Original Story: Freep.com
State school Superintendent Mike Flanagan announced Monday he is giving notice to Michigan’s charter school authorizers that he will exercise his “statutory authority” to prevent them from granting new charters if their performance overseeing the schools does not measure up.
Flanagan said a recent Free Press special report on charter schools led him to make the decision.
“This series of news articles has prompted me to think differently about whether to suspend an authorizer’s ability to open new charter schools,” Flanagan was quoted in a news release by the Michigan Department of Education. “It’s my authority in state law, and I will be using it.
“We are getting serious about quality choices for Michigan students. This is not just about getting academic results. It’s about total transparency and accountability.”
Flanagan’s office said he would not comment beyond the MDE news release, which contained several statements from him.
An eight-day Free Press series showed that MDE has never suspended an authorizer. Flanagan had said previously that the Legislature needs to provide specific guidelines for shutting down authorizers — the universities, community colleges and school districts that authorize and oversee charter schools’ performance.
The series, “State of Charter Schools,” found that Michigan charters receive nearly $1 billion per year in taxpayer money, often with little accountability or transparency on how those dollars are spent.
The series also reported that academic performance is mixed, and charter schools on average fare no better than traditional schools in educating students in poverty. Many poor-performing charter schools are allowed to continue operating for years by their authorizers.
The Michigan Association of Public School Academies, a professional organization for the state’s charter schools, said the move by Flanagan is good — and is proof Michigan already has tough oversight laws.
“He has had this authority for a number of years,” MAPSA President Dan Quisenberry said. “This statutory responsibility is part of Michigan’s strong system of charter school oversight, so it’s ironic that this announcement comes following a week of stories about how weak our state oversight is.
“We urge the state superintendent to base his decisions on academic performance and to work on oversight of all public schools. Charter schools have always been the most accountable of all public schools. What we need now is legislation that holds all public schools to this same level of accountability.”
MDE said that Flanagan has directed its staff “to establish rigorous principles that measure the transparency, academic and financial practices of the charter schools of each authorizer. The result of these measures will determine which authorizers would lose their chartering capabilities.”
In a statement, Flanagan also said: “There are many good charter schools in our state, which operate in the best interest of the students they serve and not to the best interest of the adults who run them. The news articles over the past several weeks have heightened attention to the issues that have shrouded charter schools with suspicion and contempt among some in the education community and the public — sometimes deserved, sometimes not.
“Let’s support what works and change what doesn’t.”
More than 140,000 students attend state-funded charter schools across Michigan, and in 2013-14 the state had 296 charters operating some 370 schools. In 61% of them, charter school boards have enlisted full-service, for-profit management companies — which contend that the taxpayer money they receive to run a school is private, not subject to public disclosure.
There are more than three dozen authorizers in Michigan. The largest in number of charters overseen are Central Michigan University with 64 and Grand Valley State University with 47.
Grand Valley spokeswoman Mary Eilleen Lyon said in an e-mail to the Free Press that the university has no problem with scrutiny:
“A report released by Supt. Mike Flanagan’s office last year showed that Grand Valley’s charter schools, as a whole, outperform all other authorizers using state tests as the assessment standard. Grand Valley has always acted in the best interest of the charter school students we serve. We believe in accountability ... and that our oversight procedures should be used as a model.”
Flanagan’s announcement drew praise from critics of the current system.
“It’s high time and it’s what we should be doing and should have been doing for some time,” said John Austin, president of the State Board of Education. “I welcome that.”
But Austin, who has been pushing for a stronger charter regulations, said a loophole in the law would need to be fixed. A suspended authorizer would still be able to maintain its existing charters. And nothing in state law would prevent those charters from expanding and opening new campuses.
Austin said it’s one of many legislative fixes that are needed in the charter law “to ensure transparency and to ensure clarity.”
The Michigan Council of Charter School Authorizers said it hopes to sit down soon with Flanagan to talk about the changes.
“Multiple Michigan authorizers have been recognized nationally as model authorizers,” Jared Burkhart said in a statement. “In fact, many of the recommendations mentioned by Superintendent Flanagan are already in state law or are based on best practices already in place in Michigan.”
Flanagan received a series of letters during the Free Press series from Greg Richmond, the president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Richmond, who also sent letters to the governor’s office, urged that Michigan toughen its standards — especially in accountability and financial transparency.
“Our organization believes in accountability in education — for charter schools, traditional public schools, authorizers and school boards,” Richmond said. “No one should get a free pass. We all need to earn and maintain the public’s trust. A good accountability system for authorizers should have clear standards and a fair, transparent process.”
Flanagan said tougher standards are in authorizers’ best interests, too.
“All authorizers, especially the boards of trustees of the colleges and universities that authorize most of the charter schools, must pay better and closer attention to how their schools are operated,” Flanagan said. “The integrity of their institutions is at stake here, too.”
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
COURT STRIKES BLOW TO TENURE
Original Story; WSJ.com
LOS ANGELES—A California judge declared the state's strong teacher-tenure laws unconstitutional in a rebuke that promises to spur similar challenges around the country.
The student plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state and two teachers unions successfully argued that statutes protecting teacher tenure, dismissal procedures and "last-in, first-out" layoff policies serve more often to keep ineffective instructors in the schools—hurting students' chances to succeed.
In Tuesday's decision in Vergara v. California, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu cited the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education "separate but equal" ruling, writing that the laws in this case "impose a real and appreciable impact on the students' fundamental right to equality of education."
The unions in the case—the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers—said they planned to appeal the ruling. The laws at issue will remain in effect pending that appeal.
The case seems certain to reverberate to other states. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the ruling "a mandate" for lawmakers and education leaders to address "practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students."
California has some of the strongest teacher-employment protections in the nation, and is one of only 10 states that require seniority be considered in layoff decisions. It also is one of five states where tenure can be earned within two years or less.
The court found in Tuesday's decision that as a result of that policy, "teachers are being released who would not have been had more time been provided for the process"—hurting not only students, but also many younger teachers.
The ruling also agreed with the plaintiffs' arguments that the poorest-quality teachers tend to end up in economically underprivileged schools and "impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students." Judge Treu, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, found all five of the statutes challenged in the case to be unconstitutional.
William Koski, a law professor at Stanford University, said the case will have "ripple effects" nationally. "We are going to see some litigation" in other states, he said, "and it's going to raise some pretty thorny issues about the role of courts and the judiciary in teacher employment policies and more specifically in education policies."
Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association, said, "We don't believe the court is the place to be making these kinds of policy decisions," adding that the state legislature is currently working on ways to amend the laws in question.
Marcellus McRae, a lawyer representing the student plaintiffs in the California case, called the ruling "an enormous validation and recognition of the fundamental constitutional right of all California students to equal educational opportunity," describing the case as "a catalyst for a discussion at the national level."
Dave Welch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who funded the nonprofit advocacy group Students Matter, which brought the student plaintiffs together and filed the lawsuit, said after the ruling that it would be "within our realm to look at filing lawsuits in other states." Ted Olson, a U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush, leads the legal team.
Mr. Welch said Students Matter will "work tirelessly ourselves, as well as with other organizations" to "continue to fight for kids' rights to get what they deserve—a good education—throughout the country."
Research has pointed to teacher quality as the biggest in-school determinant for student performance. In recent years, many states have moved to simplify dismissal procedures for ineffective teachers and to encourage districts to consider teacher performance in layoff decisions rather than relying solely on seniority.
Such efforts to overhaul dismissal procedures in California failed in the legislature, so students and their advocates took the case to court—a novel way to test the longstanding state policies and one that could now become a template for a broader push. The trial, which ran for more than 30 days, concluded in late March.
"This is a huge deal," said Sandi Jacobs, a policy director for the National Council on Teacher Quality, a privately funded group that aims to change states' teacher-employment policies. "This has a huge ripple effect nationally in telling policy makers that policies that harm students can be challenged," said Ms. Jacobs, who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs in the case.
Ms. Jacobs's group points to Florida, Indiana and Colorado as having what it considers to be best-practice policies where classroom performance is a "top criterion" to be considered in layoff decisions.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers called it "a sad day for public education," saying the decision focused on a small number of bad teachers, and "strips the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are doing a good job to any right to a voice."
California school districts employ roughly 280,000 full-time equivalent teachers, and the average annual teacher's salary is just under $70,000. One in eight public-school students in the nation attend California public schools.
James Ryan, dean of Harvard University's graduate school of education, said the verdict "will likely cause lawyers in other states to think about bringing similar suits." But he pointed out that the decision explicitly called on the state Legislature to fix the unconstitutional statues at issue. As a result, there will likely be "back-and-forth" between the Legislature and courts for many years to come.
"This has a long way before it's over in California and it hasn't even started yet in other states," Mr. Ryan said.
LOS ANGELES—A California judge declared the state's strong teacher-tenure laws unconstitutional in a rebuke that promises to spur similar challenges around the country.
The student plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state and two teachers unions successfully argued that statutes protecting teacher tenure, dismissal procedures and "last-in, first-out" layoff policies serve more often to keep ineffective instructors in the schools—hurting students' chances to succeed.
In Tuesday's decision in Vergara v. California, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu cited the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education "separate but equal" ruling, writing that the laws in this case "impose a real and appreciable impact on the students' fundamental right to equality of education."
The unions in the case—the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers—said they planned to appeal the ruling. The laws at issue will remain in effect pending that appeal.
The case seems certain to reverberate to other states. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the ruling "a mandate" for lawmakers and education leaders to address "practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students."
California has some of the strongest teacher-employment protections in the nation, and is one of only 10 states that require seniority be considered in layoff decisions. It also is one of five states where tenure can be earned within two years or less.
The court found in Tuesday's decision that as a result of that policy, "teachers are being released who would not have been had more time been provided for the process"—hurting not only students, but also many younger teachers.
The ruling also agreed with the plaintiffs' arguments that the poorest-quality teachers tend to end up in economically underprivileged schools and "impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students." Judge Treu, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, found all five of the statutes challenged in the case to be unconstitutional.
William Koski, a law professor at Stanford University, said the case will have "ripple effects" nationally. "We are going to see some litigation" in other states, he said, "and it's going to raise some pretty thorny issues about the role of courts and the judiciary in teacher employment policies and more specifically in education policies."
Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association, said, "We don't believe the court is the place to be making these kinds of policy decisions," adding that the state legislature is currently working on ways to amend the laws in question.
Marcellus McRae, a lawyer representing the student plaintiffs in the California case, called the ruling "an enormous validation and recognition of the fundamental constitutional right of all California students to equal educational opportunity," describing the case as "a catalyst for a discussion at the national level."
Dave Welch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who funded the nonprofit advocacy group Students Matter, which brought the student plaintiffs together and filed the lawsuit, said after the ruling that it would be "within our realm to look at filing lawsuits in other states." Ted Olson, a U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush, leads the legal team.
Mr. Welch said Students Matter will "work tirelessly ourselves, as well as with other organizations" to "continue to fight for kids' rights to get what they deserve—a good education—throughout the country."
Research has pointed to teacher quality as the biggest in-school determinant for student performance. In recent years, many states have moved to simplify dismissal procedures for ineffective teachers and to encourage districts to consider teacher performance in layoff decisions rather than relying solely on seniority.
Such efforts to overhaul dismissal procedures in California failed in the legislature, so students and their advocates took the case to court—a novel way to test the longstanding state policies and one that could now become a template for a broader push. The trial, which ran for more than 30 days, concluded in late March.
"This is a huge deal," said Sandi Jacobs, a policy director for the National Council on Teacher Quality, a privately funded group that aims to change states' teacher-employment policies. "This has a huge ripple effect nationally in telling policy makers that policies that harm students can be challenged," said Ms. Jacobs, who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs in the case.
Ms. Jacobs's group points to Florida, Indiana and Colorado as having what it considers to be best-practice policies where classroom performance is a "top criterion" to be considered in layoff decisions.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers called it "a sad day for public education," saying the decision focused on a small number of bad teachers, and "strips the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are doing a good job to any right to a voice."
California school districts employ roughly 280,000 full-time equivalent teachers, and the average annual teacher's salary is just under $70,000. One in eight public-school students in the nation attend California public schools.
James Ryan, dean of Harvard University's graduate school of education, said the verdict "will likely cause lawyers in other states to think about bringing similar suits." But he pointed out that the decision explicitly called on the state Legislature to fix the unconstitutional statues at issue. As a result, there will likely be "back-and-forth" between the Legislature and courts for many years to come.
"This has a long way before it's over in California and it hasn't even started yet in other states," Mr. Ryan said.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Michigan teens will face job shortages
Story Originally Appeared on The Detroit News
Michigan parents, prepare yourselves: With a 22.9 percent teen unemployment rate heading into the summer of 2013, your jobless kids might be making frequent withdrawals from the Bank of Mom & Dad for their vacation spending cash.
There are a number of factors at work: More competition from older jobseekers, for instance, has put young and inexperienced applicants at a competitive disadvantage. But also at fault are a series of ill-conceived minimum wage mandates at the state and federal level, which raised the cost to hire and train the teens who fill those jobs.
Those same teens can only hope that President Obama and Congress won't make it worse by following through on another proposed increase.
Nationally, teen unemployment has been above 20 percent every summer since 2009. That's four straight summers — soon to be five — of record teen unemployment. And tellingly, they've all occurred during or since the 40 percent hike in the federal minimum wage between 2007 and 2009.
The timing is more than just coincidence. Writing in 2010, economists at Miami and Trinity Universities estimated that — even accounting for the effects of the recession — at least 114,000 young adults lost job opportunities as a direct result of the federal wage hike. (Other economists have put that figure above 300,000.)
Percentage-wise, this came out to a 6.9 percent drop in teen employment in the states affected by all three stages of the federal wage hike. For those teens with less than 12 years of schooling, the relative drop in employment was even higher at 12.4 percent.
One need only look at the businesses where teens are employed to understand why. Nearly 40 percent of the nation's employed teens work in the leisure and hospitality industry (think restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels), while another 25 percent work in retail jobs at grocery stores, service stations and the like.
These types of businesses aren't exactly rolling in the dough. Their profit margins are generally 2 or 3 cents on every sales dollar. Sudden spikes in labor costs — like a 40 percent jump in the minimum wage in two years — leave these businesses with two options: Raise prices, or reduce costs.
When raising prices isn't an option — good luck with that in a rough economy — the only other option is to provide the same product with less service. This might mean having waiters or waitresses bus their own tables, or opting for a self-service alternative to young grocery baggers.
The data bears this trend out: Teens' share of employment in the leisure and hospitality industry dropped by over 20 percent between 200 and 2011. In retail, it's fallen by nearly 30 percent over that period.
This makes it all the more baffling that wage hike advocates in Congress, seeking to fulfill the president's State of the Union call for higher rates would raise the minimum wage by another 40 percent to $10.10.
This may be good politics, but it's certainly not good policy. Teens — whether in Michigan or anywhere else — start climbing the employment ladder through their first summer jobs. Further minimum wage hikes only postpone their ability to get these jobs, which research shows hurts their future earnings, employability, and professional development.
That might not seem pressing to the teens who will just lie on the beach or lounge on the couch for the next three months. But it is much more concerning for their parents, who want nothing more than a good future for their kids — and maybe even some peace and quiet between now and September.
Michael Saltsman is the research director at the Employment Policies Institute.
Michigan parents, prepare yourselves: With a 22.9 percent teen unemployment rate heading into the summer of 2013, your jobless kids might be making frequent withdrawals from the Bank of Mom & Dad for their vacation spending cash.
There are a number of factors at work: More competition from older jobseekers, for instance, has put young and inexperienced applicants at a competitive disadvantage. But also at fault are a series of ill-conceived minimum wage mandates at the state and federal level, which raised the cost to hire and train the teens who fill those jobs.
Those same teens can only hope that President Obama and Congress won't make it worse by following through on another proposed increase.
Nationally, teen unemployment has been above 20 percent every summer since 2009. That's four straight summers — soon to be five — of record teen unemployment. And tellingly, they've all occurred during or since the 40 percent hike in the federal minimum wage between 2007 and 2009.
The timing is more than just coincidence. Writing in 2010, economists at Miami and Trinity Universities estimated that — even accounting for the effects of the recession — at least 114,000 young adults lost job opportunities as a direct result of the federal wage hike. (Other economists have put that figure above 300,000.)
Percentage-wise, this came out to a 6.9 percent drop in teen employment in the states affected by all three stages of the federal wage hike. For those teens with less than 12 years of schooling, the relative drop in employment was even higher at 12.4 percent.
One need only look at the businesses where teens are employed to understand why. Nearly 40 percent of the nation's employed teens work in the leisure and hospitality industry (think restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels), while another 25 percent work in retail jobs at grocery stores, service stations and the like.
These types of businesses aren't exactly rolling in the dough. Their profit margins are generally 2 or 3 cents on every sales dollar. Sudden spikes in labor costs — like a 40 percent jump in the minimum wage in two years — leave these businesses with two options: Raise prices, or reduce costs.
When raising prices isn't an option — good luck with that in a rough economy — the only other option is to provide the same product with less service. This might mean having waiters or waitresses bus their own tables, or opting for a self-service alternative to young grocery baggers.
The data bears this trend out: Teens' share of employment in the leisure and hospitality industry dropped by over 20 percent between 200 and 2011. In retail, it's fallen by nearly 30 percent over that period.
This makes it all the more baffling that wage hike advocates in Congress, seeking to fulfill the president's State of the Union call for higher rates would raise the minimum wage by another 40 percent to $10.10.
This may be good politics, but it's certainly not good policy. Teens — whether in Michigan or anywhere else — start climbing the employment ladder through their first summer jobs. Further minimum wage hikes only postpone their ability to get these jobs, which research shows hurts their future earnings, employability, and professional development.
That might not seem pressing to the teens who will just lie on the beach or lounge on the couch for the next three months. But it is much more concerning for their parents, who want nothing more than a good future for their kids — and maybe even some peace and quiet between now and September.
Michael Saltsman is the research director at the Employment Policies Institute.
Bankers: College debt bubble mimics housing bubble
Story Appeared On USA TODAY
A group of bankers have just dumped two more problems on the Federal Reserve's plate.
The Federal Advisory Council, made up of 12 bankers who meet quarterly to advise the central bank, warned that farmland prices are inflating "a bubble" and growth in student-loan debt has "parallels to the housing crisis," which was the primary cause of the Great Recession in the U.S.
Their alarm comes at a time when financial heavyweights on the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's policy-making arm, are debating whether the benefits created by their monthly purchases of $85 billion in bonds outweigh the risk of financial instability.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has argued time and again that the program is essential to the economic recovery, but others are less convinced. Fed Governor Jeremy Stein and Kansas City Fed President Esther George have raised concerns the extended period of low interest rates is increasing the risk of asset bubbles.
"Agricultural land prices are veering further from what makes sense," noted the minutes of the FAC's Feb. 8 gathering, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg news service through Freedom of Information Act requests. "Members believe the run-up in agriculture land prices is a bubble resulting from persistently low interest rates."
As for student loans, recent growth has pushed debt levels to nearly $1 trillion, meaning it "now exceeds credit-card outstandings and has parallels to the housing crisis," the council said after its Feb. 3, 2012, meeting. The bankers told the FOMC that student lending exhibited characteristics similar to those seen in the housing crisis, including "significant growth of subsidized lending in pursuit of a social good" — in this case, higher education rather than expanded home ownership.
Just as the mortgage lending boom pushed home prices upward, student loan lending has put upward pressure on tuition. The bankers said both examples showed a "lack of underwriting discipline."
Bernanke has dismissed parallels between student lending and the subprime mortgage crisis. "I don't think it's a financial stability issue to the same extent that, say, mortgage debt was in the last crisis because most of it is held not by financial institutions but by the federal government," Bernanke told a Bloomberg reporter on Aug. 7.
After the Fed first lowered its target interest rate to near zero in December 2008, the central bank promised to keep it at that level until the unemployment rate — currently at 7.5%, drops to 6.5% or the annual inflation rate rises above 2%. The Fed has also launched three rounds of bond purchases, called quantitative easing, which have pushed its balance sheet to a record $3.3 trillion as of May 1.
The QE spending's impact on farmland prices is being documented by regional Fed banks, particularly across the Midwest's corn belt. The Chicago Fed said the value of irrigated cropland in its district rose 16% in 2012, while the Kansas City Fed reported a 30% jump in the same period.
"Investors who are seeking a positive return on their funds have shied away from bond markets," the council said, according to a Bloomberg story. Instead, they opted for real estate "as both a hedge against inflation and a means of achieving better than the negative real return associated with fixed-income securities."
Increases in land prices have continued even as commodity prices have weakened. Since hitting a record high in March 2011, the S&P GSCI agriculture index, a broad measure of price pressures on commodities, has fallen 25%.
The FAC said it supports the central bank's monetary policy at their February meeting, noting that the recoveries in the housing and auto sectors have been "especially encouraging."
Yet, there have been "collateral consequences" of the current policy; the low-interest environment has pushed "many to seek higher returns by accepting greater interest rate or credit risk," the FAC's minutes said. "As the period of low rates is extended, these pressures have increased."
A group of bankers have just dumped two more problems on the Federal Reserve's plate.
The Federal Advisory Council, made up of 12 bankers who meet quarterly to advise the central bank, warned that farmland prices are inflating "a bubble" and growth in student-loan debt has "parallels to the housing crisis," which was the primary cause of the Great Recession in the U.S.
Their alarm comes at a time when financial heavyweights on the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's policy-making arm, are debating whether the benefits created by their monthly purchases of $85 billion in bonds outweigh the risk of financial instability.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has argued time and again that the program is essential to the economic recovery, but others are less convinced. Fed Governor Jeremy Stein and Kansas City Fed President Esther George have raised concerns the extended period of low interest rates is increasing the risk of asset bubbles.
"Agricultural land prices are veering further from what makes sense," noted the minutes of the FAC's Feb. 8 gathering, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg news service through Freedom of Information Act requests. "Members believe the run-up in agriculture land prices is a bubble resulting from persistently low interest rates."
As for student loans, recent growth has pushed debt levels to nearly $1 trillion, meaning it "now exceeds credit-card outstandings and has parallels to the housing crisis," the council said after its Feb. 3, 2012, meeting. The bankers told the FOMC that student lending exhibited characteristics similar to those seen in the housing crisis, including "significant growth of subsidized lending in pursuit of a social good" — in this case, higher education rather than expanded home ownership.
Just as the mortgage lending boom pushed home prices upward, student loan lending has put upward pressure on tuition. The bankers said both examples showed a "lack of underwriting discipline."
Bernanke has dismissed parallels between student lending and the subprime mortgage crisis. "I don't think it's a financial stability issue to the same extent that, say, mortgage debt was in the last crisis because most of it is held not by financial institutions but by the federal government," Bernanke told a Bloomberg reporter on Aug. 7.
After the Fed first lowered its target interest rate to near zero in December 2008, the central bank promised to keep it at that level until the unemployment rate — currently at 7.5%, drops to 6.5% or the annual inflation rate rises above 2%. The Fed has also launched three rounds of bond purchases, called quantitative easing, which have pushed its balance sheet to a record $3.3 trillion as of May 1.
The QE spending's impact on farmland prices is being documented by regional Fed banks, particularly across the Midwest's corn belt. The Chicago Fed said the value of irrigated cropland in its district rose 16% in 2012, while the Kansas City Fed reported a 30% jump in the same period.
"Investors who are seeking a positive return on their funds have shied away from bond markets," the council said, according to a Bloomberg story. Instead, they opted for real estate "as both a hedge against inflation and a means of achieving better than the negative real return associated with fixed-income securities."
Increases in land prices have continued even as commodity prices have weakened. Since hitting a record high in March 2011, the S&P GSCI agriculture index, a broad measure of price pressures on commodities, has fallen 25%.
The FAC said it supports the central bank's monetary policy at their February meeting, noting that the recoveries in the housing and auto sectors have been "especially encouraging."
Yet, there have been "collateral consequences" of the current policy; the low-interest environment has pushed "many to seek higher returns by accepting greater interest rate or credit risk," the FAC's minutes said. "As the period of low rates is extended, these pressures have increased."
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Downward mobility haunts US education
Story originally appeared on BBC News.
An integral part of the American Dream is under threat - as "downward mobility" haunts the education system in the United States.
The idea of going to college - and the expectation that the next generation will be better educated and more prosperous than its predecessor - has been hardwired into the ambitions of the middle classes in the United States.
But there are deep-seated worries about whether this upward mobility is going into reverse.
Andreas Schleicher, special adviser on education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), says the US is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation is not going to be better educated than the older.
"It's something of great significance because much of today's economic power of the United States rests on a very high degree of adult skills - and that is now at risk," says Mr Schleicher.
"These skills are the engine of the US economy and the engine is stuttering," says Mr Schleicher, one of the world's most influential experts on international education comparisons.
Lack of opportunity
The annual OECD education statistics show that only about one in five young adults in the US reaches a higher level of education than their parents - among the lowest rates of upward mobility in the developed world.
For a country whose self-image is based on optimism and opportunity, the US is now a country where someone with poorly-educated parents is less likely to reach university than in almost any other industrial country.
It's the opposite of a Hollywood ending.
And about one in five young adults in the US are now defined in educational terms as "downwardly mobile" - such as children who have graduate parents but who don't reach university level themselves.
When the global story of higher education is so much about rapid expansion and the race to increase graduates, it's almost counter-intuitive to find a powerhouse such as the United States on the brink of going backwards.
It's easy to overlook the dominance of US higher education in the post-war era - or how closely this was linked to its role as an economic, scientific and military superpower.
The US had the first great mass participation university system. The GI Bill, which provided subsidies for a generation of World War II veterans, supported three times as many people as are currently in the entire UK university sector.
An American born in the 1950s was about twice as likely to become a graduate as someone born in the rest of the industrialised world.
As the cars ran off the production lines in Detroit, rising numbers of graduates were leaving universities to become part of an expanding middle class.
Overtaken
But the US university system is no longer the only skyscraper on the block. It's been overtaken by rivals in Asia and Europe.
Today's young Americans have a below-average chance of becoming a graduate, compared with other industrialised economies.
The US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in a speech a few weeks ago, asked how the US had in "the space of a generation" tumbled from first place to 14th in graduation rates.
So what's gone wrong?
The spiralling cost of higher education in the United States is often cited as a barrier - and the collective student debt has exceeded a trillion dollars.
But Andreas Schleicher argues that a deeper problem is rooted in the inequalities of the school system.
He says that the level of social segregation and the excessive link between home background and success in school is "cutting off the supply" between secondary school and university.
The meritocratic, migrant energy in US culture is no longer operating in the school system.
"If you lose the confidence in the idea that effort and investment in education can change life chances, it's a really serious issue," says Mr Schleicher.
Middle-class squeeze
A US Senate committee examined this sense of imperilled optimism, in a hearing called Helping More Young People Achieve the American Dream.
The economist Miles Corak was among the expert witnesses - and he says the US education system reflects a wider picture of the "hollowing out" of the middle class.
"What you're seeing is the inequality of the labour market being echoed in education."
Prof Corak describes a polarising jobs market, with the very rich and very poor diverging - and a collapse in jobs in the middle ground, such as clerical or manufacturing jobs.
For such families, sending their children to college had once been a "defining metaphor for the country".
But it seems that the education system is no longer holding the door open to the brightest and the best, regardless of background.
The Philadelphia-based Pew research group compared the outcomes of young people in 10 western countries, in a project called Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Countries?
It found the US had the strongest link between family wealth and educational success - and the lowest mobility. Advantage and disadvantage were being further amplified in education.
Research manager Diana Elliott says in the US "income has a pervasive hold on mobility".
Insecurity
Another study by Pew, against the backdrop of recession, examined the phenomenon of downward mobility and found that a third of adults classified as middle class would slip out of that status during their adult life.
It reflected a modern sense of insecurity, where families could no longer assume their children would be as prosperous. In fact, about a quarter of children born into the middle class were expected to slip downwards.
None of this matches the image of the US as a place for fresh starts and self-made millionaires. Modern American history almost assumes an upward incline.
But evidence of this downward drift has been gathering in recent years. A study by the University of California, Berkeley, showed that school leavers in California in 1970 were more likely to stay on to higher education than their counterparts in 2000.
In terms of international education, that's like finding out that athletes were running faster 40 years ago.
Such current difficulties should not be mistaken for any kind of end-of-empire zeitgeist, says Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.
Instead he says it's a more practical question of money. The rising cost of higher education is a deterrent. And there is a wider question of finance for higher education at state level.
He also says there is another "dirty little secret" of US higher education - that too many people who enrol at university fail to graduate - which pushes down the graduation rate in international comparisons.
Bouncing back
Andreas Schleicher also says there are reasons for optimism. Almost more than any other country, he says the US has the financial resources, the capacity and the flexibility to change course quickly and to catch up.
There are already plans to recover lost ground. President Barack Obama has been re-elected with a promise that the US will regain its global first place in graduation rates by 2020.
And as part of this drive, the American Association of Community Colleges, in a project called Reclaiming the American Dream, has an ambitious plan to create five million more college places.
But it's an aspiration against a gloomy background.
"The American dream has stalled," the association's report says, describing a society where typical family incomes having been falling for more than a decade.
"A child born poor in the United States today is more likely to remain poor than at any time in our history. Many other nations now outperform us in educational attainment and economic mobility, and the American middle class shrinks before our eyes."
It's as if It's A Wonderful Life had been remade - without the happy ending.
An integral part of the American Dream is under threat - as "downward mobility" haunts the education system in the United States.
The idea of going to college - and the expectation that the next generation will be better educated and more prosperous than its predecessor - has been hardwired into the ambitions of the middle classes in the United States.
But there are deep-seated worries about whether this upward mobility is going into reverse.
Andreas Schleicher, special adviser on education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), says the US is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation is not going to be better educated than the older.
"It's something of great significance because much of today's economic power of the United States rests on a very high degree of adult skills - and that is now at risk," says Mr Schleicher.
"These skills are the engine of the US economy and the engine is stuttering," says Mr Schleicher, one of the world's most influential experts on international education comparisons.
Lack of opportunity
The annual OECD education statistics show that only about one in five young adults in the US reaches a higher level of education than their parents - among the lowest rates of upward mobility in the developed world.
For a country whose self-image is based on optimism and opportunity, the US is now a country where someone with poorly-educated parents is less likely to reach university than in almost any other industrial country.
It's the opposite of a Hollywood ending.
And about one in five young adults in the US are now defined in educational terms as "downwardly mobile" - such as children who have graduate parents but who don't reach university level themselves.
When the global story of higher education is so much about rapid expansion and the race to increase graduates, it's almost counter-intuitive to find a powerhouse such as the United States on the brink of going backwards.
It's easy to overlook the dominance of US higher education in the post-war era - or how closely this was linked to its role as an economic, scientific and military superpower.
The US had the first great mass participation university system. The GI Bill, which provided subsidies for a generation of World War II veterans, supported three times as many people as are currently in the entire UK university sector.
An American born in the 1950s was about twice as likely to become a graduate as someone born in the rest of the industrialised world.
As the cars ran off the production lines in Detroit, rising numbers of graduates were leaving universities to become part of an expanding middle class.
Overtaken
But the US university system is no longer the only skyscraper on the block. It's been overtaken by rivals in Asia and Europe.
Today's young Americans have a below-average chance of becoming a graduate, compared with other industrialised economies.
The US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in a speech a few weeks ago, asked how the US had in "the space of a generation" tumbled from first place to 14th in graduation rates.
So what's gone wrong?
The spiralling cost of higher education in the United States is often cited as a barrier - and the collective student debt has exceeded a trillion dollars.
But Andreas Schleicher argues that a deeper problem is rooted in the inequalities of the school system.
He says that the level of social segregation and the excessive link between home background and success in school is "cutting off the supply" between secondary school and university.
The meritocratic, migrant energy in US culture is no longer operating in the school system.
"If you lose the confidence in the idea that effort and investment in education can change life chances, it's a really serious issue," says Mr Schleicher.
Middle-class squeeze
A US Senate committee examined this sense of imperilled optimism, in a hearing called Helping More Young People Achieve the American Dream.
The economist Miles Corak was among the expert witnesses - and he says the US education system reflects a wider picture of the "hollowing out" of the middle class.
"What you're seeing is the inequality of the labour market being echoed in education."
Prof Corak describes a polarising jobs market, with the very rich and very poor diverging - and a collapse in jobs in the middle ground, such as clerical or manufacturing jobs.
For such families, sending their children to college had once been a "defining metaphor for the country".
But it seems that the education system is no longer holding the door open to the brightest and the best, regardless of background.
The Philadelphia-based Pew research group compared the outcomes of young people in 10 western countries, in a project called Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Countries?
It found the US had the strongest link between family wealth and educational success - and the lowest mobility. Advantage and disadvantage were being further amplified in education.
Research manager Diana Elliott says in the US "income has a pervasive hold on mobility".
Insecurity
Another study by Pew, against the backdrop of recession, examined the phenomenon of downward mobility and found that a third of adults classified as middle class would slip out of that status during their adult life.
It reflected a modern sense of insecurity, where families could no longer assume their children would be as prosperous. In fact, about a quarter of children born into the middle class were expected to slip downwards.
None of this matches the image of the US as a place for fresh starts and self-made millionaires. Modern American history almost assumes an upward incline.
But evidence of this downward drift has been gathering in recent years. A study by the University of California, Berkeley, showed that school leavers in California in 1970 were more likely to stay on to higher education than their counterparts in 2000.
In terms of international education, that's like finding out that athletes were running faster 40 years ago.
Such current difficulties should not be mistaken for any kind of end-of-empire zeitgeist, says Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.
Instead he says it's a more practical question of money. The rising cost of higher education is a deterrent. And there is a wider question of finance for higher education at state level.
He also says there is another "dirty little secret" of US higher education - that too many people who enrol at university fail to graduate - which pushes down the graduation rate in international comparisons.
Bouncing back
Andreas Schleicher also says there are reasons for optimism. Almost more than any other country, he says the US has the financial resources, the capacity and the flexibility to change course quickly and to catch up.
There are already plans to recover lost ground. President Barack Obama has been re-elected with a promise that the US will regain its global first place in graduation rates by 2020.
And as part of this drive, the American Association of Community Colleges, in a project called Reclaiming the American Dream, has an ambitious plan to create five million more college places.
But it's an aspiration against a gloomy background.
"The American dream has stalled," the association's report says, describing a society where typical family incomes having been falling for more than a decade.
"A child born poor in the United States today is more likely to remain poor than at any time in our history. Many other nations now outperform us in educational attainment and economic mobility, and the American middle class shrinks before our eyes."
It's as if It's A Wonderful Life had been remade - without the happy ending.
Jimmy Wales: Boring university lectures 'are doomed'
Story originally appeared on BBC News.
The boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
The custodian of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online courses new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer.
"I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative," says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students.
"It's also been slower than anyone would have anticipated. But I'm not a person who thinks that people will be able to just go online and get a complete education without the guidance of the teacher. That sort of simplistic model shouldn't be our framework."
Instead he thinks that universities need to use online technology where it really works.
And from his own experience as a student, the traditional university lecture should have been condemned decades ago and replaced with an online video recording that can be stopped and started.
Recorded lectures
"I was taking an advanced calculus class and my instructor was reputed to be a fabulous researcher, but he barely spoke English. He was a very boring and bad teacher and I was absolutely lost and in despair.
"So I went to the campus tutoring centre and they had Betamax tapes of a professor who had won teaching awards. Basically I sat with those tapes and took class there. But I still had to go to the other one and sat there and wanted to kill myself.
"I thought at that time, in the future, why wouldn't you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people's heads?
"We're still not quite there. In university you're still likely to be in a large lecture hall with a very boring professor, and everyone knows it's not working very well. It's not even the best use of that professor's time or the audience."
Online courses provide such libraries of video lectures, supplemented with interactive information, that can be used at any time on a tablet computer or laptop.
And Mr Wales suggests the future model of higher education will be to allow students to use recordings of lectures - and to use the teaching time to discuss and develop what students have been watching.
"It seems much more effective and is the direction I think we're going to go."
Wikipedia itself is central to this changing landscape in which huge amounts of high-quality information are available free anywhere with an internet connection.
The sheer scale of the information and the volume of its consumption has no parallel in history. Wikipedia's latest internet traffic is running at more than 21 billion page impressions per month.
But he says it remains uncertain whether universities will be ready to change. "There's a certain inertia in the system."
Adapt or die
"The really interesting challenge for big-brand universities is whether they are going to move into that space. If we thought of universities as normal businesses we would say, 'Will they be able to adapt to the PC revolution?' It's that kind of question. Will Harvard or MIT, Oxford or Cambridge, be able to adapt? Or will Microsoft come out of nowhere?
"It's going to be really fascinating to see it unfold."
In terms of technology in education, he says we should look at how it's being driven by interest in home schooling.
"In the US, for younger children, the home schooling movement is huge.
"There are a load of online educational resources, they're booming. Parents are looking for the best education for their kids, they realise these tools are working. There's a marketplace for it long before the traditional school is going to think about it."
Mr Wales himself grew up in a small private school run by his mother and grandmother in Alabama. There were four other children in his grade.
"It was like a one-room schoolhouse, the kind of place Abe Lincoln went to school," he says.
"Education was our life, something incredibly valued by my family."
Developing world
An important part of Wikipedia's future focus, he says, is going to reach the modern world's version of isolated school houses in the developing world.
In wealthier countries there might be the luxury of a debate about whether Wikipedia is better or worse than printed encyclopaedias. But Mr Wales wants to support languages in Africa where there have never been encyclopaedias in the first place.
Wikipedia operates in 286 different languages, but the content is very unevenly spread. There are more than 4 million articles in English, while Xhosa, spoken by almost 8 million people in South Africa, only has 147 articles.
"Our role in languages of the developing world is quite different from our role in English.
"We've still got a long way to go. I'd say we've increasingly turned our focus to the languages of the developing world. It's really of great importance. Our goal is a free encyclopaedia for everyone in their own language."
He rejects the idea that Wikipedia's instant knowledge represents some kind of dumbing down. It has long been accused of being the hidden hand in countless school and university assignments.
But Mr Wales says it plays a vital democratic role in allowing ordinary people to become informed in a way that would never have been possible before.
If there is a story in the news, people can find out the background for themselves. "We can see it in our traffic. There's a massive spike.
"In some rose-coloured view of the past we all went home and read books about it. The truth is that we didn't.
"It's remarkable that people now have the opportunity. It's not a Utopian state, but people have the possibility to do their own research."
Pub quiz
Mr Wales also defends what Wikipedia represents for free speech in countries with censorship and a lack of human rights.
"The impact of the knowledge we bring is important, but what is much more deeply political is the concept of Wikipedia, that ordinary people should be able to participate in the grand human dialogue.
"It's a very subversive idea in a society that is top-down and 'do as your masters tell you,'" he says.
The online encyclopaedia is now 12 years old, launched in the same month as iTunes and when Greece adopted the euro. It has grown to 26 million articles and has more than 500 million individual users a month.
Wikipedia's next development will be to make it easier for a wider variety of people to write and edit articles, with an editing tool that is more user-friendly.
"For people who aren't computer geeks, it's intimidating. The user base of active editors tend to be computer-savvy. We want to diversify, so they can be geeks but not computer geeks."
Of course, there's still a big unanswered question. How would the king of Wikipedia get on in a pub quiz? Would he have to illicitly check his smartphone under the table?
"I've declined to go on a TV quiz show. There's no upside for me. Unless I get every single question right I'm going to be subject to mockery. Because I'm meant to be the encyclopaedia guy."
The boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
The custodian of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online courses new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer.
"I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative," says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students.
"It's also been slower than anyone would have anticipated. But I'm not a person who thinks that people will be able to just go online and get a complete education without the guidance of the teacher. That sort of simplistic model shouldn't be our framework."
Instead he thinks that universities need to use online technology where it really works.
And from his own experience as a student, the traditional university lecture should have been condemned decades ago and replaced with an online video recording that can be stopped and started.
Recorded lectures
"I was taking an advanced calculus class and my instructor was reputed to be a fabulous researcher, but he barely spoke English. He was a very boring and bad teacher and I was absolutely lost and in despair.
"So I went to the campus tutoring centre and they had Betamax tapes of a professor who had won teaching awards. Basically I sat with those tapes and took class there. But I still had to go to the other one and sat there and wanted to kill myself.
"I thought at that time, in the future, why wouldn't you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people's heads?
"We're still not quite there. In university you're still likely to be in a large lecture hall with a very boring professor, and everyone knows it's not working very well. It's not even the best use of that professor's time or the audience."
Online courses provide such libraries of video lectures, supplemented with interactive information, that can be used at any time on a tablet computer or laptop.
And Mr Wales suggests the future model of higher education will be to allow students to use recordings of lectures - and to use the teaching time to discuss and develop what students have been watching.
"It seems much more effective and is the direction I think we're going to go."
Wikipedia itself is central to this changing landscape in which huge amounts of high-quality information are available free anywhere with an internet connection.
The sheer scale of the information and the volume of its consumption has no parallel in history. Wikipedia's latest internet traffic is running at more than 21 billion page impressions per month.
But he says it remains uncertain whether universities will be ready to change. "There's a certain inertia in the system."
Adapt or die
"The really interesting challenge for big-brand universities is whether they are going to move into that space. If we thought of universities as normal businesses we would say, 'Will they be able to adapt to the PC revolution?' It's that kind of question. Will Harvard or MIT, Oxford or Cambridge, be able to adapt? Or will Microsoft come out of nowhere?
"It's going to be really fascinating to see it unfold."
In terms of technology in education, he says we should look at how it's being driven by interest in home schooling.
"In the US, for younger children, the home schooling movement is huge.
"There are a load of online educational resources, they're booming. Parents are looking for the best education for their kids, they realise these tools are working. There's a marketplace for it long before the traditional school is going to think about it."
Mr Wales himself grew up in a small private school run by his mother and grandmother in Alabama. There were four other children in his grade.
"It was like a one-room schoolhouse, the kind of place Abe Lincoln went to school," he says.
"Education was our life, something incredibly valued by my family."
Developing world
An important part of Wikipedia's future focus, he says, is going to reach the modern world's version of isolated school houses in the developing world.
In wealthier countries there might be the luxury of a debate about whether Wikipedia is better or worse than printed encyclopaedias. But Mr Wales wants to support languages in Africa where there have never been encyclopaedias in the first place.
Wikipedia operates in 286 different languages, but the content is very unevenly spread. There are more than 4 million articles in English, while Xhosa, spoken by almost 8 million people in South Africa, only has 147 articles.
"Our role in languages of the developing world is quite different from our role in English.
"We've still got a long way to go. I'd say we've increasingly turned our focus to the languages of the developing world. It's really of great importance. Our goal is a free encyclopaedia for everyone in their own language."
He rejects the idea that Wikipedia's instant knowledge represents some kind of dumbing down. It has long been accused of being the hidden hand in countless school and university assignments.
But Mr Wales says it plays a vital democratic role in allowing ordinary people to become informed in a way that would never have been possible before.
If there is a story in the news, people can find out the background for themselves. "We can see it in our traffic. There's a massive spike.
"In some rose-coloured view of the past we all went home and read books about it. The truth is that we didn't.
"It's remarkable that people now have the opportunity. It's not a Utopian state, but people have the possibility to do their own research."
Pub quiz
Mr Wales also defends what Wikipedia represents for free speech in countries with censorship and a lack of human rights.
"The impact of the knowledge we bring is important, but what is much more deeply political is the concept of Wikipedia, that ordinary people should be able to participate in the grand human dialogue.
"It's a very subversive idea in a society that is top-down and 'do as your masters tell you,'" he says.
The online encyclopaedia is now 12 years old, launched in the same month as iTunes and when Greece adopted the euro. It has grown to 26 million articles and has more than 500 million individual users a month.
Wikipedia's next development will be to make it easier for a wider variety of people to write and edit articles, with an editing tool that is more user-friendly.
"For people who aren't computer geeks, it's intimidating. The user base of active editors tend to be computer-savvy. We want to diversify, so they can be geeks but not computer geeks."
Of course, there's still a big unanswered question. How would the king of Wikipedia get on in a pub quiz? Would he have to illicitly check his smartphone under the table?
"I've declined to go on a TV quiz show. There's no upside for me. Unless I get every single question right I'm going to be subject to mockery. Because I'm meant to be the encyclopaedia guy."
Lack of sleep blights pupils' education
Story originally appeared on BBC News.
Sleep deprivation is a significant hidden factor in lowering the achievement of school pupils, according to researchers carrying out international education tests.
It is a particular problem in more affluent countries, with sleep experts linking it to the use of mobile phones and computers in bedrooms late at night.
Sleep deprivation is such a serious disruption that lessons have to be pitched at a lower level to accommodate sleep-starved learners, the study found.
The international comparison, carried out by Boston College, found the United States to have the highest number of sleep-deprived students, with 73% of 9 and 10-year-olds and 80% of 13 and 14-year-olds identified by their teachers as being adversely affected.
In literacy tests there were 76% of 9 and 10-year-olds lacking sleep.
This was much higher than the international average of 47% of primary pupils needing more sleep and 57% among the secondary age group.
Achievement gap
Other countries with the most sleep-deprived youngsters were New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Australia, England, Ireland and France. High-performing Finland is also among the most lacking in sleep.
Countries with the best records for getting enough sleep include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Japan and Malta.
The analysis was part of the huge data-gathering process for global education rankings - the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).
The rankings of results for maths, science and reading were published at the end of last year, with Asian education systems dominating the top of the tables.
But the researchers also wanted to find out more about the influence of home life. There has been much analysis of the impact of family wealth and poverty, but the Boston College researchers also wanted to measure factors such as sleep and nutrition.
So the tests were accompanied by questionnaires for teachers, pupils and parents about sleep patterns. And this information was compared with pupils' test results, so that the performance in maths, science and literacy could be compared with levels of sleep.
Brain food
"I think we underestimate the impact of sleep. Our data show that across countries internationally, on average, children who have more sleep achieve higher in maths, science and reading. That is exactly what our data show," says Chad Minnich, of the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center.
"It's the same link for children who are lacking basic nutrition," says Mr Minnich, based at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College.
"If you are unable to concentrate, to attend mentally, you are unable to achieve at your optimal level, because your mind and body are in need of something more basic.
"Sleep is a fundamental need for all children. If teachers report such large proportions of children suffering from lack of sleep, it's having a significant impact.
"But worse than that, teachers are having to modify their instruction based on those children who are suffering from a lack of sleep.
"The children who are suffering from a lack of sleep are driving down instruction."
That means that even the children who are getting enough sleep are still suffering from this sleep-related dumbing-down.
Cramming school
The researchers uncovered regional trends that bucked expectations.
Asian countries are the highest-performing in maths tests - and Mr Minnich says this has often been associated with long hours and cramming in after-school classes.
"One would assume that they would be extremely tired," he said. "And yet when we look at the sleep factor for them, they don't necessarily seem to be suffering from as much sleep deprivation as the other countries."
Getting a good night's sleep isn't going to transform an underperforming country into an education superpower. For instance, the least sleepy pupils seem to be in Azerbaijan, but they are still considerably behind the most sleep-deprived pupils in Finland.
But researchers say that it does show how differently individual pupils might be placed on the ability spectrum, with lack of sleep representing the difference between being high-performing and average.
There are also big changes as pupils get older. Younger pupils in South Korea have among the lowest levels of sleep deprivation in the world, but in secondary school they have some of the worst problems.
There are differences within countries too. At the level of US states, among secondary pupils Colorado has a much worse problem with lack of sleep than Massachusetts.
What the study does not show is why young people are missing out on sleep - or why more technologically advanced countries seem to have the biggest difficulties.
But sleep experts point to a particular problem due to technology in children's bedroom - specifically the use of screens on smartphones or laptops late at night.
Serious barrier to learning
It isn't only that young people are kept awake by messaging their friends or using the internet. The light from the screen, held close to the face, is physically disruptive to the natural onset of sleep.
"Having a computer screen that is eight inches away from your face is going to expose you to a lot more light than watching a television on the opposite side of the room," says Karrie Fitzpatrick, sleep researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois.
"It's going to tell your brain to stay awake," says Dr Fitzpatrick.
"That light can reset the whole circadian rhythm system and say, 'Wait a minute, it's not time to go to bed'."
Lack of sleep is also a serious physical barrier to learning.
"Sleepiness is a problem at all stages that are relevant to learning, memory and academic performance," says Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey.
Research into sleep disorders and brain function has shown the importance of sleep in memory and consolidating information.
Without sleep, the brain struggles to absorb and retain ideas.
"There is a growing interest in the associations between adequate sleep and academic performance," says Prof Dijk.
'Loss can be reversed'
Dr Fitzpatrick says lack of sleep is going to leave pupils more emotionally volatile, more potentially disruptive and physically struggling to learn.
And she says that the loss of sleep and short-term attempts to catch up can cause further and complex disruptions to the way the brain tries to store information.
But there is good news. If you start getting enough sleep on a regular basis, the loss to learning can be reversed.
"As long you haven't gone into extreme sleep deprivation, if you go back to seven to nine hours per night, as long as there has been no permanent damage, you can probably restore the functionality of accumulating, processing and being able to recall memories," says Dr Fitzpatrick.
"The basis of learning will likely be restored to normal levels."
Otherwise trying to study without sleep is going to be tough. "Your brain is running on empty."
Sleep deprivation is a significant hidden factor in lowering the achievement of school pupils, according to researchers carrying out international education tests.
It is a particular problem in more affluent countries, with sleep experts linking it to the use of mobile phones and computers in bedrooms late at night.
Sleep deprivation is such a serious disruption that lessons have to be pitched at a lower level to accommodate sleep-starved learners, the study found.
The international comparison, carried out by Boston College, found the United States to have the highest number of sleep-deprived students, with 73% of 9 and 10-year-olds and 80% of 13 and 14-year-olds identified by their teachers as being adversely affected.
In literacy tests there were 76% of 9 and 10-year-olds lacking sleep.
This was much higher than the international average of 47% of primary pupils needing more sleep and 57% among the secondary age group.
Achievement gap
Other countries with the most sleep-deprived youngsters were New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Australia, England, Ireland and France. High-performing Finland is also among the most lacking in sleep.
Countries with the best records for getting enough sleep include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Japan and Malta.
The analysis was part of the huge data-gathering process for global education rankings - the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).
The rankings of results for maths, science and reading were published at the end of last year, with Asian education systems dominating the top of the tables.
But the researchers also wanted to find out more about the influence of home life. There has been much analysis of the impact of family wealth and poverty, but the Boston College researchers also wanted to measure factors such as sleep and nutrition.
So the tests were accompanied by questionnaires for teachers, pupils and parents about sleep patterns. And this information was compared with pupils' test results, so that the performance in maths, science and literacy could be compared with levels of sleep.
Brain food
"I think we underestimate the impact of sleep. Our data show that across countries internationally, on average, children who have more sleep achieve higher in maths, science and reading. That is exactly what our data show," says Chad Minnich, of the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center.
"It's the same link for children who are lacking basic nutrition," says Mr Minnich, based at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College.
"If you are unable to concentrate, to attend mentally, you are unable to achieve at your optimal level, because your mind and body are in need of something more basic.
"Sleep is a fundamental need for all children. If teachers report such large proportions of children suffering from lack of sleep, it's having a significant impact.
"But worse than that, teachers are having to modify their instruction based on those children who are suffering from a lack of sleep.
"The children who are suffering from a lack of sleep are driving down instruction."
That means that even the children who are getting enough sleep are still suffering from this sleep-related dumbing-down.
Cramming school
The researchers uncovered regional trends that bucked expectations.
Asian countries are the highest-performing in maths tests - and Mr Minnich says this has often been associated with long hours and cramming in after-school classes.
"One would assume that they would be extremely tired," he said. "And yet when we look at the sleep factor for them, they don't necessarily seem to be suffering from as much sleep deprivation as the other countries."
Getting a good night's sleep isn't going to transform an underperforming country into an education superpower. For instance, the least sleepy pupils seem to be in Azerbaijan, but they are still considerably behind the most sleep-deprived pupils in Finland.
But researchers say that it does show how differently individual pupils might be placed on the ability spectrum, with lack of sleep representing the difference between being high-performing and average.
There are also big changes as pupils get older. Younger pupils in South Korea have among the lowest levels of sleep deprivation in the world, but in secondary school they have some of the worst problems.
There are differences within countries too. At the level of US states, among secondary pupils Colorado has a much worse problem with lack of sleep than Massachusetts.
What the study does not show is why young people are missing out on sleep - or why more technologically advanced countries seem to have the biggest difficulties.
But sleep experts point to a particular problem due to technology in children's bedroom - specifically the use of screens on smartphones or laptops late at night.
Serious barrier to learning
It isn't only that young people are kept awake by messaging their friends or using the internet. The light from the screen, held close to the face, is physically disruptive to the natural onset of sleep.
"Having a computer screen that is eight inches away from your face is going to expose you to a lot more light than watching a television on the opposite side of the room," says Karrie Fitzpatrick, sleep researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois.
"It's going to tell your brain to stay awake," says Dr Fitzpatrick.
"That light can reset the whole circadian rhythm system and say, 'Wait a minute, it's not time to go to bed'."
Lack of sleep is also a serious physical barrier to learning.
"Sleepiness is a problem at all stages that are relevant to learning, memory and academic performance," says Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey.
Research into sleep disorders and brain function has shown the importance of sleep in memory and consolidating information.
Without sleep, the brain struggles to absorb and retain ideas.
"There is a growing interest in the associations between adequate sleep and academic performance," says Prof Dijk.
'Loss can be reversed'
Dr Fitzpatrick says lack of sleep is going to leave pupils more emotionally volatile, more potentially disruptive and physically struggling to learn.
And she says that the loss of sleep and short-term attempts to catch up can cause further and complex disruptions to the way the brain tries to store information.
But there is good news. If you start getting enough sleep on a regular basis, the loss to learning can be reversed.
"As long you haven't gone into extreme sleep deprivation, if you go back to seven to nine hours per night, as long as there has been no permanent damage, you can probably restore the functionality of accumulating, processing and being able to recall memories," says Dr Fitzpatrick.
"The basis of learning will likely be restored to normal levels."
Otherwise trying to study without sleep is going to be tough. "Your brain is running on empty."
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