading tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As with previous studies, this one debunked the widely held belief that public schools were inferior to their private and religious counterparts. The private schools appeared to have an achievement advantage when the raw scores of students were considered alone. But those perceived advantages melted away when the researchers took into account variables like race, gender and parents' education and income.

Yes I agree, problems within our education system (in the US) can't be solved through quick fixes such as chartered schools, vouchers or some new fangled education practice. What I don't understand is why doesn't the US investigate how they educate their children elsewhere? I can tell you the main difference between Canada and the US: quality of teachers. In Canada, teachers are much more highly trained and have better wages. But I guess, being the richest country in the world, the US just can't afford to implement such measures.