U.S. Education System

[Drew-san]

I originally posted this on another forum a week or two ago, but I feel there would be a more engaging discussion on it here. I don't really feel like writing a personalized intro for Jref at the moment, so I'll skip to the opening although it doesn't mesh to this. -.- What's wrong with the US education system? Teachers.

It seems to be unpopular in today's world to blame teachers, but I think it's safe to assume in a setting like this I won't get any flak. I've been out of school for almost a year and four months now, so the disdain for some of my teachers is still fresh. Not all teachers are to blame of course; we do have our good teachers. A lot of teachers put the blame on funding as a cop out, but between 1981 and 2007, [inflation adjusted] spending went from $5,639 to $10,041. It nearly doubled, yet student performance (backed by their test scores) did not.
Rather than look at the money we're providing the teachers let's look at the teachers we're providing the schools. Students in Singapore, Finland, South Korea, and Japan test at the highest level in the world. 100% of their teachers come from the top 1/3 of their graduating classes. They're compensated based on performance (motivated) and talented. Conversely in the United States, only 23% of schoolteachers come from the top 1/3 of their classes. This number sinks even lower (14%) when in a school where most of the students are below the poverty line.

Choosing to pursue a career as an educator is rarely looked at with any real intent when looking at the top students in the states. We're taking scholars from the bottom of the pack and sending them to educate the youth while in other industrialized nations they are sending their best. Why choose a field with such limited growth? On a study of 900 students in the United States graduating from top tier colleges stated they never considered becoming teachers. This is a big problem in America's education system.

Another one of the big problems (and perhaps the biggest) are the unions. On February 24th, The American Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers' union in the United States, issued a new proposal. If a teacher is performing unsatisfactorily they have a year to improve or they will be fired in 100 days. So you can collect your pay check for 465 days before you have to worry about losing your job. Remember that other union that led to the collapse of their own field (hint: vroom vroom)? These unions have government officials under their thumbs. Former chancellor of Washington D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee, proposed getting rid of tenure. Which would lead to the firing of bad teachers making more money than everyone else and the good teachers left could be paid more. A recent study shows teachers don't improve after 5 years on the job. The system she proposed would have gotten those remaining teachers $5,000 dollars a year, but the teachers doing the most outstanding of work could have earned up to $115,000 annually.

Private sector employees perform badly and they're held accountable, and can lose their job. In the public sector it's excruciatingly hard to fire poor workers. Only 20% of American 8th graders can read at their grade level or above and exiting high school only 40% can read above that same 8th grade level or above (and the CIA says we as a country have a 99% literacy rate. Ridiculous). Shoddy numbers like this have been going on too long. If led by the public sector these teachers would have been held accountable and replaced with someone who could effectively perform their job. A quote by a blogger who helped inspire this post and from whom I have gotten a lot of information:
"You can point the finger at Wall St., corporations and hundreds of other private industries, but you’d still be missing the point: We can choose not to engage with the private sector. If I don’t like the way a company does business, I can choose not to do business with them.
If I don’t like the way you’re performing with my tax dollars, I can’t stop paying taxes. That means public sector employees are overprotected. That’s a problem." In charter schools their teachers are not part of unions and their students outperform public schools by a wide margin and these schools are given the same amount of funding.

"In America, a student drops out of high school (on average) every 26 seconds. These students are eight times as likely to go to prison than a high school graduate. They are 50% less likely to vote. They are 65% more likely to need social welfare. They won’t be eligible for 91% of jobs in the United States. They will earn less than 42% of what a high school graduate will, and less than 31% than that of a college graduate."
Comments, ideas, etc.?

[Nuala]

My experience in high school was a negative one. It really pains me to say that. I hear that you're supposed to look back fondly on your teenage years as a time of little responsibility and good times with friends. That couldn't have been further from the truth for me. A term that defined my interactions with my peers can be noted by an undeserved term I was frequently taunted with, that being "Columbine Shooter". The term is a reference to the Columbine school shooting in which 13 people were killed. Being called that repeatedly made me snap in a sense. I became despondent after awhile and refused to return to school during October 2006, first semester of my senior year in high school.

I was called it in front of school staff. They did nothing about it. I didn't report it to them, was not going to be a "rat". Needless to say, the school system perpetuates bullying and even more than that. The school was still as ignorant as ever even after they were informed I had signed myself into a hospital. The hospital threatened to sue them if they didn't provide home schooling for me, which was interesting because my grades drastically improved after being removed from the public school system. I guess that I wasn't overreacting to the treatment I received at the school considering how far the hospital went to help me.

[Half-n-Half]

Very nice post Drew-san but if I may make one suggestion, please cite all your statistics; it makes your case that much stronger.

In my opinion the job market for teachers should be one of the most competitive out there, on par with doctors. If only the best and brightest are allowed to treat our sick and wounded why don't we have the same standard for those people educating our future? Naturally the pay would have to increase to reflect that competitiveness and that extra funding would probably come as a burden to tax payers.

[Drew-san]

You're right, I will do that next time. xD They shouldn't be too hard to find through a quick google search, but as I'm too lazy to back track I'll leave that up to anyone who wants to verify or challenge my post. In the future I'll refrain from posting statistics without citing the sources in the actual post as well.

[FrustratedDave]

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[Hezam]

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LMAO
Smart girl !

[MTR]

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She said: "I personally believe that US americans are unable to do so.. because a.. some a people out there in our nation don't have maps and i believe that our ad. ducation like such an south africa and Iraq everywhere like such as and i belive that they should a.. our education over here in the US should help the Us South africa or should help Iraq and help asian and other countries so that we will be able to build our future."

[Emoni]

Public education in the US = Some of the world in the modern

University education in the US (if you gots za bucks) = Some of the best in the modern world

I was home schooled due to the public schools in my area being so horrid both in regards to the quality of education as well as lack of safety. Prior to graduate school, I taught for a year as a substitute teacher at the very schools I would have gone to... Damn, did my parents ever make the right choice to do home schooling instead of public schooling. I won't even begin to describe how awful it was or the things I saw, as it would take up the entire thread.

[Mycernius]

A friend of mine married an american some years ago. She had a duaghter from a previous marriage and whilst they lived in the UK she went to a local school up at wakefield for about a term.
When they moved to the US the daughter was skiiped up a grade because of what she had done at the Wakefield school. This did surprise me because I would have thought that only doing one term wouldn't impart that much knowledge. Anyway I saw my friend a few years later. He wasn't that impressed with the US education system. It seemed that on the return to the US schools the daughter was now being held back a grade. My friends comment on the US system is that the public schools are turning out people who have only basic english and maths skills and the teachers really don't give much of a shite about the students. Whether this is endemic to the whole of the US or just in North Carolina I am not sure. What he did say is that if you want your child to have a dcent education then you would be better off in the private sector.
I find it odd that the US seems to have such a bad education system for its children yet its universities like Harvard, and Yale are in the top universities in the world.

[Pachipro]

"America's Biggest Teacher and Principal Scandal Unfolds in Atlanta"

This is probably going on in every school district in the country in one form of another. You can't really blame the teachers for the poor performance of the students as, if they have uneducated parents and/or parents who don't give a damn, how are they supposed to do homework and get the studying help and tutoring they need after classes?

The fact is the US is way behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to Science and Math and they spend more per student than any other country. When you have parents who don't care or are too busy working two jobs to make ends meet and not educated enough themselves, students who care more about how they look than their grades, and teachers who are under the gun to improve grades and test scores or risk being fired or the school losing funding, there will be scandals like erasing wrong answers and inserting the correct ones by teachers and administrators. The US education system is a disgrace to the modern world and putting the blame solely on the teachers only leads to abuses like this major scandal which is only the tip of the iceberg I believe.

[JimmySeal]

@Drew-san
If you want better teachers, make it more lucrative to be a teacher. Japan pays its teachers like kingpins once they pass the grueling certification process.

A large part of the high test scores in Japan, Korea and other countries is thanks to the cram school system (which you haven't mentioned at all), not the public education system. I've seen some second-rate education in Japan, and a lot of students don't even have a concept of homework when it comes to actual school.
So if you're going to complain about the US education system by comparing it to Japan and Korea, complain about the US' lack of cram schools, because that's a large factor. However, I think the whole cram school/entrance exam system is a disgrace that robs children of their childhood years, even if it does raise their test scores a little.

100% of their teachers come from the top 1/3 of their graduating classes.

This statistic looks really bogus to me. I would like to see a citation on this one.

[clascoutx]

...entry students should learn to talk first, then read. language was
designed for memory not writing. paper, pens, print are recent
inventions compared to the age of language. the sound approach
to language is the sound approach. it's also the multi-lingual path
into world idioms. throwing books at children is asking them
to run before they can walk. the true vehicle of tongues is air,
and it costs nothing(so far).