Letters: American education works

Re “How to train a teacher,” Opinion, July 3, and “Teach the children well,” Letters, July 5

Eli Broad’s criticism of American schools of education, as well as the letters commenting on his Op-Ed article, missed an important but apparently little-known fact: Our educational system has been highly successful.

When researchers control for poverty, American students’ international test scores rank near the top of the world.

The products of our educational system do very well: The U.S. economy is ranked as the fifth most innovative in the world out of 142, according to the 2013 Global Innovation Index, which is based in part on the availability of education, new patents and the publication of scientific and technical journal articles.

Evaluating schools of education should be based on real-world results, not descriptions of courses and admission standards. The kind of criticism Broad makes is like criticizing an Olympic gold medalist because experts have decided that she did not do enough sit-ups in training.

Stephen Krashen

Los Angeles

The writer is a professor emeritus of education at USC.

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