If you are into education, into reducing inequality, and into trying to create equality of opportunity, this is a particularly interesting finding.
In a nutshell here is what is going on ... In Canada education is by and large funded equitably. In the province where I live all students irrespective of whether they live in poor or rich neighbourhoods (Canadian spelling - yes there is a difference for a number of words) are funded at a set dollar amount per student. Adjustments are then made for things like percentage of ESL students etc. The bottom line is that paying higher property taxes does not get you more resources for your school board to spend on your kids. Yeah, I know, socialism ... but not really.
“This is good because in not letting the least advantaged kids – in terms of family resources – fall behind, we have an overall higher score, and frankly in the long run, a more inclusive society.”
What you find in the Canadian system is a huge effort to stop kids from falling behind including lots of special ed. There seems to be a lot less spent, relatively, on gifted or advanced programs. The result shows up in the numbers below the squiggle where we see that "class" is less of a determinant of performance than for many other nations - and I would argue that starts with how schools are funded.
This is really quite stunning:
Ever since the PISA exam scores were announced in December, parents and education experts have been fretting over Canada’s 13th-place ranking in math. But when parental education is taken into account, it turns out the children of the country’s doctors and lawyers fall even further in the rankings: They placed 22nd when compared to their similarly advantaged peers around the world.
Canadian students with parents working in the least-skilled jobs, such as cleaners and couriers, may have answered, on average, fewer questions correctly than the better-off students in their class. But when ranked against their global peers, they did much better – placing 10th.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...
There is a lot of bullshit about everyone being created equal, and its all up to the individual ...
But let's be honest. If you have educated parents with good jobs living in a district where good schools are the result of higher property taxes, the kids there will have a running start over kids from impoverished backgrounds where kids may not have enough to eat and the schools are poorly equipped with equipment and teachers, and everything else, and where parents may not have the time or the ability to really help their kids academically.
The bottom line from the Canadian approach is that funding education equally does not get rid of all the difference between rich and poor ... but it does help ... a lot. And ultimately if you really want to tackle inequality, both in outcomes and in opportunities, if you do not start with education. I don't know where else you would start.
Granted all is not rosy. As the commentator write ... “average is increasingly not good enough.”
So no magic bullet ... but there are definitely some proven solutions that can make a real difference ... if that is what people really genuinely want.