Education in the United States has in the recent years undergone a change from the old adages of reading, writing and arithmetic to scientific studies by scholastic academics on the best scientific methods of educating America’s pupils in an almost production line corporate style. Teachers and administrators are now going out on strike when they think that their pay is too low or for other grievances that their union organization NEA (the National Education Association) points out for them to oppose. These teachers strikes are also mirrored by similar student strikes which are becoming increasingly frequent, notably occurring on Novermber 15th, 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley, where upwards of 20,000 are said to have participated to protest tuition hikes and corporate style teaching methods by the teachers. The education system, however, is ranked at a score of “average” on an international scale and is in need of overhaul. (AFP, 2012) This may not be particulary easy, however, in an education system that is literred with complexities that make change a difficult thing to achieve. The modern American education system is in need of radical action in order to reinvent itself to performance at standards that it has committed itself to in order to get test scores back on track.
The American education system is in need of radical change in order to be able to perform at a high level that it was once able to. However, is politics getting in the way of changing the way things are done? The main teachers union, the NEA, has in recent times become a very powerful political organization that carries a lot of political weight when they unite behind a political candidate of their choosing. Many politicians cater to their demands because of the political clout that they can unleash either for or against a politician that happens to be running for office. The school administrators are also now more or less political figures themselves. They can sometimes command large amounts of dollars for their salary which may greatly influence the way that they may run a school district according to who may give the largest amount of school funding to their district. Statistics also show that even though these districts are receiving more money from the government and also the private sectors than ever before the students’ test scores do not reflect the monetary resources being placed into producing high test scores, with test scores falling to their lowest average ever in 2011. (Mcintyre, 2011) These scores are particularly low in the low income school districts which also happen to receive the least amount of federal funding. This has contributed to a problem in which the students of low income schools are harnessed in their educational abilities from an early start and are a detriment to national test scores. More must be done to help them in particular if test scores and education levels are to be raised throughout the country.
There is currently much effort being placed on trying to get test scores up to an acceptable level, particularly in the schools of the inner city. These schools are where America’s trouble youth habitually reside and there is great poverty and crime associated with the neighborhoods that feed into the schools. The students that live in these areas are not intellectually inferior to their suburban counterparts, but a culture has develop that has led them to believe that they are. A lifetime of social programming that they are not as intelligent as their White Anglo Saxon Protestant WASP counterpart has been reinforced into them from childhood. These inner city students are usually made up from minority families who themselves have grown up thinking of their inferiority, and have passed on this fallacy to their offspring. More and more these inner city students are no longer made up of minority populations, but also from white Americans. The failing economy from the previous years has affected all aspects of society and has caused many non-minority families to move back into more affordable housing, some of this housing is located in the inner city. It is common knowledge that schools in inner cities are not funded nearly as well as those more affluent communities which effects the learning ability of students who, at times, do not have the basic materials of which to work with. For this reason, minority students tend to suffer in education. Erroneous findings from pseudo academics tend to point at scholastic results being in favor of non-minority students because of the superior culture of these students. Many of these individuals are incorporating their own prejudices into these findings and tend to look down at the culture of other ethnic groups or minorities. With test scores that do not take into account the low funding of these communities schools, much blame is put on these communities for bringing down the education system as a whole. (Reeves, 1998) The American educational system was considered to be one of the best in the world, but now ranks as a mid tier educational program internationally. Is it the fault of teachers, however, for failing to even be ready to teach students? According to the Former Secretary of Education, William Bennett, only 20% of teachers are endowed with a degree in an academic subject. (Bennett, 2008) This brings to light whether we can trust our current teacher force to be able to teach students to acceptable levels. With that few majoring in academic subjects, the answer may be no. The previous statistic is in no way helping our students perform at a high level, and is another reason we are scoring so poorly on tests.
The education system is in need of an overhaul if we are to change test scores and once again become competitive on the world stage. A way that this can be accomplished may be to overhaul the testing system to begin with. Perhaps the tests could stop focusing so much on language arts, reading, and math, and include things such as science and social studies so that these areas of the day are not seen as dead space. Additionally, it may be a good idea to have the teachers teaching these subjects to be able to pass highly on the tests themselves before they an educate others on the subjects themselves. Whatever needs to be done, the test scores being so low in a country that is supposed to be the greatest on Earth is a shame and needs to be fixed. This starts with the teachers whos job it is ultimately to teach the stuents, but hurdles must be cleared before any real progress is made and that may take time, time that the students do not have with every passing year.
In conclusion, there are still teachers and administrators that believe that they are at their best when they are doing what they love the most, which is teaching and educating. Despite the numerous flaws in the educational system it can still be worked with in order to achieve educational balance between what teachers teach and what students score on their test. Even though the education of the American student may be in bad shape right now, with the right policy changes it can be helped. At this time, though, there are variables which need to be addressed before fixing it, such as political issues, funding issues, and education equity issues. If education is to be revived, it must develop a new strategy. We must educate our students, but be careful not to make habitual test takers out of them lest we forget why they are there: to be educated. It is time for new policy to address the issue and it is time to change the way we think about education in America.