Action Steps for All Americans
Chapter 5
Education on the fall in the US
“Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends”-Benjamin Desraeli
I was watching CNN this morning and a story jumped out at me that really caught my attention. It was a prefect sag way into this chapter because I believe education problems in this country is hurting us as much as anything right now. The story was about President Obama kicking around some possible legislation of American children going for longer days of school (9 hours) and having possibly shorter summers. President Obama has said, “America must drastically improve student achievement to regain lost international standing in education. “The future belongs to the nation that best educates it’s citizens, said Obama.” The fact is that there are many continents that are outpacing this country in education in Math and Science skills.
President Obama proclaimed some vital statistics that on average our youth goes to school least days then other industrial nations (160 -170 days ). Obama and the government have stated that in Europe many attend 200 days of school and in Asia as many as 220 days. There are even some states because of school budgets that are lobbying for some school districts to only have students go to 4 days of school a week. This in my opinion would be a problem greatly for the United States because the facts are that we are already being out performed by other countries as it is. Here in the United States, many of the test scores continue to drop under how they are performing in the other two continents. Some of this people attribute to there being many good hard working teachers, but then also many teachers that are greatly underperforming in some of our schools in many ways.
It is the United States students that are paying the price for school districts that are weak and then having teachers not as dedicated to their profession. After some research, it also appears that in many states there are some very powerful teachers unions that may protect teachers to much and slowed down some progress. Meaning that some are given tenure and it is very hard to fire teachers that under perform. There are many people who are greatly against teachers getting tenured in school districts because after all there are not a lot of professions out there were a person can be promised of their job year to year.
The reason the story on our school kids not going to school long enough, stated that we have children that go to not as many days of school is because of an archaic law. In the earlier part of the 20th century this law kept kids home more in America in the old days. The reason was that kids were expected to stay home because they needed to help the family on the farm during the summer months. Well it is safe to say that since farming in this country has been on the decline many are not staying home to tend to the farm. To be exact it is only expected that about 2% of the students might be helping on the farms in the United States anymore. Many are now playing basketball on the county courts or fishing or playing Wii or vacationing. It has come to a point where many will now be going back to school longer, and in the longer run it will benefit our younger students.
We have a tremendous amount of brilliant scholars in this country who might easily be able to gain knowledge with 160 days of school. We all know those kinds of kids because we all went to school with kids that just found school very easy. We also have some stupendous Institutions of Higher Learning in this country that is full of hard working students. Many students are just born extremely smart and always will be because it is inherited or because school just comes more easy to them. But for a vast majority of our society, our youths need education and need to have their thoughts and minds fostered. They are going to have to work with dedicated teachers and or thought provoking people to better learn science and math and history. As a student myself, of course I would not have been in favor of having an extra three weeks of schooling. That would have cut into my four to five weeks of summer I used to spend with my family down at the Jersey shore. But we are at a time where the old laws may need to be reversed and have kids more cracking the books.
But the fact is in many ways our education endeavors have deeply fallen behind our competing countries and longer days in school may have to occur. To get back to our prominence in education, we have to become a smarter nation and this may help many of our troubled youth. With school and activities after school it could help many to do more productive things and stay out of trouble. Many children would get used to the longer days because many get home and are bored anyway. Plus most important for our countries future better educated students will help our country achieve a great deal more.
This chapter is going to look into where the state of our education is and what needs to be done to get us where we need to be. The plain fact is that the last fifty years we have seen our education get weaker and some high schools seems to resemble the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High at times. Some of high schools appear to be more of a place for kids to meet a girl or guy and plan the next part instead of being there to learn. Many students look at school more as a time to try drugs and party as much as they can and try and get passing grades. Also with many families having two working parents, the nine hour school day could be a blessing for many parents. A lot of the mothers or fathers are not home during the day in this time and age to take care of youths anymore, like they did in the sixties and seventies. Many parents in this tougher economy are also having themselves, to work longer hours to survive and put food on the table.
Recently I read a story by Christine Lagorio of the Associates Press and was able gain much insight from it. She talked about the state of our education system compared to the other industrialized nations and it came out in 2005 and how we were ninth in education for students age 25 to 34 years of age. So it is not just our younger children that are not getting as educated but also people in college and students going for their masters. Ninth in the world, means that many other countries are working harder than we are and are looking to better further their futures. School graduations at this level of education are rising overseas while ours continue to decline in the United States was mentioned in this article. Our desire for furthering our education is shrinking while these other nations are greatly rising. We must do all we can do to get better teachers and more students that want to be the best so they too can be to have a brighter future.
We rank seventh in the world for college students that hold college degrees and it will be imperative that we get back to the top. That does not stand out and seem that bad but the sad thing is we probably have more colleges and ways to get students loans, but are not taking enough advantage of it. With that access of a lot of schools and grants one would surmise we would be at the top of the educational chart and at one time we were. Only twenty years ago we were at the top of list at Number 1 with college students getting degrees and have fallen off that mark. That quickly we have dropped in education and the United States cannot settle for mediocrity when it comes to education. We will pay a horrible price of not becoming more advanced in the sciences and technology and the arts for our future in this country.
A recent 20/20 program further looked into our decline and it really changed the way I looked at our education system in our country. They issued test with students in Belgium and then gave the same questions and test to American students in New Jersey. The students were of high school age and they wanted to see where our students would test compared to Belgium students. New Jersey has many good schools but the high school students tested a great deal lower than the students in Belgium. The reason many of the teachers and students in Belgium said that they test better was because school for them is a lot more fun and education is not looked at as something boring. Many of the high schools are very demanding and the teachers in many of the schools are top notch. They also have a very free society where they are able to easily choose whether they can go to charter schools, public schools, private schools or catholic schools. Meaning that all these schools have to be competitive to keep up with one another with the best teachers or students will not go to their schools.
You can do this in the United States but many have to attend the high schools or the elementary schools that are in their zip code areas. That takes away the competitive element though of having to go to the school in your area and not having a choice. Some of our high schools are wonderful but in many areas many of them are not. The schools in Belgium are more competitive because the kids can go to any of them and if the schools do not perform then they go out of business. I truly believe in the United States instead of pumping money into deadbeat schools with tax money, the competition of the schools would be so much better. Teachers would know, just like the job market, that they have to work hard or their jobs would no longer be there. Studies show that about 57% of the parents in this country give their schools an A- to B+ rating but that is because it appears that way. The truth though is that we are underperforming in many of these schools compared to the education that students get in some other competing countries..
In some poorer nations like Russia, Czechoslovia, and Poland some of students are even testing higher on achievement tests than our students. Many of our school districts are saying that they need more money to become better but in reality many of these continents work with a lot less money than we have in our school districts. Many of the schools overseas have some better teachers and are a lot more innovative and we have what it takes to turn the tide and change this. Now I also know that we also have some wonderful teachers in some of our schools so my intentions are not to belittle all our schools because that would not be fair. But the fact is that many of our schools are underachieving and we know the ones that are around our areas that are.
This program on education stated that many of the public schools in some areas are just mediocre and when some of the students go to charter public schools that changes. It changes because the charter schools have different regulations and expectations and in places like Belgium if teachers do not perform well, they can be let go. In many of our public schools the program addressed that teachers are protected by some of their school union groups with tenure. Many great teachers can be honored with tenure and still remain great teachers but the problem is some just kind of coast in their jobs and that then effects perform in our schools.
So to keep our economy robust and a nation of more intelligent and bright people, we are somewhat losing a battle. Also that same year in 2005, international test were delivered in Europe, Asia, and the United States to 15 year old students. The United States showed that compared to our peers overseas we came in below average with math skills applying to daily tasks. The countries mentioned in the article finishing above the US, were Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan and once again Belgium. This study is somewhat depressing because of the money that we pump into our school districts nationwide we are giving a lot. So after much of the information I garnered from these article it will be the responsibility of the students and their teachers to work harder at what they are doing.
We all are paying taxes and a lot of money to get the best teachers, computers, and the right school materials and text books, but we are not finishing ahead. If it were me, some of our educators should go to one of these countries like Belgium and spend several months learning from them. They are doing the right thing and looking at what they are doing right. We spend on average $11,152 per student in the United States and that is second in the world. So we are throwing money at the issue but not getting a kind return for our investment. Many world continents are improving in education and we are slipping and it is really effecting us in many ways. As a country we spend more on education per student then all of the G8 nations, but we are lagging behind these other developed nations in math and reading skills. This is a major factor that if not corrected will help us continue to lose our edge against our powerful nations and we cannot let this happen.
Once again it goes back to the fact that our President may have to put children into school longer to help us get our edge back. In many situations it is not always the teachers to blame either. Many of the students in their classrooms misbehave and do not have a lot of respect for other elders and this can be blamed on the parents at home. Lets face it, that if we raise our children to respect us, they will respect their teachers. Talk to our own parents and their parents and they will tell you when they were in class it was more disciplined and they did more of what they were told to do. The students went to school and learned and if they strayed the other way they had a father they had to deal with on the home front. In to many of our classrooms today there is to much talking and messing around and not enough learning.
I read another fabulous article recently from a Dr. Frank G. Splitt called America’s Failing Education System. Mr. Splitts is a member of The Drake Group(TDG) and is a former McCormick Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University. So indeed Dr. Splitt is a very educated man and probably respected by many of his peers. The article talked about how President Obama and our Education Secretary Arne Duncan have set a huge goal of bringing educational excellence back to America. I am very delighted that two important educational and intelligent figures have stepped up to say that this has to be done to make us great again. This article mentions that this can happen by implementing higher educational standards and that with the help of the American Recovery and Reinvestments Act, it puts laws in place to help all American students strive to be better. So it does appear that there are people out there working towards change but there needs to be more of this.
We need this to occur quickly in 2010 and there after, to prepare more students for college and help more students graduate from our high schools and colleges. College is such a time for the mind to sore and wisdom to grow and must be more important than partying or playing sports. Part of college is the partying and always will be but we must put more of a demand on education so the next generation will take our country to new heights. There are many people that have thought that we have lost our edge because high schools and colleges are focusing much or more on sports than education. After all these sports teams help to bring a great deal of money in to these schools and help make them more popular Universities at the college level. Popularity is big because students have a huge choice of where they want to go to school.
A more recent report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEPA) report has stated that US high-school students haven’t achieved any significant gains in reading and math skills for nearly four decades. Once again it does appear that we as a nation may have gotten a little complacent in our desire to educate ourselves. For too many years we believed we were doing many of the right things with our students, but indeed the things being taught became obsolete. There are many superb teachers across this great country and also many hard working students. The problem is though that there are far too many students that are interested in hanging with friends or causing mischief in our society. This could be a lack of discipline in their lives or from what they watch on television where they believe it is the appropriate way to act. These are the kind of students you see get off the bus with no back pack that is full of books or homework assignments over their shoulders. They are just going to school because the law says they have to.
Many school districts are failing themselves in that they hire inexperienced teachers and are not worried too much about the curriculum that they have for the districts students. Many have to put a lot more effort into their teacher plans and weekly assignments. We all know the teachers in our schools that loved teaching and loved working with students and the ones that really did not care. This has gone on for a while now and we are paying the steep price of some neglect in our schools over the past many years. Neglect against the very thing that nobody can take away from an individual and that is intelligence. The NAEP has particularly pointed out that high school reform in this country is way overdue. We cannot just continue to say there are problems with some of our schools districts but we need to go out there today and make the necessary changes right now.
Many companies and colleges have been saying for along time that to many students are easily earning diplomas in this country. There have even been stories I read about that said in one school the teacher was actually giving the students answers to test to make themselves appear to be a better teacher. They are earning these diplomas but many do not have the skills or knowledge to righteously have a degree from that high school. A diploma from a high school or college should be an enormous honor instead of being a worthless piece of paper. We must get to a point where the prerequisites of a diploma must be met or a student is not privy to have one. We cannot have people entering the work place not being as smart as they should be to have that job. One of the biggest fears our own President Obama feels is that our future could be very bleak with companies having substandard workers in many situations.
Even going back to when I was in high school many school districts had curriculums that were weak in two important areas-math and science. Other countries in Asia are kicking our tails in these areas and this parallels why our productivity is shrinking and we are in a debt, like we have not seen in our storied history. This is seen when a student comes over from Asia and from other parts of Europe to our schools that many of them are more advanced in education. Many of the Asians it is a fact attend our Universities and find that our curriculums are quite easy. They will have a distinct advantage with getting better jobs like accounting positions and financial positions if this trend continues in our own country.
The NAEP and many others believe we have fallen behind because we accept that our programs are status quo or having gotten stale in our teaching methods. Many political opponents or school district administrators need to now step up and make changes. Maybe it was because feet might get stepped on or there might have been no political advantage to the person in administration to make a change. Well we are at a huge time in our history where we the school district taxpayers must also speak up. This is a time where we need to get more involved with our own school districts and attend school district meetings so we are comfortable that our students are being trained properly. Even though many of us have jobs and not a lot of time, get out there and get more involved in what schools are teaching and speak up if a certain teacher is not performing. We pay the taxes and without this tax money the schools do not survive and there are also many other things that we do to help finance schools with our tax dollars.
I know because I have an eight year old and a six year old and it is my civic duty to attend meetings and be more involved. If there are things that I feel are not being taught to them I have a responsibility to talk with the teacher about it. Many books and articles have been written over the years about how countries fail and many would think a weak military or troubled political government is the cause. It is probably part of it but many do not realize a country with a weakened educational system is tops because without educated individuals the nation will not survive
A report in 1983 came out called the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) report. This report felt that in the United States there was a lot of corruption, greed, incompetence and deceit in many school districts that hurt change being made to our educational system. Our very education is one of the most important things we have and cannot continue that we get weaker. Much of want went on in 1983 probably goes on today. We get extremely upset and in an uproar over things like identity theft but have accepted the corruption in some of our school districts as being normal. We have become a society that has accepted average or mediocrity and this is showing in our student’s marks on an international level. We have our pride and one of the more important things we have to beat is our competitors in is education and we know this. We have to become a country that is willing to make education well above things like athletes and other things.
We are so at battle to have today with health care reform and there is no doubt there are necessary changes needed in this area. This will be discussed as another important area that this country needs to get better in as well. But a reform of our education system, one would hope would be looked at with the same reverence as health care reform. There are just as many laws that need to be enacted in our educational system as in health care system that will allow us gain greatness again. Our kids and the future of this great nation are counting on this. To many reports have come out as of late to back the fact that we are not performing in many of our high schools and colleges that we sho