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(More customer reviews)I liked 'The World's Schoolmaster' most, about Andreas Schleicher, a German who lives in France. Schleicher studied physics at the University of Hamburg and became interested in mathematical analyses of education. He's worked to shift the OECD from measuring inputs (like spending on schools) to outputs (how much kids learn) and helped design a credible test to do so. The result was the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15-year-olds measuring retention of facts and ability to think critically and solve real-world problems. The U.S. rated in the middle, and Germany even lower.
Americans blamed poor performance on the prevalence of immigrants, but Schleicher et al noted that native-born Americans performed just as poorly. Schleicher has helped other nations improve by making their teacher-training schools more selective, and backing away from reducing class size.
Today 70 countries give PISA to samples of more than 500,000 15-year-olds every three years. The latest results came out in 2010 and for the first time included Shanghai - which trounced every other nation. Schleicher credits its success in part to a policy of rotating the best teachers into the region's worst-performing schools.
Schleicher is far from the first to focus on outcomes - this was done in 1966 in the Coleman Report. Unfortunately, American educators have ignored it and similar analyses ever since.
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