Chinese schools

Some pulls from Nicholas D. Kristof 's China's Winning Schools op-ed in the NYT:

• . . . even in backward rural areas, most girls and boys alike attend high school. 
• In my Chinese-American wife’s ancestral village — a poor community in southern China — the peasant children are a grade ahead in math compared with my children at an excellent public school in the New York area.
• Chinese principals can’t easily dismiss teachers, but they can get extra training for less effective teachers, or if that doesn’t work, push them into other jobs.
• . . . excellent early childhood education, typically beginning at age 2
• Colleges are third-rate and should be a national disgrace.
• Many Chinese complain scathingly that their system kills independent thought and creativity
• . . . the greatest strength of the Chinese system is the Confucian reverence for education that is steeped into the culture.