what does fate have in store for them? 25 out of that 100 won't graduate from high school. a total of 50 won't go to college. that's half the class that won't go on to higher education. 50 will attend college, but only 22 will graduate within six years meanwhile, other countries are outstarting us. on a recent international test, u.s. students ranked only 15th in the world in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math. overall, the world economic forum ranks the quality of our education at 26th. what's odd is that we've been outspending most developed countries by a long shot. in 2007, we spent over $10,000 per student versus the $7,400 average for rich countries. how can we spend so much money and have so little to show for it? we'll ask that question and others to some of the leading figures in american education here on this special essay. we'll examine the role of teachers, testing ands technology. and we ask the man who spent billions of dollars trying to fix education about how he's spending his money. microsoft founder and philanthropist, bill gates. but first, there are two nations in which consistents consistently rank on top. south korea and finland. what is their secret? we'll take you there and show you how they get their impressive results with completely opposite approaches. let's get started. ♪ >> welcome to seoul, south korea. capital city of one of the world's fastest growing economies. there are many reasons to be impressed with this ancient tiger that rose from the ashes of the civil war. but south korea's crown jewel is its education system. thanks to a militant drive for success, this nation's students have outperformed the rest of the world for the better part of a decade. on the most recent exam, the benchmark international test, south korea ranked first in reading and second in math among all nations. >> in south korea, teachers are known as nation builders. >> president obama has noticed, singing korea's prass on a regular basis. on a visit to seoul in 2009 he asked south korean president lee mun bach what his biggest challenge was in education. the president's reply? korean parents care too much about their children's success. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> we visited the cho family on a typical day for their son, song do. he gets up every day at 6:00 a.m. jumps rope as the sun comes up. then eats a massive grek fast his mother has prepared. she says a healthy meal helps his concentration. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> sung do's studies are especially important this year, because next november he'll take an all-important college entrance exam. it's the ultimate test in a particularly test-driven education system. >> since the family is really expecting a lot from me and supporting me a lot, i think i have to return their favor. >> sung-do goes to school from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on most days, much longer hours than most american stints. there are about 205 school days in south korea's calendar, 25 more than the typical u.s. schedule. over the course of their academic careers, south korean children will spend almost two more years in the classroom than their american counterparts. after classes let up, sung-do studies for hours in a school cubicle and takes his dinner in a school cafeteria. he'll sometimes go to a late night cram school known in korea as a hagwan, nocturnal schools for kids offering classes in science, math or any other subject that's covered on the big college exam. after school instruction is very popular here, enrolling three-quarters of the nation's students. the average korean family spends roughly 20% of their income on private constitutering. back home, sung-do usually continues his studies well after midnight. >> it's true that study hours is horrible. i might enjoy the pain i cannot avoid. i'm trying my best to enjoy this environment and this age. >> the korean education system is at the heart of an extraordinary economic success story. 30 years ago, the nation's per capita income was less than $1,700. today, it's almost $24,000. but many here think that the pain students endure is not worth the price of admission to the world's elite. suicides among school-age children are abnormally high, doubling in 2009 compared to 2003. president lee mung bach has made easing academic pressure one of his top priorities, pledging to reduce study loads and create a more engaing curriculum for students. >> the process is so painful. they don't know how to enjoy learning. >> a former minister of education now advises the president. as minister, he changed the college admissions process so there would be less emphasis on the entrance exam. he also targeted the late-night cram schools which were known to drill students past midnight. there is now a 10:00 p.m. curfew for the schools. south korea's very own law to prevent students from studying too hard. citizens can actually report misbehaving cram schools to the government for a cash reward. the tipsters have become known as the hatparazzi. we followed a team one night as they made their rounds in a district in seoul. there's a hagwan in this neighborhood on almost every corner. the team looked for suspiciously lit schools where students might be receiving an illicit algebra lesson. one school was opened. and the inspector issued a penalty. they've exposed 75 schools this year alone. the minister hopes south korea can reach a happy medium between its enthusiasm for education and its students well-being. >> we should try to make students be happy to learn. that's very important to me. so that's what i hope for the future of korea. coming up, is there a kinder, gentler way for students to make the grade? we'll visit a country where students spend far less time in the classroom than south korea, yet enjoy remarkable results. 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[ professor ] good morning students. today, we're gonna... align can help. only align has bifantis, a pantented probiotic that naturally helps maintain your digestive balance. ♪ ooh baby, (what) can i do for you today? ♪ try align today. south korea's students spend way more time in the classroom than americans. that might explain why they've been outperforming us lately by leaps and bounds. but there's another country where students spend less time in class than the south koreans, and their performance is also off the charts. finland. ♪ >> on the surface, finland is the education world's ultimate slacker. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> children don't start school here until they're 7 years old. they have far less homework than many countries. and they log fewer hours in the classroom than most developed countries, even the united states. but don't be fooled. finish students score first in the world in science and second in the world in math. >> that's the kind of amazing thing that we are able to achieve higher internationally in these academic areas with very little work and very short school days. >> a leading figure in finland's education field works with its ministry of education. in his recent book "finnish lessons," he says finland is less concerned with the amount of time they spend in class than how that time is spent. >> if we could calculate how much time young people engage in real learning, i think finnish young people are probably at the same level where your children or japanese or koreans are. >> in finland's schools, teachers spend less time drilling the facts and more time developing students' creativity. most importantly, he says, hardly any time is spend preparing students for standardized tests. >> we have deliberately removed all those thipgs. we never had a standardized testing system. and i hope that we never will. >> but how can finland afford to be so flexible in its approach and still get great results? the answer is simple. they have great teachers. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> teaching is a highly respected profession here, on par with doctors and lawyers. that's because they're all required to have master's degrees. the competition for those degrees is fierce. only one in ten applicants is accepted to primary schoolteacher training programs. >> the elementary teacher program is hardest to get in than the university. harder to get in than medical school for law school. >> christy lanka, a professional of educational psychology at the university of helsinki says her school routinely turns away highly qualified candidates. it's the exact opposite situation in america. almost half of all u.s. teachers graduate in the bottom third of their college class. >> i'm asking what kind of information we need. >> hakanan was one of the lucky ones accepted to the university of helsinki's teacher education program. >> from sort of day one, they start making you think about the importance of how you're teaching and what it is that you're trying to get across. it's not just your subject. it's also that you're raising future citizens. >> when you think about finland, what comes to mind? >> in addition to managing her course load, she practices her craft at a local school under the watchful eye of an experienced teacher. >> definitely from the start, there's -- they put you on the spot. and you have to start kind of performing as a teacher. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> south korea and other high performing nations are known for their well-trained educators, too. but in finland, teachers are given far more autonomy. there is a national curriculum here, but it's just a framework, serving as a guide for each school instead of a top down edict. and because teachers don't have standardized tests to worry about, they can teach their students however they want. >> it's like in a company. you have a strategy of the company, but you are not watching each employee all the time. so it's very autonomous profession. >> but this autonomy and handing over the responsibility of many things to schools would not have been possible if we hadn't had this academic program for training teachers. so without good teachers you cannot really do this. >> with all of that responsibility and the respect that comes with it, finnish educators tend to stay in their profession. compared to the u.s. where the turnover among teachers is roughly seven times higher. but let's get real for a moment. what can america learn from a tiny ethnically ho mojs now country that's home to just over 5 million people? salzburg agrees that size does matter. he points out that over 30 american states are similar to finland in population. >> colorado or massachusetts. very close to what finland could be. >> but an american classroom is likely to be far more diverse, featuring many different languages and ethnic origins and have a great deal more poverty. only 4% of finnish children are poor, while in the u.s. the rate is over 20%. >> i've been in these classrooms in the united states. and when i would see these huge diversities and poverty, i'm helpless. >> can an education system overcome poverty? and can the u.s. create an army of great teachers like in finland? next, we'll talk to the man who's spending billions of dollars to answer those questions. as students around the world overtake the united states, no one outside government is more concerned or spending more money to fix education than the bill and melinda gates foundation. in total, its bankroll, $5 billion worth of initiatives for students and schools. i visited bill gates at his foundation's new headquarters in seattle to talk about his latest plans. if you were the secretary of education, i'd say you are even more powerful than the secretary of education. suppose you could change something about the structure of american education, the system. what would it be? >> if i was in charge of a school district, it'd be about hiring the best teachers. and how do you get them to learn from each other and how do you make sure you're bringing the really good ones in? so the basic research about great teaching, that's now become our biggest investment. >> it's okay. it's good. >> it could be a very smart investment. one study says that if students had a top teacher for four years straight, the achievement gap between blacks and whites would disappear. >> page 68. if you have your notes -- >> the gates foundation has launched a massive effort to figure out how america can foster great teaching. collecting data from thousands of educators and even videotaping their lessons. what do you think makes a good teacher? >> clearly, there's something about engaging the student. as i've watched the videos of the great teachers, they are constantly looking out and seeing if the kids are starting to fidget. they're bringing up the energy level. they're calling on this kid. they're using examples. >> but gates's reserng is not only about identifying great teachers. his team is also figuring out how to grade the teachers, just like they grade their students. >> i'm not saying that you need to use semicolons all the time. >> they're looking at different ways to reward and motivate good teachers, like adding to their paychecks, based on their principal's evaluation or teaching performance. >> we're going to have these feedback mechanisms. the way you weight the different elements, how much tasks weigh into that, how strong the other elements are, that's what we're investing in. >> and that's where things can get controversial. because when it comes to education policy, the politics are nasty. >> no more cuts! >> in recent years, an all-out brawl between school districts and teachers unions has dominated the education debate. critics of the unions say they're more concerned about preserving their members' jobs than educating children. the unions say that the administrators' reforms aren't doing any good. at the center of the storm has been michelle reed, the former chancellor of washington, d.c.'s, public school system, one of the nation's worst performing school districts at the time she took over. >> in 2007 the education world went into a frenzy over the possibility that michelle reed could actually turn around the school district. >> featured in the lightning rod documentary "waiting for superman" reed turned the school system upsidedown, firing dozens of schoolteachers and closing 27 schools. you famously clashed with the unions while you were in office. do you think still in retrospect and looking forward, are teachers unions ra fundamental problem to educational reform? >> well, i think that teachers unions, but more specifically the contracts, the collective bargaining agreements that dictate a lot of the policies in school districts are extraordinarily problematic. >> one of the policies rhee has been fighting has to do with seniority. when schools cut their budgets, newer teachers are often laid off before the more experienced teachers regardless of their performance. it's the so-called last-in, first-out policy. >> this is a policy that makes absolutely no sense for children. because what it results in is one, you end up firing some of your best teachers. two, you end up disproportionately negatively impacting the lowest performing schools in the system because they are the ones that have the largest number of new teachers. and, three, you actually end up having to lay off or fire more teachers because the junior teachers are the lowest paid. >> after she left d.c., rhee started her own organization, students first, to push her agenda all over the country. she's lobbied state governments to pass laws, reforming teacher tenure, and paying teachers according to their performance. merit pay. people look at one of your proposals, merit pay -- >> mm-hmm. >> -- and say the whole rationale behind this is wrong. you're looking at teachers who have gone into this profession for reasons that don't have to do about maximizing money. >> right, right. >> and you're trying to influence them by offering them a little bit more money or a little bit less money. >> mm-hmm. >> is it really going to work? >> the merit pay proposal that we put in place in washington, d.c., allowed the most highly effective teachers who were teaching in the lowest performing schools to make twice as much money as they were in the old system. so when you're talking about the potential of doubling someone's salary, that's not a little bit of money. >> what the gates foundation is trying to do is to come up with the perfect combination of carrots and sticks to improve teacher performance. the hillsborough county, florida, school district, covering the tampa area, got a $100 million gates grant to be one of the foundation's new guinea pigs. after some tough negotiating, here's the system that the union and administrators came up with. >> let's continue as we normally do, okay? >> new teachers are given lots of training and on on-call professional mentor so they have a real chance to succeed. >> here's what i want to do. >> teachers are graded in three different ways. evaluations by a peer up to six times a year, observations by the school principal up to four times a year, and a complex formula that measures their students' performance. under the old evaluation system, a whopping 99% of teachers were given a satisfactory rating or better. but not anymore. >> i am not going to receive the same kind of performance appraisal. i'm no longer going to get one that says i'm perfect. i'm going to get one that actually is representative of how well i'm doing. >> how might that help in future lessons? >> the ratings will determine pay levels for new teachers and for veterans who opt in and could lead to firings. >> learning was enhanced because of the communication with the students. >> okay. >> but it looks like the teachers, for the most part, are onboard. 80% of them said the feedback improved their craft. >> i can sit down and have a conversation with that person and say, look, give me some feedback. give me something that i've never got before. >> but not everyone agrees with the foundation's $100 million experiment. when we come back, we'll hear from one of the gates's harshest critics. >> he's listening to economists who think that the way to evaluate teachers is by their students' test scores. i think this is profoundly wrong. 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