You know the story. Schools in this country and many other countries, they just aren't

so great at teaching kids. Why not? What needs to improve? Now you've heard the answers

too. Some experts say it's all about increasing teacher skill. Others say it's the pedagogical

approach or the curriculum. Unless it's classroom size or maybe dollars spent per kid. Or we

need more computers. What do all these answers have in common? They all represent the supply

side of the education equation. But what about the demand side? The students themselves. Where

are they falling down? Today, a story from China about a foolproof way to boost learning,

at least for some students. It doesn't have a fancy name. You don't need a PhD to administer

it. And it's almost comically cheap. Here's Long Qingyi, an eighth grade teacher in China.

Sometimes I have to call the students up to the blackboard in order to read. Sometimes it's a

matter of having students who can see, help those who can't. And other times I just have to walk

over to the students myself to give them extra attention. Now as you can imagine, a student who can't

see the blackboard can't read the blackboard. And if you can't read the blackboard, that makes

it pretty hard to learn your lesson. And a kid like that or a bunch of kids like that can start

to drag the whole class down. Now, what if the solution doesn't have anything to do with curriculum

or more computers? What if it had to do with...

From 8 p.m. American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio. Today, a smarter kid's at 10 bucks a

pot. Here's your host, Steven Dubner. Gone Sue Province in China is about a thousand miles west of

Beijing. It's mostly rural, a lot of subsistence farmers, and very, very poor. For kid growing up in

Gone Sue, a good education is important. A few years ago, two Western economists, Paul Glevy and

Albert Park tried an experiment in Gone Sue to see if they could raise kids' test scores.

Economists and other researchers don't have a good handle on what it is that it takes to increase learning.

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