Focus on class     SOME US parents are sad that their high school children score badly in math , science and reading compared to kids in other countries.    There has been an endless series of mostly fruitless education reforms to address this gap ( ).    Now comes an approach based on the insights  of a group of US exchange students. They spent a year in some of the most successful high schools in the world -in Finland, Poland and South Korea.    Author and journalist Amanda Ripley followed three exchange students for her new book, The Smartest Kids in the World - and How They Got That Way. She argues that to improve academics, US schools should de-emphasize sports.    Instead, students should bring their passion and intensity  to academics , she concludes.    "High school in Finland, Korea and Poland had a purpose, just like high school football practice in America," she writes. "There was a big , important contest at the end, and the score counted."   Sports are a distraction  ,Ripley argues, and most countries require them to take place outside of school.    Trading in US school sports culture would be a huge change for people in the US , who respect teamwork and sportsmanship as training for life.    But playing down sports could pay off, as it has elsewhere, if we redirect money , focus and glory to learning.    Ripley is critical  of memorization in South Korean education, but she praises the system's high goals and the free-dom its students have to fail and recover through hard work.    Too often , we don't ask teachers to give our kids harder assignments  -and we're quick to complain about a failing grade. What's working elsewhere is to set ambitious  goals for kids ,and then allow them to discover that they have it within themselves to reclaim  success from failure.   Each of the countries in Smartest Kids came to education reform after an economic crisis  . Finland was losing jobs after graduating just 10 percent of its teens from high school in the 1950s. Today , the graduation rate is 95 percent . Poland's wakeup came in 1999, as students consistently tested below average in reading.    We've tried so many "reforms" in education. Maybe what we need is a truly radical  shift away from sports in favor of schooling. Which of the following statements about education in South Korea is True according to the article?
High academic scores are considered an important measure of education quality in South Korea. The memorization skills of South Korean students are the keys to their academic success. South Korean teachers emphasize teamwork and sportsmanship as much as American teachers do. South Korea started education reforms in the 1950s to improve students' reading skills.