In 2009, Shanghai participated for the first time in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the tri-annual survey of the world's school systems.

And when Shanghai's teenagers proved their math, science, and reading were much better than their peers in the United States, Germany, and Japan, the world was shocked and awed.

Here, much more so than the 2008 Beijing Olympics or Shanghai's skyscrapers or China's double-digit growth, was proof positive that the future belonged to China.A tour of any Shanghai junior high school offers an easy explanation as to why Shanghai placed first on the PISA.

They may be crammed and overcrowded, but the halls are clean and tidy, classrooms packed with attentive and focused students, and meeting rooms filled with university-educated and highly-motivated teachers trading notes on how to better design their 45-minute lesson.

The incentives to succeed bind the school together, and guide it. Teachers are paid about 10,000 yuan a month ($1,640), which makes them solidly middle-class in Shanghai.

In their PISA performance, Shanghai's students show "a high level of resilience," which is to Why Asian schools succeed

That's in large part because the Shanghai government is committed to leaving no child behind: It funds all schools equally, partners high-performing schools with low-performing ones and offers fast-track promotions to administrators who can turn around bad schools.

In one Shanghai junior high school I visited, teachers stayed after school to tutor failing students -- and the head teacher there honored those teachers in school assemblies.

But these teachers can drive Audis if their students do well enough on tests: Yes, administrators can give teachers bonuses, but the real money is in grateful parents and moonlighting at for-profit cram schools (after school tutoring programs).

And the head that honored teachers who tutored failing kids told me that in her experience, the best indicator of a student's school performance is his/her socio-economic background. She said the tutoring of poor kids is just a bandage, a way to get them through the system and not have them drag the school downsay that poor students do better than expected.After Shanghai children leave school at 4 p.m., they go on to cram school and do homework until bedtime. In stark contrast, when Finnish children leave school at noon, they just go play for the whole day.

That Finnish students do almost as well as their Shanghai peers on PISA suggest that long school days, cram schools, and homework are not really about helping students learn -- it's more about pleasing anxious, demanding, and hyper-competitive parents.

Of course, there's a rising tide of Chinese parents who care more about their child's well-being than his or her test score.

And these wealthy and well-educated parents who understand the costs and sacrifices of Shanghai's PISA victory are emigrating abroad or opting for new private Western-style schools that have sprung up in major Chinese cities.

That's bad news for Chinese education reform because those who are in the best position to make a stand are instead voting with their feet.