What we found out in our work in Bangladesh is that the best way to try and shift some of those gender norms and try to shift some of the dynamics between men and women is by linking that to some other intervention. For example a new technology because dressing gender norms in itself is not going to be very easily accepted. So for example we've started testing a new type of nets that are more suitable for women to use and what we would what we wanted to find out is if we could get better benefits for women in terms of their empowerment and also in terms of household food security if we link that to a gender transformative approach. So in some communities we've started testing different approaches to make gender norms a topic of discussion and that bringing in both men and women also sometimes mothers-in-law and also at the community level with community leaders. And in other communities we just provided the other nets the new nets without doing that. So what we're measuring in the end is the level of empowerment that has whether that has increased or not and also the level of household food security because the nets are really aimed at catching a small fish species Mola which is really nutritious.


Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us for another weekly edition of condo insider, which is put on by White Council of Community Associations. So the whole purpose is about educating our condo board members as well as the general public. So with me today. I have with me Norma cops. She is the director with senior medical patrol. So she's going to talk to us about Medicare and also in her office. They handle. I'm not sure if some of you seen their commercials, but they have commercials about fraud and scams.  So she's going to go through what they do in their office. And partly, we also want to talk about how some of this fraud.  They will never go down. So we have to try to be cognizant of every attempt where we can save money or, you know, where some seniors are paying things when they shouldn't really have to be paying for it at all. Like, I think what's coming home on the TV is something about there's some agencies that can even evaluate your plans to see where you could have more potential savings. So this is part of a series that I'm doing on opportunities where seniors can take advantage of some of these programs to help them save money or, you know, find other services that they are eligible for at no charge. So let me bring on Norma, Norma Kopp. She is with Senior Medicare Patrol, also known as SMP Hawaii. So welcome to the show Norma. So let's start off by telling us exactly what SMP Hawaii does. Thank you for having me Raylene. On behalf of Senior Medicare Patrol Hawaii, we are part of the Department of Health and we're housed, managed by the Executive Office on Aging. We are part of a national network of 54 fellow chapters across the United States in the territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas, as well as the District of Columbia, so total 54. And we've been here since 1997. So we just wrapped up our 25th year in Hawaii. We are a volunteer program federally funded and again state managed by the Department of Health. What SMP does in its charge is to be sure that we assist and empower beneficiaries, not just Medicare but Medicaid as well, those that need help. And we also address concerns from their families and caregivers, and the whole thrust of it is to teach them how to prevent and detect as well as report healthcare fraud, alleged fraud, or actual fraud, as well as billing errors and abuse. So the difference between abuse and fraud just to make things really clear is abuse could happen once and it may not involve other people. Whereas fraud, there's an element of criminal intent that we can sort of scratch and sniff and follow. And at the very onset, if you're not sure who to contact, whether it's healthcare related, or even a gift card scam or possibly worse a romance scam. Just call us and we'll have our number and all of the contact contact information available. Okay, so I know what seniors a lot of times they get. I think my think on it because I'm not at that stage yet of Medicare. So they get sometimes they'll get billing. And especially for services that they never or even a test that they never took, right, or even services and it depends upon the plan that they have. Because I think like state workers they never have to pay anything out of pocket but other other private employers, they might have different things within their plans of that nature. Can you go a little bit about that. So on that comment about state workers it really depends on when you entered state work as a public steward some people are grandfathered under the old plan or former plan others like myself are under the current plan. So it's not carte blanche and it's not like we don't get, we don't pay anything but it really depends on entry of service but going back to the whole thing about summary notices so these are not billing statements these are quarterly statements from Medicare that come in the snail mail. And if you set up an online account with Medicare.gov obviously you're going to be able to get your statement on demand. But sometimes it's difficult to decode all the different specs the appeal section or even just a front page but it's very clear at the very top it says this is not a bill. However, some Kapuna will say I never ordered this brace or why is there a duplicate record of this so you know we'd like to think that we cut some grace to people that are working hard in health care. You know some of this is unintended and human error, but as we know with 70 billion plus dollars a year to false claims in the Medicare program. The Medicare has an insolvent issue so this whole issue about making sure that you can understand and decode your billing statement and if you don't know how no shame call us will go over that we have people. Literally in in their 60 70 years age group saying I live alone I don't know what what this is and so if it feels funny if it doesn't look right call us will put your mind to ease. I don't know what calls will connect with partners. You know when you see companies like IRS Medicare Medicaid, SSA Social Security agents, right off the bat really everybody should know with think tech Hawaii.  They don't have the staff they don't have the time. They're not going to call you it's not efficient, but they will snail mail you for the most part they will not text you or email you. They're working with banks they're not, you know, it, if you did not solicit this if you did not create an online account. Assume that it's a scam and these savvy scammers this is their lifetime career. Everything else, but working either solo or in groups, not just in this state or in this nation, but across the world. These are highly sophisticated networks of scammers and you know now they're talking about artificial intelligence which makes everything look so real as well right. Yeah, let's pull up slide number four. So it's a really good you have a little, a little bit of stats. Yeah, we have like 10,000 Americans that yes, 55 each day. Yes. And in Hawaii we have what one in four white residents it's going to is 65 or even older. It's 19 since 2020 so a quarter of our 1.4 million population of residents sit in this baby boomer 65, you know, age the golden, the golden era right the silver tsunami, but look at this. This was, you know, this is really startling that in seven years in the year 2030, we're going from a quarter to one third of the population here in Hawaii being, you know, silver tsunami. Yeah, yeah. So more more on the stats is that you know, when you think about 2017 I don't know about you really but it feels like it was ages ago, but that was just six years ago. We had about 246,000 Medicare eligible individuals. Now, double that amount in 10 years from or in 20 years span 2037. That is half a million projected in the popular half a million people by way of the baby boomers right we were born 1946 to 64 so I don't know when you were born but that's the largest population in American history. They're all turning 65. And so this solvency issue I was talking about is like a checkbook that's just just surviving on its last page its last check. And so what the volunteers do with SMP, whether they're counselors or they distribute information that when they go shopping or, and everybody can do that in our volunteer team, or they're actually out there in the exhibits now that we're back in person we're out there in the communities, or we're doing presentations like at various agencies now they're asking for in person zoom MS teams. What they're all doing is not just expanding the reach of SMP, but they're trying to keep the integrity of the Medicare program. So our children and our grandchildren can benefit from that you know what when we started working part time, full time I don't know when you start I started working when I was 15. We started paying into the Medicare program. And then the paycheck stub was working at canteen corporation at a little stadium. You know, I'm not going to give it up when I turn I want that piece of benefit right so. Yeah, and thankfully we work together as a team we're part of Hawaii ship meaning you know the executive office on aging has our unbiased counselors from Hawaii ship state health insurance assistance program. We're SMP we're sort of the state scambusters for health related fraud, and then we have our long term care of Budsman volunteer programs. I'm going to really dwindle, you know, the funds I mean even Social Security. Here about it's being like no what no what you know dwindling down not going to be money even though you paid into it. So we have to reserve what the people have paid in for the next generation of people. That's still, you know, and it's just amazing how some people have nothing better to do. Yes, create scams, you know, and people always say that they'll tell me you know after we do a phone call they'll say oh thank you because I really didn't think calling the police would help but honestly we work with law enforcement and they're very grateful. These beneficiaries are very grateful when we can salvage a little bit back for them. Timing is everything really when people call us, we're hoping that that scam just occurred or they woke up to that and like we got to call SMP. When people dilly dally or they feel guilty or ashamed to call.  So the longer you take because you just made grandma guilty feel guilty because she just lapsed in her mind and she said she gave out her number her Medicare number her social. You know, we do that to grandma. It's not healthy. We shouldn't be shaming the victims that have already felt so bad about it we should try to like muster up the courage just call just call and try to take care of it. Yeah, because I didn't want to myself once I got a text message about a package I'm like, so I put my click on the link and then I have to pay like $2 I'm like, after I did I'm like brain you should not have done that. No, better. No, it was turn around call the bank. Nothing had gone through yet nice and I just said, well, I lost my car. Yeah, so that just stopped everything stop everything right. You know, this is why it takes we tell people it takes our entire state we're not talking Governor Josh Green State of Hawaii we're talking about all of us looking out for each other. We have a lot of kupuna either self determined lives or just by consequences they're living alone. They're living in isolated areas we somehow got to take the time to look out for them because guess what yeah, every day we wake up and the sun rises we're that one day older. We're sharing that road. We don't feel it but one day we will. I'm becoming aware that don't assume that the seniors are going to know, you know, I mean I was talking to one that was, and I've known this woman for a couple years and I mean I was talking to and I go, you don't know what part is. I was shocked, you know, and I'm like, it has a pandemic isolated us too much so we're not getting out. But I, you can't always just assume that people are going to know these things. You know, some of us take for granted. Right. Right. So that's, that's why in our mission we talk about prevent the tech and report and prevent is really about education so you're right, you know, cognitively I don't know about you but oh boy, as a decades we're on I'm just like okay where, what was I doing you know so the idea of making sure that we remind people or put posted notes by the phone or, you know, tell Auntie just hang up, you know, don't engage savvy scammers are recording right they're recording they can they can do voice impersonations they they have AI at their fingertips they can be us. They're not really they're they're fine with taking our money right that's great that's control, but they really want to be us online they want our identity. And so our three step prevention here is just treat your Medicare card, as you would like your, your favorite credit card, you know, your, your, your mileage plus card for your airlines, treat it like platinum. Don't give out your card. And one of the tricky words people use these days over the telephone or text is what was your, you know, Miss Tenna what was your Medicare card number again. You know, as they, they talk to you and say oh you have an appointment we see you have an appointment so you don't have to wait in line too long in the waiting room. You know, we're just checking to see. You know, we just kind of cleaning up the, the files here what was your Medicare card number again this is a true story where the word again, just trip this woman up and on Hawaiian. She was smart enough or alert enough or just thought to call us and we were able to replace that card within 10 days. And yeah, so even words like again, they'll use your name, they'll make you feel good. But the bottom line is what scammers are really good at is they want to put you under the ether ETH ER and what that is is this incredible mix of emotions that will make you feel urgent. I got to get it or scared or threatened or nervous or happy they want to get you in this ether and once they can get you under the ether they got you. So we need to just take a step back hang up delete permanently delete get rid of our trash bin in our computer and put in that software that's going to help safeguard a lot of these really dangerous notes. And going back to what you said about detect. Even though the person's like not even sure, or even their family members not even sure, it's still good to make that phone call to SMP because even though it may not be it may be okay for that particular incidence, but it's starting to develop a pattern. You know, it starts just with one, you know, and they kind of like got away with it but now now you're getting multiple phone calls for the same situation. Right. That would be once you start getting like more than five is kind of like a red flag. Sure. Or to this then we're not we're not seeing, you know, it is a possible scam so I think if any, you know, people think it could be like something really small might be minor. So it could lead into something bigger. Right. That calm that, you know, it's just enough and sometimes all they need to do is scam how many people and for $10 and they, they could have $100,000 in days. Right. And again, beyond the money, what's more valuable is for them to take our identity and what they do with that identity is I can, if I'm the scanner scammer, I could take hold of all I need is your social security like just your four digits the last four and I just need your date of birth and I can go to town on you. I'll open 10 credit cards and I'll start shopping on your name.  I'm not stopping at just your household. So I'll look you up. I'll look at property values. I'll see where you are. I'll Google map you. I'll try to connect the dots, which is pretty easy now. And yeah, I'll just make sure that I bring you down because now it's easier, right? It's easier. I just need to take one down and then connect the dots with family and friends. Social media, you know, Facebook, it has its good purposes where you can be reminded of a classroom union or an anniversary or but oftentimes what was happening with the pandemic is people were showing their vaccination cards, like hey, I got vaccinated and you if you zoom in there's that date of birth there's all these elements for scammers to just, you know, just really mess you up so people just be aware that when you post something there's a downside to that as well just got to be really careful. And I really think our younger generation we got to give them credit a lot of them sometimes don't get the credit they deserve, but they're the very ones that because they're kind of savvy with online devices. You know, and they're looking after their, you know, Kupuna, it's important to acknowledge them right now. Generation X and the younger generations. They're a little bit more savvy, although 18 to 24 right now that age group, they are the number one group to be scammed for online purchases right now. All the generations I've talked to the high schoolers and stuff they they're very aware, because not only are scams increasing the types of scams are rampant so there's Bitcoin right there's we talked about romance scam we dealt with a case with three checks going up to a woman 89 year old widow who is very lonely befriending somebody who she thought was a doctor in Korea, and she was asked by the doctor supposedly her new lover to help him with his medical practice and wrote three checks 58,000 80,000. And add that up Norm 130,000 for a total of $260,000 in two months, all gone just like that and by the time the daughter called us after seeing a commercial, our commercial it was like, I should have called sooner. I was just too ashamed. I was so angry. I was. Yeah, it's all gone. So, let's learn from these lessons. Timing is important. SMP should be like one of the first things you think about next to police. We will not just candle or address your healthcare alleged scams or actual scams and billing errors and, and things like that. But we will be a referral source and contact the agency that's most appropriate to deal with when it comes to non health care scams so we have offices in with the federal trade of federal trade Commission FTC in Los Angeles so we work with their attorneys. We work down the street with commerce and consumer affairs. We work with the attorney general's office. We work with public safety narcotics enforcement. We have different. We work with the bank security management corporate security folks. You know, it's not just healthcare but it's, we pivot will be the referral source for non health care. One thing that you said, yeah, I want to make this clear. You had said all they need is your last four digits or your social security and your date of birth and they can find you. Well, that's pretty much the two core identifiers that can get them closer to getting in on, on just being able to identify you. So they, you know, if they can find, like, if they can find your social security number and the last four digits. There's just a lot of technology out there to be able to find that right and then because we're all pretty much online, but we have to be careful so I'll be really honest with you really when I have certain forms that are in front of me and for my social security number. I'll call the agency and say, do you really need that? Oftentimes the clerks will say, Oh, you know what, that's just standard. We're not even thinking what's on the application anymore. It's an old form, right revised 2006 or whatever on the bottom of the page. Oftentimes we just, just by just not even thinking we'll put our social social security and I think it's important for us to question that right in this 2023 year, people are still asking us for a social security number. I just would just draw a line across that. Like right now I fill out a form and it was to do an ACH spot on my, send this even then it's encrypted email. I'm still like, can I, can you just call me from the office and I'll give you the number information. Yes. But call me and fill in the other part, you know. Yes. See, we're out of mind, right? But imagine Kupuna, 78 years old, not knowing that perhaps that might be an option not to fill that portion out. What are they going to do? I don't know if everybody knows, even if you only put in your account number, you still need the routing number, the routing numbers on the websites, the bank websites. It's like so easy to fill in the rest, you know, so I'm like, give me the routing number, but call me for the account number. You know, still I don't want to fill in as, I want to fill in as least amount. Yes. You know, is the way I feel. Yeah. So just try to keep the message grow simple for the viewers. It's really about just, just protecting your identifiers, your Medicare card number, your social security card number, your driver's license, all of that just keep it close. So to educate yourself, learn, we have our website, smphoi.org, we'll come out, we'll come out to your audience, your family, your groups, you know, we'll do it on Zoom, we'll do it in person, what have you. We're available, we have volunteers, we need more volunteers, we'll train.  It's our now it's something deep down inside the lower stomach that just is just does not feel right. And that's what you need to follow is your gut call us will help you as best we can. And a lot of times families will be really good about summarizing the facts so we're not getting all over the place will just say, could you just email us the facts just tell us when this happened, where did this happen how did this happen and then, you know, let's go from there and and so so far so good right now and we thank our volunteers right now because without them there'd be no smp anywhere. And what's one of your, one of the ones that a call that you took in at it ended up being started out being kind of like, you know, just like here, but then eventually it blew into something big. What's, what's one exactly. Okay, well it's not healthcare related but it could have been because it would have probably impacted their resources for health plans but bottom line is I got a call. You know, fairly older gentleman who was calling on behalf of his parents from another island I won't see which island, and he was calling, and he was rather calm for being shaken up by the news that his parents got an email that said that their account at such and such bank was being compromised and about 88 other account holders of the bank were in the same situation so okay that to me was a flag like. Not a lot, but enough. Okay, that was number one parents were under the ether they panic they said oh okay they were told take $90,000 out wire it to Hong Kong. The bank said it was a secured entity and a lot of the other account holders were in the process of doing the same thing. Okay, so now more ether are under this cloud they're like okay we got to get it done got to get it done. Boom, 90,000 is gone. Okay, so something happened. Parents thought, what just happened, we better call our kids right so the sun calls me calls us and says I don't know where to go I called police, I need help. I'm getting the run around from the banks blah blah blah blah blah. So we got a hold of the banks got hold of the police we got you know I again talk to the investigators. Again, this is not healthcare, but we'll do our best as we can, and then leave it to this process to take, take its place. And a couple weeks later, the son called and emailed me as well and said that they were able to work through the case. And the investigators on that island said that in the five weeks they were doing multiple fraud cases this one moved so quickly, because the time was being honored and everyone worked together. And he credited SMP for like just, you know, working with the family, you know, and being the facilitator. They got, they're getting a check from the FBI, according to the sun. No scam here with about $85,000 back. Oh, wow. Good. Yeah. Yeah. So we're down to the end. Let's just kind of review the prevent detect. Yes. So we will be, we will underscore the need to educate continue to bring out this message that it's important to understand that not all errors are intentional. But with all the rampant scams and the different types of scams, technological, everything else, email, text, be really careful. What looks legit is probably not because if you didn't initiate it. How did they find you, right? Look, look at, look at the links that you're getting emails be really skeptical skeptical about offers that look pretty good or investments scammers will work very quickly. I wouldn't click on anything that is foreign. I wouldn't click on anything that flatters you too much. You know, you are one of only 1100. I mean, what, and a lot of these checks look so good, like, I'll just cash this in 3,820. I mean, it looks so good. And it's just enough, right. What's the harm, big harm, don't do it. And if our tellers are doing their job, they're going to stop you and say, anti, this looks like a scam. I just talked to my bank manager. So it does take a whole state a whole community right Raylene it's not just one household so don't ever feel alone don't ever feel like oh my gosh my mom just got scammed shame I don't like call call just contact us will do our best. Timing is everything like, like I said, again, we're a volunteer program so to the extent that we have qualified volunteers and train them on and on. This is the success of our program so we want to continue for another 25 years. We need everybody's help we need everybody to fight and and protect this place that's so precious this place called Hawaii there's no place like this on earth and I've lived elsewhere. These volunteers are for real. We're trying to make short impact and lasting difference. And you talk about money, there's nothing more raw and necessary and critical than money, but more importantly, your legacy. It doesn't get any better than this as some people way to volunteer for a program like this is it's like a movement it doesn't feel like just a program. So we want to thank all of our partners out there, our volunteers, our families who are patient with us and all of those that call in and and ask for help. We're nearing the end of our time. So I want to thank you Norma for coming on to the show today. I think in a couple of weeks or next week we have your other division the ship ship people. That will be the other part of a segment that we're doing on, particularly for aging in place kind of things, more than just aging in place because scams can be from a teenager on up it's they have no they're not discriminatory on age. I know my niece got one and with her bank account and now I have to laugh at that because she only had like a dollar and why'd you open the account with a dollar. My submit a lot. I'm like you're gonna count for a dollar. So, so it takes. And scammers will go low, you know. But the bank caught it actually the bank caught it. So they close the account. Right on. Thank you. I want to thank you very much. My pleasure. I'm very informative. And so again to people if you want to want to learn a little bit more they can do presentations in your office or with your family, they can do that. And also they can also tell you a little bit more about volunteering and, and even just volunteering you're going to learn a lot more about the SMP, and even just the detection. And what you need to know so being a volunteer you're going to learn a lot when you do the volunteer. And it's, and it's very rewarding to make sure that we protect each other. So, thank you everyone for joining us for another edition of Auto Insider. Again, Norma, thank you very much for being on the show. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.


In this discussion, we will discuss the discussion question of describe the difference between an account receivable and note receivable. When considering an account receivable and notes receivable, it may be best first to define the accounts receivable and how the accounts receivable would be gotten on the books, what's the journal entry to record a typical accounts receivable, it being the one that is probably most common and then compare and contrast the note receivable to it. So the accounts receivable is something that's going to be an asset, a current asset, it gets on the books, it's recorded due to something that happened in the past, a prior transaction, typically a sale. We have a sale of goods or services and we record the accounts receivable as part of that if the sale was made on accounts, in other words, we made the sale. We didn't collect cash, we're going to collect cash in the future, that's what the accounts receivable represents. So the journal entry then would be, if we made a sale on accounts, we would debit accounts receivable, increase in the asset account, credit revenue, that revenue could be called revenue, it could be called income, it could be called sales if it's a sale of goods or it could be called fees earned if it's a sale of services. If we do sell goods just at the same point in time under a perpetual system, we would also typically debit cost of goods sold and inventory, credit inventory, which would record the reduction of inventory and the related cost expense of the goods we sold. That's how the accounts receivable would be on the books, then the accounts receivable then is an asset, it's not cash, it's representing a kind of intangible type of asset, a claim to something in the future, typically a claim to future revenue, I mean future cash that we're going to receive at some point in the future. We already recorded the revenue at the point in time we recorded the receivable when we earned it and then when we get the revenue, and then when we get the cash, the journal entry would be a debit to cash and a credit to accounts receivable, reduce in the accounts receivable. So that's the accounts receivable, what's the difference between it and notes receivable? The note receivable will typically be there if we're talking about something that has a couple characteristics, one, if it's a larger dollar amount, two, if it has a longer term of payment, like the accounts receivables usually around 30 days, if we have a longer term of payment we might want to have a note receivable rather than an accounts receivable, and three, we may want to charge interest on this. Now of course they're all related, so I mean if we have a larger dollar amount we probably want to charge interest on it, if we have a longer term than 30 days we probably want to charge interest on it. And if we are charging interest and it's longer than 30 days and the dollar amount is larger, we probably want some formal documentation which typically often happens with a note receivable, meaning we have a written promise oftentimes to pay listing out what the principal will be, what the interest will be on it, what the terms of the note are in that documentation. So the difference between a note receivable one is usually it's in writing rather than a verbal agreement, usually the terms are longer, usually we're going to be charging interest on it, and so those are going to be some of the differences for it. In terms of recording the note receivable it's still going to be an asset, but and it may still be a current asset and most of the notes receivable we will be working with will still be current assets, that being because they're going to be due within a year, less than a year still. But the term is usually longer than the accounts receivable. So note that the difference is not that the accounts receivable is a current asset and the notes receivable is a non-current asset. That's not necessarily the difference, that might be a difference between a particular note receivable and accounts receivable. Usually there is a difference between the term, but it may not be a full year, so that is not the distinguishing factor. The term is usually longer, maybe 60 to 90 days rather than 30 days, and usually we have the interest on it. So it's going to be on the books as an asset. It's not going to be tracked in the same subsidiary ledger as the accounts receivable, which is going to be a list of accounts by customer that will support the accounts receivable account, the number in the accounts receivable The notes receivable, we may break out a separate note receivable on you have a different account for each note receivable and then be recording the interest on some other ledger or we could put them all into one account notes receivable and have a similar supporting documentation as the subsidiary ledger for accounts receivable, noting both the customers that owe us for the note receivable as well as the interest calculation on the notes receivable. The journal entry to record notes receivable could be very same or very similar to pretty much the same as accounts receivable except replacing notes receivable for accounts receivable if we made a sale on account for a note rather than accounts receivable. So if we got informal notes when we made the sale because possibly the dollar amount was larger, possibly we wanted to charge interest on it, possibly the terms were longer, we would debit rather than accounts receivable, notes receivable, credit sales, revenue, income, or fees earned whatever we call the revenue account and then we debit costs to get sold in credit inventory if we sell inventory on a perpetual method. So that would be how the notes receivable gets on the books. Now it is possible as well to convert an accounts receivable to a notes receivable meaning if the accounts receivable became non-due if it took over the term of the account receivable over typically 30 days to collect then we may say okay now we want formal documentation on this and that would be an agreement for us to have with the customer to try to assure payment in the future, getting a promissory note, converting it from a receivable of an account receivable to a note receivable, the journal entry being simple, debiting note receivable, increasing that asset, crediting accounts receivable, decreasing that asset. It's also possible to go the other way. It's also possible that if the note was dishonored and we didn't get paid within the time period we would still want to track who owes us the money and we would have to take it out of notes receivable possibly and put it into accounts receivable so that we could still track it in the subsidiary ledger and record the fact that the term of the note is over meaning to do that we would debit accounts receivable, credit note receivable for the principal and then credit any interest earned on the notes receivable, converting it back to the accounts receivable so that we can still track it in the subsidiary ledger and still try to take collection action on it.


Today on The Spruce Eats, mac and cheese, cheesier than ever. Whether you've had a good day, bad day, or anywhere in between, mac and cheese never, ever disappoints. It's elementary. You want to know what makes mac and cheese, mac and cheese? Today, I'm going to let you know. This is the type of foundational cooking we are talking about at The Spruce Eats. Hey everybody, I'm Kisha Harris, an editor here at The Spruce Eats, and today we are going in on mac and cheese. We're going to start with the all-american cheddar noodles in the oven. Then we're going to do a burger mac and cheese with a jarred tomato sauce and beef. And finally, we're going to end with a stovetop mac and cheese with broccoli and cheddar. We're going to start with the all-american cheddar. And where does it all begin? It begins with the pasta. To this pot of water, I'm going to add salt. And when it starts to come up to a boil, I don't want you to do anything until you taste it. You must taste it.  That's what it should taste like. The next part of mac and cheese. Stay with me. Cheese! Cheese! We need cheese. We need copious amounts of cheese. It's easy to buy the shredded cheese. But you know what? The thing that they have to do in order to make that cheese last on the shelf is put in some stabilizers so it doesn't clump. And while that's fine for us, for maybe something else, for this luscious mac and cheese where there's such simple ingredients and very few ingredients, you want to do the cheese grating yourself. I personally am not doing cheese grating because, you know, I use these muscles for other things. Oh, fine! Just in time. Yes. Look at those. So can you grate that cheese? The cheese of it? Yeah, you can grate all of it. Why not? Come on. I want to see what's coming. Yes. Here's the thing. You can use cheddar here. But this is when you want to get your cheese feels all up in it. Okay? We can do pepper jack. We could do moderate jack. We could do cheddar. Gruyere. Gouda. Because gouda is what? Gouda. Gouda. You're okay, right? Whatever. Bye, Lauren. Bye, Lauren's arms. So this process is going to cook for about five to six minutes. But I would encourage you to keep checking, keep tasting, and wait for it to be al dente. So we don't have much time. Let's pull this sauce together really quickly. All cheese the sauces start with. Bechamel, which is a roux that starts with flour and butter. So I have put two tablespoons of butter into this pan, and I'm going to wait for the bubbles to go down. You do not want to start building this roux while the butter is still releasing its liquid, okay? We're going to wait for that film to go down. And we're not trying to brown. We're just trying to melt that butter. Don't be directed by your food. Let the food be directed by you. So if you get to this moment and you're feeling a little harried and things are all over the place, don't be afraid to take the pot off of the flame. Put it to the side until you're ready to start tending to it. Now I'm ready. The bubbles have gone away, right? I'm going to take equal parts flour to fat. And when you slowly incorporate it, that wasn't slow enough, but you'll see it kind of comes together. And it smells so nutty. This is the very beginnings of what roux is. When you think about creole cooking and Cajun cooking, when they make roux, really the skill of a chef, of a Cajun chef is based on how well they can make a roux. A light roux, a dark roux, whatever. But this one, we just need this. Okay, great. Now what we're going to do is we have a half a cup of whole milk. I'm going to slowly add that in. You want to dump it at once. You don't want to change the temperature too quickly. And I'm going to turn down my heat a little bit. Now it looks a little clumpy, but you just keep going. I want to make sure I don't have any clumps, and I want to get it to the right consistency. Now it feels like if you've ever made pudding at home, this is kind of the stage where it's starting to get that consistency. It's called nape, which means that if you can put something in it, and you can draw your finger through the middle and it doesn't close back up, that's where we want. So great. Now I'm here. I'm going to take it off of the heat. I'm going to add in some paprika, and I'm also going to add in some black pepper, and I'm going to add in a pinch of salt. I'm going to get that all incorporated. I'm not going to put it back on the heat, because it doesn't need to be back on the heat. I should be putting in the cheese right away, but we have to make sure to check on this pasta, right? You have to always work on your timing. If you want success in the kitchen, you have to kind of think backwards about, hmm, perfect, exactly where you want it to be. I'm going to drain the pasta. We're going to take that cheese that Lauren grated. We'll save some of it for the top, and just the heat from that sauce is what's going to melt the cheese. So the reason why you put a little bit in at a time is because we don't want to bring the pan's temperature down, and we don't want to bring the contents temperature down too much. Now this is where it becomes mac and cheese. That looks so much better than when I used the packaged cheese. All right, we've got the luscious, luscious cheese sauce, and let me tell you the difference of grating your own cheese versus packaged, you can see it. And let's see. I'm sure you can taste it too. Yes, yes. Perfect amount of salt. We're going to add in the noodles, and we're going to lusciously and lovingly get everything coated. I have a buttered dish. Same butter that you use, unsalted butter. And, you know, be liberal with it. We want the little brown little edges if we could get those. See, the great thing about this mac and cheese is that this is really a mac and cheese for maybe four people or one after a bad day. But you could double it and put it into a bigger casserole. I'm using a small one right now. If it's a bad day, put more cheese on. Put more cheese, it's okay. And then to gild the lily even more, this is the gildedest lily you're ever going to eat. We have some cubed butter. We're just going to drop those on there.  Kiddos. This is going to go into the oven and wait till it comes out. Mac and cheese. It's elementary. We are moving on to burger, mac and cheese. Yes, you heard that correctly. Burger and mac and cheese together. Dream! So, let's begin. I've got water boiling, salted water, ready for our pasta. It's getting hot. I am going to take these two tablespoons of olive oil. Add it to the pot. So it starts with some onion. One rib of celery. And celery is an interesting ingredient. You don't really think about it. You think about it in a mirepoix. You think about it again in this trinity that is the foundation of a lot of creole cooking like gumbo and inti fave. But celery is like a secret salt. It's that secret kind of ingredient that you really don't really know that you need until you need it. And we also have a half of a medium green bell pepper. Cooking, cooking, yum, yum, delish, delish. So with the other one, we started with a traditional kind of bechamel. This one, you know, we want, if you think about a cheeseburger, you know, I like onion on it. Some people put the bell pepper in there and then you need a little ketchup. Ketchup is our tomato sauce. So, it's not a traditional mac and cheese, but this is going to give you all of what you need. All right. My water's coming to a boil. I'm going to add my pasta because I want it to be ready when I'm ready.  Make sure that it's not sticking. Here we go. We've got the trinity in here. All of the notes. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm in my grandmother's kitchen. Okay. She's making hot side cheese. She's making sweet potato pies. All of the things. Okay. Salt, pepper. Next thing, I'm going to use some tomato paste. And this is going to help thicken. And I just want to cook it out a little bit. Most tomato paste live in a can or a tube. It has a little bit of a metallic taste to it. You want to cook that out. And now we're going to continue to season this sofrito. I'm going to add four cloves of garlic. Or five or six or seven or eight. I mean, no vampires in my house. We're going to put the beef in there and it's going to start to give off its fat and add its flavor and all of that stuff. And it's going to help to pull up the fond on the bottom. I don't necessarily cook the meat all the way through. I want the meat to start to break apart so that when it incorporates with the pasta that it's just a very even mouth feel. Like I don't have big pieces of beef in there. I want to have kind of a very nice saucy, saucy sauce. And again, we want to season. Season, season, season. And keep in mind when you're using jarred stuff, canned stuff that has its own salt level. So I don't need to season this too much. I just need to season it to actually bring the flavor out. You could use an arrabbiata. You could use a roasted garlic. You could even use an Alfredo sauce if you wanted to. I mean, why not? It's mac and cheese. It's your mac and cheese. Do your own thing. And listen, you might be asking, why don't you just make the pasta ahead and let it sit? No bueno that. You know, as soon as it comes out of the pot, it is ready for flavor. It's hot. It's ready to take in all that sauce and everything that you kind of labored over a little bit. It's ready to take in all those flavors. And I want to do that. I don't want it to be cold and say, no, son, I don't want you. I want it to say, oh, bathe me. Bring me together. Okay. So I'm going to put in 32 ounce jar of your favorite sauce right now. We are going to bring this up to a boil. And you see, look at the consistency. No big pieces of meat. We're going to let that simmer, maybe for about 10 minutes, five to 10 minutes. And in that time, I'm going to taste this pasta. Perfect. Perfect. The sauce is done. The pasta is done. We're ready to rock. Love that consistency. Love the smell of that. And remember, all ways taste. We're going to taste this for salt. Mmm. Oh. All right. In goes our pasta. Noodles are saying, thank you. They had a long hard boil. They jumped in the sauna. They jumped in the meat sauna. They said yes. They're asking for a glass of red wine right now. Sorry. We don't have it. I think that anything that's made in a casserole dish is a casserole. You know, macaroni is a category. And I think a casserole is a technique. So macaroni cooked in a casserole dish is a tech category. Okay. We're going to do half of it. I'm going to smooth it out a little bit. Okay. So we're going to take this, be as liberal when you want to make sure it's even, so that when we cut into this bad boy, you get cheese in the middle. You get cheese on top. Then, we take the rest of our burger mac. Yes! Yes! So this is almost like a little lasagna. Okay. Final two cups of cheese. And here it is, your burger mac and cheese, ready for the oven. And for our last trick here at The Spirits Eats, we have stovetop mac and cheese. So simple. One of the box mac and cheese is great. But guess what? You can do it yourself in one pot, in no time. And guess what? We've added frozen broccoli from your freezer. So you get all of that green mac and cheese feel together in one. It's going to be magical. Let's get started. The frozen broccoli. Listen, we just don't want to throw it into the situation. We actually want it to be incorporated easily. We don't want big hunks of broccoli. So what I suggest is that you defrost it and you roughly chop it. It doesn't have to be fine pieces. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it just needs to be chopped. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the colander where I'm going to strain the pasta and I'm going to put it into the bottom of the colander. Pasta is ready. Al dente. Here we go. Now what we're going to do is this hot water is going to go over that cold broccoli, just warming it up. And now we're going to get the sauce together. We're going to start our roux again. Two tablespoons of butter. All the liquid is coming out of the butter. Now we are ready for the equal parts of flour. That's two tablespoons. Take your time with the roux. And listen, if you mess up, start again. It's only two tablespoons of flour, two tablespoons of butter. Just get it right. And take your time. It is a one pot meal, but you don't have to rush through it, right? Okay. Look at this gorgeous roux. It's beautiful. It's gray color. I'm going to take the mustard powder. We love mustard. Or if you've had grain mustard, those mustard seeds, ground down is mustard powder.  I think it's great.  And I'm just going to get it incorporated real quick. No biggie. Here is our roux. Here's our seasoned roux. We're adding two cups of whole milk. And we want to get it incorporated. We just don't want to pour it all in. Get in those corners, guys. And I love this recipe because when you come home from a long day of work as a food editor and you really don't feel like cooking, this will take care of you. This will hug you back. This will tell you it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. So look, you see the steam coming up off of this beautiful milk facial? You do not want to boil this. You don't want to burn the bottom of it. That milk will easily burn to the pan. So you just wanted to come up just before a simmer. Perfect. We're here. I'm going to turn the flame off. You could also remove it from the heat source if you need to. But now this is just hot enough for us to add the star, which is the cheese. Okay? I'm not going to put it all in there. I'm going back to the whisk again because I really want to start to whisk those two things together. And you can see it, like the color of the cheese. You can see the texture change a little bit. Now this, look how smooth and gorgeous that is. Yes. I'm going to put the rest of the cheese in there. So that first mac and cheese that we baked, the sauce was a little bit more firm. It was a little bit more tight. But this one is much more loose. And this is what we want. We want to pour this into a bowl and put our face into it. And now all we have to do is taste it. Mm-hmm. Proceed it in. Ooh. I'm going to add a little bit more salt and pepper. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Here comes our pasta and broccoli. Broccoli, this is when you call everybody. Come on, y'all. I'm not playing. It's hot. Y'all want to enjoy half a foot? Let's go. That's when you do that. Yes. Look, and you see what I'm saying? See how loose that is? We did it, guys. We have three amazing mac and cheeses. We have the classic baked mac and cheese. Yum. We have a burger mac and cheese. A yum. And finally, we have our stovetop mac and cheese with broccoli and cheddar. Davunila. All right, let's start at the beginning, the classic baked macaroni and cheese. First of all, you want to take in the smells, the coloring on top, the cheese, the pasta, the little crispy bits that are sticking out. That's what we are looking for. Now, depending on how much you like somebody is how big a slice they get, because they might not be coming back for seconds because there might not be seconds. That beautifully cooked pasta is just sitting there glistening with butter and cheese and goodness. Then, we have little crispy bits on top that just add to the moment. Just add to the moment. And then, you go in. Oh. Oh. Mm-hmm. Two steps. Let's get it. Are we done? Because I need to go and eat this. Oh, we have more. Okay, great. All right, hold on. One more. Now, let's move on to this burger mac and cheese. Yes, burger mac and cheese. See, it looks like a lasagna. It's giving you the lasagna feels. But once we dig in, whole other ball game. All right, I'm going for the corner. Oops. Wait a second. Like a little pool of noodles and meat and cheese and a little love, right? That trinity that's in there so you get all the smells. Like it's like meatloaf and in a casserole with baccaroni. Yum. Let's get into that. Oh. Mm. And write some people over on Sunday. Come over. I'm making a couple of things. Making mac and cheese. Word? Word. Come on over. Mm. Mm. Mm. But wait. There's more. Our stovetop poppy right here. Stovetop mac and cheese. Didn't come out of a box. Well, the pasta came out of a box. But you made this lovely little thing right here. Here we go. Right into a little bowl just as much or as little as you want. I like to use a spoon with this because it just says spoon. Don't say fork. It says smooth edges. Oh. Mm-hmm. Mm. I love this. And I love how that mustard powder comes out in there. And I would just take a little bit and more pepper. Little pepper. Mm. Well, not broccoli. It just says it's okay. I'll take care of it. Mm. Guys, we did it. Three macaroni and cheeses. Faked American mac and cheese. Burger mac and cheese. Stovetop mac and cheese. So these are some of my favorite mac and cheeses. What are some of yours? Let us know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe to The Spruce Eat.


Hello my people, my name is Meacham, welcome to the SCORE channel. The first chapter of why Peruvian education sucks focused strictly on public education, but I can't give private schools a free pass. Oh no. Private schools in Peru are part of the problem, and it would be a huge mistake to ignore the role they play in Peruvian education. So how much of a role do they play? Our first chart shows the percentage of high schoolers enrolled in both public and private schools. Both bars will add up to 100, so what you're seeing right now is what it would look like if every country had a 50-50 split. Half their students in public school, half their students in private school. Let's put these bars where they belong. I think a splash of color is in order. There we go. The yellow side represents public schools and the blue is for private schools. I guarantee that bar at the top is going to surprise you. Wanna guess where Peru is? I kept most of the countries from the last video, but I've switched a few around just for fun. Starting from the bottom, we have Ireland with just 0.2% of its students attending private schools. Costa Rica at almost 8% is the lowest in Latin America. And if you recall, they're also the biggest spenders on high schoolers in the region. Clearly, there seems to be a trend here. More developed nations have less students in private school. El Salvador is the first to jump up to 16.5%. It's almost the same percentage of viewers who are subscribed to the SCORE channel. Huh. But here's where it gets interesting. Colombia is the first country to go over 20% private, and here's France hanging out at 25% right next to Argentina. And then we arrive at Peru at 26.6%. There are a few countries in the 30s and 40s, but for the most part, it's rare to see a country over 25% privatized. The ones that are go hard into the blue. India is the first country where the majority of students go to private school. And then there's Chile at an incredible 62.2%, but nobody on earth has more private schoolers than the United Kingdom. I told you it was a surprise. So what can we make of this? It's tempting to say that a low percentage of private students equals a better education system. After all, most of the countries on the bottom of this chart are places where you get a good education. But it's more complicated than that. I don't think anybody would argue that the UK system is the worst in the world, and the country considered the best, Finland, has 13% of its students in private school. Generally speaking, if you don't have a lot of people in private school, that probably means your public system is doing such a good job that private schools aren't necessary. In a country like Peru or Guatemala, where the public system is hot garbage, it makes sense that private schools would be welcome. But still, developed countries average a 90-10 split. So what's going on with the UK? Why is Chile so high up on this chart? This chart, published by Pisa, who we'll be talking about more soon, makes an important distinction. There are private schools that are completely independent of the government. Then there are schools that are privately owned and operated, but get most of their funding from the government. Chile is a perfect example of this. Even though 62% of their high schoolers attend private schools, the majority of these private schools are dependent on the government. When the United States overthrew the democratically elected social Salvador Allende and replaced him with the benevolent and loving dictator Augusto Pinochet, neoliberal economic ideas led to massive privatization of education. Similar things happened here with Alberto Fujimori. But what makes Chilean private schools different is that most of them are funded directly by the government. Many have no fees for students while others have very low fees. This is not the case in Peru, which has the highest percentage of independent private schools in Latin America. Virtually none of Peru's private schools get government funding. Instead, all of their money comes directly from the students' families. Now, I previously calculated that Peru spends $853 a year on each of its public high schoolers. So you would expect private schools to charge at least that much, right? They don't. We're going to switch to Peruvian Soul Nace because I like round numbers in this video. It's very much about Peru. We're also going to focus just on schools in Lima for a bit because that's where I was able to find accurate data. Don't worry, rest of Peru, you do get some time in this episode. Each section of this doughnut represents the percentage of private schools in Lima whose monthly tuitions fall into a given price range. This piece, for example, represents the 7% of schools that charge between 600 and 800 soles a month. Many of you watching might think that you belong to the smallest slice here, but you'd be way off. This is the 3% of private schools that charge less than 100 soles a month. I did not even know that was possible. That's less than a third of what Peru gives to its public schoolers. Now, $853 is about 3,400 soles at an exchange rate of around one to four. Private schools typically charge families 10 months out of the year, so 340 soles is the number to beat. The largest slice by far doesn't even come close. This is the 100 to 200 soles bracket, and it represents an astounding 30% of private schools in Lima. Alright, surely the next one will do it. Nope. Darn. If you're keeping track, that's at least 58% of Lima's private schools that charge less than what the Peruvian government gives to its students. We finally eclipse the 400 soles mark with the next chunk, although, of course, some of those are also under 340. The 400 to 1,000 soles range combined for 24% of the total. Finally, we reach the last piece. 24% of private schools in Lima charge more than 1,000 soles a month. Ah, damn it, I said we needed more money into education, not less. The fact that over half of Lima's private schools have less resources than their public counterparts is not promising. But hey, economic conservatives swear that government screws everything up and the private sector is always better than the state, so maybe these schools are just super efficient. Every three years, the Peruvian government performs a standardized test to measure student performance in math and reading. Manuel Marcos published a paper at the San Marcos National University that compared Lima's private school performance to public school performance on this test. Conveniently for me, he broke it down further by looking at how much those private schools charged. He only looked at the math scores, but I think it'll be good enough. As far as the test goes, the Ministry of Education sets three milestones for students' grades. 480 is essentially the bare minimum. If you're down here, I've got some burgers that need flippin'. A score of 575 means you're doing pretty well, you're making good progress. 640 is the satisfactory level. If you're up here, you're where you should be or better. Manuel broke his schools down into five categories. We've got the public schools, which are free, low-cost schools that charge between 50 and 250 soles, mid-level schools charging between 250 and 850, high-cost schools that charge between 850 and 1700, and finally, the elite schools that charge more than 1700 soles a month. Public schools lead off with a score of 609, not bad. That's within the acceptable range. I would expect the low-cost schools would perform worse since they're getting less resources than the public schools do, and lo and behold, that is absolutely correct. With a horrendous score of 554, the average student at one of these schools is way worse off than they would be in a public school. But Manuel's mid-level goes all the way up to 850 soles a month, so you'd think they should be able to top the public sector. Praise yourselves. 608, a single point. There are families in this group providing their school with double the amount the government does, and yet the performance is identical. Next time someone tells you the government is always more inefficient, show them this. But money must be able to have some impact, right? It does, and you'd see it here now that the high-cost schools finally show a return on investment with a score of 649. The elite schools score an incredible 671 points. The maximum on the test is 700. Clearly, these elite schools do get outstanding results. Perhaps the message here is that you need at least 850 soles per student per month to have a good education at Lima. Manuel didn't explain exactly why he divided the schools up in this way, but I think I see a more profound idea in his data. Let's bake a new donut using his numbers instead of mine. Now, instead of looking at the percentage of schools, this time we're looking at the percentage of students who go to schools in each of Manuel's brackets. 47.63% of students go to public schools in Lima, which is just half a point shy of the 48.14% represented by the two lowest groups put together. Combined, these three slices make up 95.77% of all students in Lima. 95.77% is not performing at the level the government would like to see. The point this study makes clear is that just 4.23% of students in Lima get the education they deserve. The rest are stuck paying for an inferior service. Now, to be fair to private schools, they do typically outperform public schools at the secondary level, but even then, their level of achievement on this test isn't outstanding. At best, 29% of students reach the satisfactory marks for a given subject. The vast majority of private schools in Peru suck, but even the ones that are doing a good job are still contributing to a major problem in Peru. Social segregation is hard to measure, but people smarter than me have managed to do it. The Garard Index, also known as the G Index, is one way to measure social segregation in education, and it's the way Javier Murillo from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid chose to do it, so good enough for me. The G Index tells you what percent of a group would have to change schools in order to achieve perfect Thanos-level balance. Let me give you an example. Let's imagine a region with three schools. In one of these schools, there are 12 weebs. None of the other schools have any weebs, so if we want an equal distribution of weebs, we'd need to relocate eight of the original 12. That would be a G Index of 0.66, two thirds of the population. This chart shows us the G Index for secondary schools in urban areas in various regions of Peru. There are two bars for each, one for the lowest 10% of the population and the other for the wealthiest 10%. For comparison's sake, Finland has a G Index of just under 0.3, making it the least segregated school system on record. However, it's also a country with a lot of economic equality in general, so that shouldn't come as a surprise. Before I dive into this chart, I think you should know what it means to be in the bottom 10% or the top 10% in Peru. The bottom 10% of people nationwide earned 164 solos a month in 2016, the most recent year data's available. I don't know how it's even possible to survive on 164 solos a month, but apparently 10% of the population does. On the other hand, the top 10% averages 3129 solos a month per person, which is more than enough for a comfortable life anywhere in the country. I used to live on much less and I was perfectly fine. So how segregated are Peruvian students? Well, turns out we're one of the worst in the world in that regard. I took the five wealthiest urban regions, but I did split out the Lima provinces because they're quite revealing. What you'll notice right away is that there's generally a big gap between the top 10% bar and the bottom 10% bar. In other words, this means the wealthiest people are segregating themselves much more than the poorest people. The exceptions are where wealth is more equally distributed. When there's less of a gap between rich and poor, you tend to see similar G index numbers across the board. That's why Finland's two bars are almost exactly the same. Their poorest people are not that much poorer than their richest people. They're closer together. There's no reason to segregate. Lima's provinces say both the exact opposite and the exact same thing. See, the provinces around Lima are quite poor and we see that the G index only goes up by about three points. In the story, Beowulf, there's a dragon that sits on a horde of gold. That's the top 10%. But in Lima's outskirts, there is no gold. Nobody becomes a dragon. Where there is gold, we see dragons. La Libertad, Hondo Trujillo, has an enormous gap. The poorest people are fairly well distributed, but nearly two out of every three wealthy people is segregated. And similar situations play out across the country, but I really wanna focus on Arquipa and the city of Lima, which have strikingly similar and extremely high numbers. A G index of over 0.5 is considered extremely high and would rank higher than the majority of countries. Rio hasn't studied them all, but Lima and Arquipa would rank much higher than any of the European nations he's examined. But in Peru's urban regions, it's clearly marked. With the G index of 0.5255 and 0.513 over, Arquipa and Lima respectively, these are some of the most divided places on earth. We often say that the wealthy people in Lima live in a bubble, but so do the poor people. And the situation for the top 10% is even more pronounced. At 0.6664 and 6265, you're looking at extreme segregation. For reference, the United States, which used to literally prohibit black people from attending white schools, sits at 0.33 today on this scale. Peru's two most important cities are twice as segregated as the United States is today. What makes this segregation possible? School choice, the freedom to choose where you go to school. When people have the freedom to decide where they want to go to school, they essentially also have the freedom to decide who they will be surrounded by, who their kids will grow up with, who their friends will be, who will influence them. And so naturally, people will typically segregate themselves according to economic lines, but perhaps also due to other lines like religious lines or racial lines. School choice is often praised as a way to bring competition into education and bring up school quality, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. Here in Peru, you seem to have plenty of school choice. There are tons of private schools, but what choice are you making really? The poor have no choice, but to get whatever crappy education they can afford. Meanwhile, the wealthy have some choice, but given the small number of quality schools, it's not much of one. And that's why a lot of these supposedly great private schools are actually terrible for their students and I wouldn't send my hypothetical child to them in a thousand years. Ultimately, there really is no choice. School choice hasn't improved the quality of education in Peru. All it's really done is allow the wealthiest people to hide from the school problem. And even they're not getting the best service that they could possibly be getting. Here's the proof. The program for international student assessment, or PISA, is a great way to look at educational outcomes. It removes national curriculums from the equation and measures everyone with the same stick. I took the average scores from the 2018 PISA test for all the Latin American countries that took it and some of our popular destination countries, along with a couple of top performers, just to show you how far we are from being even remotely competitive internationally. Good news, Peru is not dead last today. Argentina and Brazil actually sit behind Peru, whose score of 401.7 is still remarkably low, 65th in the world to be precise. We see a step up for Costa Rica and Mexico, followed by another jump up for Uruguay to 423.7, and then we arrive at our Latin American leader, Chile, with 437.7. But Chile's success still only puts it in 46th place worldwide. Italy's in 34th. We've got France and the USA right next to each other to around 495 points. We finally break into the 500s with countries like the Netherlands and UK. Ireland is number 12 in the world, which again lends credence to the idea that a well-funded public school system with minimal privatization is probably the best recipe for success. Canada takes 8th place with 516.7 points, but this massive bar here. This one belongs to the students of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Shenzhen. I probably butchered that pronunciation just now, but those are students in mainland China with an absolutely jaw-dropping score of 578.7, they lead the world. If privatization is the answer, these results suggest it's the wrong answer. While there are high-performing countries with lots of private schools like the UK or the Netherlands, those schools are mostly funded and regulated by the government, unlike Peru's. Chile likewise takes a mostly hands-off approach to its private schools, and while their results certainly are better, they invest a lot more into their students, so you'd expect even more performance than what they're actually getting. Peru's public system needs more money so that it can push the private sector to step up its game. The government probably should get more involved in these private schools, funding them directly and regulating them more strictly. Peru's education system needs to be redesigned from the ground up. If only there was someone who understood the problems in education and had the power to make the change we all need.