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Our schools are among the most unequally funded in the industrialized world, with some states or districts spending more than double what others spend per pupil. Money properly spent on the right educational resources for students who need them the most — especially on well-qualified educators and keeping classes at reasonable sizes — can make a huge difference.
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The Escuela Nueva (New School) model, introduced in Colombia 40 years ago, is almost unknown in the U.S., despite international accolades for its learning-by-doing approach. Teachers, parents, and students also have a say in how the school is run. While most of the students are poor and live in rural communities, they do as well on reading and math tests as their middle-class urban counterparts. A move is afoot to bring the model here.
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On the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the average reading and math scores of 8th-grade black boys were barely higher than those of 4th-grade white girls, and Latino boys did only marginally better. The male adolescents who participated in a program called Match, where teenage students work two-on-one with a math tutor, ended up as much as two years ahead of a control group. Here is why.
