Little known fact.
Children of Japanese descent in America outperform Japanese children in Japan.
Children of Swedish descent in America outperform Swedish children in Sweden.
And so on through every other identifiable group. Only exception is Finnish children, who do slightly better that American children of Finnish descent.
The difference is simply our mix of ethnic groups compared to those of the other countries.
Along this line, white, black and Hispanic students in Texas all outperform their ethnic counterparts in Wisconsin, but based on the average for each state, WI is better. The reason, of course, being the much smaller number of minority students in WI.
The great Iowahawk wrote one of the greatest smackdowns of all time on this issue. On Paul Krugman. A real delight.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
Great info and post. Thanks.