Make America(n) (Education) Great Again
30 Days of Writing: Day 3
Sometimes I have a tough time rationalizing the decisions being made in education at the state and national level. Individuals, some with little to no background in education, are making decisions that affect all of the children and teachers in this country. The best part: most of these individuals do not send their own children to the public school systems they claim to be fixing.
Some of my colleagues and I have a saying about policies, changes, and the way things should be done: “That sounds too much like right.” It seems that the obvious, correct solution for the way things should be done gets pushed aside as we try other ideas.
Our country has a strong sense of nationality. We believe, right or wrong, that we are the greatest country in the world. Yet with education, we know this isn’t the case. Students score lower in math, reading, and science that students in many countries in the world.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this study from the Pew Research Center.
“The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38thout of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.”
Ouch. That puts us in the middle of the pack. That would be average, or a C for those of us in the education world.
Why is this the case?
- Lack of funding?
- A cultural problem?
- An issue with curriculum?
- An issue with implementation?
Now that we’ve identified the problem, why don’t we look at options to fix it.
To me, the first step seems obvious. Find countries that are doing better than us and see what they are doing differently.
To do this we have to accept the fact that we are not the best and that we have issues that need to be fixed.
This should not be difficult. There are 23 countries above we can use as an example. Singapore tops the list. Why not start there?
Once we have an idea of what countries are doing differently, we can pick of few of these ideas and test them in our public school system. We can even set up some schools to be the test schools before things are implemented on a larger scale.
I’m sure there will be a lot of things that will not work. Cultural differences, funding, push-back from parents, or poor implementation could kill some of these ideas while they are being tested.
For example, year round schools. I understand that switching to a year-round school system would be more beneficial to student learning and retention of information. You spend 9–10 months teaching students, only to have them leave for two months and practice nothing they have learned. This leads to a review session at the beginning of the year to get students re familiarized with concepts they have already learned and should know.
I understand all of this perfectly. I agree with the idea. However, as a current teacher, I would hate switching to the year round system. I know the breaks would be split into smaller chunks and would be distributed throughout the year. I understand I would get the same amount of time off.
I would still hate it. I’m sure I’m not alone. However, it is something that we should move to in the not so distant future.
While there will be plenty of ideas that will inevitably fail, other things will work. We will find new and better ways to teach the youth of our country. We can prepare students to be “global citizens,” as one article mention earlier puts it. We can become competitive again on a global level.
We can make American Education great again.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and read my post. I’m currently 3 days into a 30 day writing challenge. I’m also finishing up the school year as a teacher, working on a final for a graduate class, finishing up the spring track season, and finally, getting ready to start summer graduate classes next week. All while trying to churn out two posts a week on my own site. I couldn’t have picked a better time to start a 30 day challenge.
Enough woe is me for the day. Thanks again for reading.
Now it’s your turn. What can we do to make American education great again? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
- This post was originally published in Teaching in Trump’s America
Join the March For Public Education on July 22, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/254445494966564/.
