Even though Joel lived a continent away, many sixth-graders at a Title I school in California could easily identify with his life of poverty. Their empathy motivated them to launch an ambitious charitable project, which, Mr. Mitchell argues, had far greater educational value than the relentless test preparation that is standard fare in most…

Suggests ways researchers can use international comparisons to improve student learning, using math performance of U.S. and Chinese sixth-graders on four types of tasks. Chinese students did better on computation; U.S. students excelled at process (open performance) assessment tasks. U.S. kids need to develop symbolic and algebraic thinking. (MLH)

The 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores for eighth-graders show that when socioeconomic status is considered, English-proficient Asian students have no achievement advantage over other ethnic groups. However, Chinese sixth-graders, using abstract reasoning skills, outperformed American students on 12 open-ended math…