Students First (I won't link to their website, you can find it yourself) has published a new video comparing the ranking of the US education system to a potential performance in the Olympics.

There are a huge number of issues with this analogy, but I'll just bring up two.

1. Countries which perform well at the Olympics outspend the other countries, have a larger population base, and more free political environments. So from this analogy, we can predict that the US will perform better in education if they spend more money, increase their population, and work on implementing a more democratic decision making system within their education system. Not what I think Students First is hoping for with their privatization agenda...
    
2. The Olympics accept only the most elite athletes in their competitions. The US education system is intended to educate everyone.

• David Wees's blog

About David

David is a mathematics teacher and a learning specialist for technology at Stratford Hall in Vancouver, BC. He has been teaching since 2002, and has worked in Brooklyn, London, and Bangkok before moving back to Canada. He has his Masters degree in Educational Technology from UBC, and is the co-author of a mathematics textbook. He has been published in ISTE's Leading and Learning, Educational Technology Solutions, The Software Developers Journal, The Bangkok Post and Edutopia. He blogs with the Cooperative Catalyst, and is the Assessment group facilitator for Edutopia. He has also helped organize the first Edcamp in Canada, and TEDxKIDS@BC.