Recommended: The great schools revolution

The Economist has an interesting article in this month's issue: Reforming education - The great schools revolution.  While the USA has been spending more and more money on education, our ranking has fallen further and further behind the rest of the developed world.  We now spend more per student than almost any other country, yet our 15 year olds rank between 17th (reading) and 25th (math) among the developed countries of the world.

As the article notes:

"Above all, though, there has been a change in the quality of the debate. In particular, what might be called “the three great excuses” for bad schools have receded in importance. Teachers’ unions have long maintained that failures in Western education could be blamed on skimpy government spending, social class and cultures that did not value education. All these make a difference, but they do not determine outcomes by themselves."

and:

"So what are the secrets of success? Though there is no one template, four important themes emerge: decentralisation (handing power back to schools); a focus on underachieving pupils; a choice of different sorts of schools; and high standards for teachers."