The Smartest Kids in the World

When I was younger, I always used to think that

no matter where you go,

education is gonna be like...

you get it.

You have the opportunity to get it.

And if you fail,

that's on you.

Good morning.

I've come to realize

that it's not always about

a student not caring,

or a student not showing interest.

But sometimes, where you are,

where you go to school, where you live

can greatly effect your education.

Attention! Salute the teacher.

I'm not really being challenged at all.

Especially at our school,

there's nothing in to really push me.

It didn't feel like learning,

it felt like... just being a statistic.

And that's not what I wanted,

from my high school experience.

We had English teachers, teaching the science classes.

I just didn't feel like,

I was getting the best that I deserved.

There were fights in classrooms

and somedays I could take it

and other days I couldn't.

I just don't feel ready for what's next.

And I wanted something different.

I'm never been off the country before,

at all.

So, it's definitely new to me.

Leaving behind everything you know.

Your family, your mom and coming to a new country.

Things I can experience and feelings that I don't

necessarily see or feel here everyday.

I wanna know that difference

I wanna know the people, and...

understand them,

understand why they do certain stuff,

and why we don't do that.

I was always curious about

why these countries are doing so well?

Why is America not?

America is exceptional in many ways.

Sadly secondary education is not one of them.

The US spends more on education

then almost every other developed country.

What do we get for our money?

US high school students rank

31st in math and 23rd in science,

versus other developed countries.

This is according to the highly regarded PISA rankings.

There were little or no gains in the last decade,

while other countries raced ahead of The United States.

Here to talk about what it means,

Amanda Ripley, author of.

The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got This Way.

What do we need to do differently?

For a country that is looking to deliver

a world class education system,

what path needs to be followed?

I mean what are we doing wrong and what are they doing right?

I spent the first half of my career

avoiding writing about education.

I wrote about crime,

I wrote about terrorist attacks.

I wrote about hurricanes and

floods and earthquakes and fire.

But, I avoided doing educational stories

because the conversation in the United States

about education,

could not be more stagnant.

It's just the

same people lobbing the same accusations back and forth.

We are going to give students choice!

More money for a successful charter school,

means less for public school.

Just pouring more money into a broken system,

uh, doesn't work.

We... We're setting benchmarks

that determines, what it really means to have

a quality education in this country.

Is it just the teachers though, Jeff,

what about the parents?

I started

realizing that,

in most education debates

there were no students at all.

It was about adults.

There are millions of experts on education

who are never in the room, when decisions get made.

And those people are kids.

Students know things about school

that you can never know.

Until you ask them.

It made me realize,

that there was a lot to this education thing,

that I had not understood.

And that's why I needed kids,

if I was going to investigate this mystery.

Why is it, that there are now a handful of countries

that are just, reliably, killing it?

You know, what's it like to be a kid there?

You can't get that from the data.

Luckily, there are tens or thousands of kids

who'd switch places every year.

They are the key to understanding

how we're doing

and what's possible.

Congratulations on your study.

Would you like me to hold that?

Yes.

I wanna try this one out.

Alright.

Where you gonna study abroad?

The Netherlands.

I'm happy for ya. I think that's...

very life expanding.

Yeah.

Get out of small town America.

Nobody, that I know of

has ever done anything like this.

Nobody feels, Saratoga,

for a long time, has done this.

So I mean it's exciting for people out here.

There will be a football intimational meeting

on Friday...

- No. - I will of course, too bad.

Anyone interested to join football next fall,

should plan to attend, if possible.

Grace? You're here. Kevin? You're here. I heard your voice.

Tyler?

This is a silent sustained reading class.

From what I understand, it's because our school is

low testing in reading.

And so they designated period for us to just read.

To improve test scores.

It's Thursday and

I usually don't do much in this class.

Um, his name is Mr. Mason.

He's the wrestling coach,

track coach, golf coach.

He also teaches this computer class.

He does all the Microsoft stuffs,

all the yearbook stuff for the school.

Um, but he's at state track right now.

I felt held back in most of my classes.

But, take what you can get.

All you can really do in Saratoga is sports.

The guts and the heart that we saw this weekend,

is exactly what we have to have pushing forward.

Those matches right now,

pay off at state.

We've got sports year round and

students consistently miss the Fridays to compete.

The attendance for that day is less than half in the school.

And uh, they can't count that as an actual school day.

So they just don't allow us to go.

I wouldn't mind going to school on Fridays.

Well, darn it!

The schooling over there I am certain is gonna be

taking my knowledge to a new level and how I can learn and.

I look forward to that.

I look forward to not so much of a monotonous day.

Like here. It day after day, we do that same thing.

And I hope to uh,

you know, sway from that path by going to the Netherlands.

- Um, it's Finnish. - Finnish.

What are you telling us?

Um, I said, "Hi, my name is Brittany."

I live in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

"I am 16 years old and I love shopping."

I'm never been off the country before,

at all. So, it's...

It's definitely new to me.

And when people would ask me, "Why Finland?"

I kinda didn't want to tell them it was

'cause they have a really great educational system.

Because everybody was gonna look at me like,

"You're going on exchange for education?

"You can get that here in the United States" and so

I always told them, "It was because Santa Claus was from Lapland,

and I really wanted to go to Finland"

everybody just kinda went with it.

They're like "Oh my gosh that's so cool. Yeah, you should go."

I wanna remind you, that you're explanation statements

need to demonstrate proficiency.

I'm getting a lot of corrections back

that uh, are just kinda phoning it in.

I don't go to school to make friends.

I go to school for an education.

It's so important, that I get good grades,

because I wanna be really successful

and sometimes that can...

get in the way of, like my friendships and stuff.

People tell me all the time, that like you're overworking yourself,

you're so overwhelmed right now and then there's me,