Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281

Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123 and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues. I'm not convinced test scores are even all that sensitive to teacher quality within a wide range. Eric Hanushek has produced many peer-reviewed papers on the importance of teacher quality, http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality and I encourage participants on Hacker News who like to discuss education policy to read them thoughtfully. Better-quality teachers matter, both for test scores in the short term and for outcomes that matter a lot more in the long term. Every article about how terrible the U.S. education system is is more or less bunk. "Every" such article? How many have you actually read? Have you lived in another country for any length of time, as I have? Quite a few authors have devoted more time and effort to careful international comparisons of education than the two bloggers you recommended to back up your opinion. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2013/01/09-timss-pisa-loveless http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts... http://educationnext.org/is-the-us-catching-up/ http://educationnext.org/is-the-us-catching-up/ http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ Content analysis of the textbooks (for people who can read Japanese or Korean or Chinese or Russian--but how many Americans is that?) makes the point very clear. See http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd... (a LONG but worthwhile read I learned about from another Hacker News participant) for more about what's really missing in United States education. See also http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/29/look-east-young-man/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/29/lo... from a professor of mathematics at Princeton about which students come to Princeton well prepared for the courses there.