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That's been the beauty of the OECD since the very beginning is that it has been a place
where countries come to share their best practices and to get to the highest common denominator,
instead of the lowest common denominator. And part of the way they do this is they build
a knowledge base with data. So the OECD has all this cross-country data and so you can
find out how you are doing relative to other countries.
What's an example: Every two years if you open up major newspapers in the U.S. it will
say 'The U.S. has fallen or risen in education'. Where are our fifteen year olds doing relative
to other countries in science, math and reading; that's OECD data, It is crucially important
for the U.S., so important that Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, made sure to release
that, have that data released in the U.S. as a wake-up call that we needed to do more
on education reform.