Do you think the U.S. will be able to attain high educational achievement?

bigmeat78

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With the new Common Core Standards that 45 of the states have adopted, the United States is trying to raise the bar among school age children in order to compete in a more globalized economy. The United States falls in the middle of the pack when assessed against other foreign countries. Finland along with other Asian countries rank at the top of the pack, and have done so for the past decade. Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, the Asians place more emphasis on education than Americans, and Finland regards education (teachers in general) on par with doctors and lawyers. Thus, enabling a more sound educational system that is able to rise to the occasion. But with the gap between the rich and poor, not to mention race playing a contributing factor to a possible lag in the United States' educational system, along with high stakes testing (which is controversial in itself), does anyone think 10-15 years down the road the United States will be ranked as one of the top five or three countries that provide one of the best educational opportunities for its children?

Anyone from other countries who would like to give their insight will be of much help. What are your countries doing that work and don't work? What can we Americans learn from those that may benefit us?
 

meningreentights

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The United States spends more money on public education than many other nations. There is enough blame to go around. You can point to the educational system, the students, and the parents. If I had done what these kids do today, I would have been terrified to go home. The school system here loses teachers in droves, and fails miserably in meeting state requirements. There comes a time when parents need to accept responsibility for their kids, and be a parent. We have women go up to the schools, and threaten the teachers if they fail kids. After seeing some of the parents in action, it is easy to understand why their kids are so horrible. Maybe a large contributing factor is social decay.
 

bigmeat78

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Thank you for your input. It was very insightful. I do agree with you, too. I think we live in an age of entitlement, where everyone gets a trophy even just for showing up. I believe education is like a machine, where if one part of the machine stops working the whole machine crashes. You brought up the aspect of the parents. Parents are an integral part of the this educational machine. In order for the system to work, you have to have competency on all levels from the administration, teachers, parents, students, and even the community working together to benefit the welfare of the children. The bigger question is how to we solve these things. Apparently, throwing more money into our system isn't the solution since we spend the most per pupil despite meager results. Yes, there is social decay, but other countries are also very Westernized and listen to the same music, TV shows, watch the same movies, play the same video games that our kids enjoy, but yet, some of those kids perform at a higher level. Do teaching strategies need to be changed, higher teacher salaries to be administered so we can keep the successful teachers from leaving in droves like you had stated, tougher standards, or less governmental regulation to allow teachers the freedom to teach? All of these questions have been debated time and time again. I just wonder what other countries have found to be successful.
 

lovinglife

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American children are not motivated to learn in most cases. Ask any teacher and you will hear that the main problem in school is that students simply don't do any work. If we force students to use 2-3 hours after school to study, you would probably see a tremendous increase in grades (assuming you forced them to study). The problem is, this interferes with social activities and after school sports and no parent will ever sign off on that.

Money isn't the problem. Most of the time teachers aren't the problem. Student focus on studying is the problem. Parents not caring about their children at school is part of the problem too. Curriculum also is part of the problem, as standard classes have dropped the bar very low so that students are able to pass the class (good job no child left behind).

Educators are trying tons of things to get students to do better. Right now, "flipped classrooms" are a focus of study. Instead of lectures in class, the student watches the lecture at home in 15 minute segments. Class time is used for individual help, "homework", or learning activities based on the out of class lecture. The goal being that class time is used to understand the lecture through practice, with the teacher present to help.
 

manju

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I think part of the problem is that there just aren't many qualified public school teachers in the US to teach advanced subjects. It's a relatively poor paying profession that most educated with advanced degrees would eschew for more lucrative tech jobs elsewhere. We just have fewer quality teachers that can teach beyond the 3R's anymore.

The brain drain and exodus of academically talented people out of primary school teaching from the top down has been constant for the last 4 decades and we wonder why we have kids who don't stack up to those in other countries? I don't think US kids in general are any dumber or less motivated than any other country's.
 
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bigmeat78

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You raise a good point. I've read that in Finland teachers are highly qualified. The profession is also looked upon with high-esteem such as doctors and lawyers in this country. I alluded earlier about education being a machine, and teachers are part of the mechanism to run a well oiled machine.

Thank you, Steel Ranger for providing that article. It redeems my faith in education in this country when the voters decided to fund the libraries instead of jails. Many people don't realize that libraries service a large part of the population, especially the poor who don't have access to computers. In addition, libraries offer services beyond just checking out books to read for leisure. Maybe that commissioner should realize that the more educated a society becomes, the less jails you'll have to build for criminals.
 

TOP9X7

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I think all of the above comments have merit and point to the problems education is facing in this country. We don't value and compensate teachers so many who are excellently qualified go into other fields. Parents can be remiss in taking a pro-active position in their children's education. Funding for vital programs like the arts and sports falls short and suffers from cuts. The cost of a college education is a major deterrent leaving graduates with tremendous debt.

Do any of you believe that some of this may be intentional? A dumber populace is easier to control and manipulate. Less education is one more thing which lessens the middle class and causes a greater divide between the haves and have-not. Is this the reason the Koch brothers are funding colleges and even attempted to buy the U. of Florida to control the curriculum?

The Tea Party membership benefits from a less educated and informed populace. It's a big part of having people vote against their own self interests.
 

bigmeat78

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Excellent point. A less educated population will have to depend on the government for more assistance leading to more control. I'm not a conspiracy wacko, but point A does lead to point B when you look at it under those circumstances. But doesn't the government realize, and I read this somewhere, that if the United States had Finland's PISA score (the international ranking test) our GDP would be raised by one to two trillion a year.
 

lovinglife

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I think people are over-blaming teachers by a huge amount. How do you teach kids that don't want to learn with parents that don't care? What exactly can a teacher do? At best, the very greatest teacher might inspire a couple kids out of 30. Which does help, but that still leaves 27 or 28 kids that don't care.
 

manju

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As long as the US can draw from the world's educated elite who are schooled better in their respective country, speak English better than most Americans, and want to come to the US to work in our tech dependent industries, and fill and keep all our grad schools in business why would there be any incentive to invest anything in public education in this country?