Can ‘Academic Superpower’ South Korea Teach the U.S.?

Can the United States learn from an "academic superpower" like South Korea?

After this question was posed last week in a prominent Wall Street Journal article about Korean private cram schools, Berkeley Patch asked education experts who are in the Berkeley area or have links to Berkeley. 

The Wall Street Journal article highlighted a South Korean teacher who makes $4 million a year running a private, after-school cram and tutoring academy, known as "hagwon," to illustrate the enthusiasm (or hype, depending on one's point of view) around tutoring academies in South Korea. 

Many people, including the writer of the Journal article, believe hagwons contribute to South Korea's top ranks in international standardized testing results. 

"Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S.,” wrote Amanda Ripley, whose new book, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, explores the education systems in South Korea, Finland and Poland. 

At the same time, the writer acknowledged problems with the hagwon system, including unequal access to education according to wealth and the toll it can take on students from a "relentless grind" of schooling day and night.

South Korean students rank at or near the top in international comparisons of academic achievement. In the often cited OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of 15-year-olds conducted every three years, the most recent results available (2009) show Korea ranked first in reading and math among regular nations (OECD lists results also for select cities like Shanghai, city-states like Singapore and principalities like Liechtenstein).

For a list of the top five countries in each category, see the end of this Patch article. 

But does this mean America can learn from South Korea and adopt after-school programs like "hagwons"?

"The problem of U.S. education," said UC Berkeley graduate Clark Sorensen, chair of Korean studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, "is not that it's 'bad,' but rather that it is uneven – poor and minority students often don't have access to high quality schools that the well-established middle and upper class do have." 

"Creating expensive 'hagwon' will not provide that access," Sorensen said. 

Expressing a similar viewpoint was Jennifer Peck, executive director of Oakland-based Partnership for Children & Youth. 

"All students should have access to activities and trained staff who can enrich and enhance their educational experience,” said Peck, who advocates after-school and summer-learning programs for the Bay Area’s lowest-income communities and has helped secure more than $90 million in public funding to help thousands participate in such programs. “Unfortunately, many children whose families cannot afford these opportunities are the ones who typically fall behind, and are on the wrong side of our huge ‘achievement gap.’ It appears that the tutoring programs offered in South Korea feed into this same phenomenon." 

The former director of the Berkeley-based Coalition for Science After School, Jason Freeman, supports after-school "enrichment programs," not the conventional classroom approach. 

"In my experience, we do not need any more time spent on traditional education and ‘classroom’ learning,” said Freeman. “Beyond the school day, kids should spend time in enrichment programs that give meaning to the classroom subjects, get them excited about learning, and point them toward careers." 

He also emphasized that our schools need more staff, more tools and better pay for teachers.

"It's less the effectiveness of teachers or tutoring that goes into Koreans’ success, and more the motivation of the students and the way families are organized to support studying,” Sorensen said. 

Below are the top five nations in each category in the OECD rankings, not counting cities, city-states and principalities. The U.S. rank among regular nations also is included at the bottom of each list.

Reading
    1. Korea
    2. Finland 
    3. Canada
    4. New Zealand
    5. Japan
    ...
    12. United States

Math
   1. Korea
    2. Finland
    3. Switzerland
    4. Japan
    5. Canada
    ...
    25. United States (tied with Iceland and Portugal)

Science
    1. Finland
    2. Japan
    3. Korea
    4. New Zealand
    5. Canada
    ... 
    17. United States 

We'd like to know your answer to the Wall Street Journal's question, "Can the U.S. learn from this academic superpower?" You can tell us in the comments.