Stephan:
Largely I think because the nurturing of the charter education system, and the trend to privatize what had once been public education, and because of the increasing pressure by religious and special interst political groups, American public education, once a beacon to the world, has been systematically degraded.
The result? The world Top 20 Project “An international project to monitor and rank over 200 nation’s education systems for student development for ages of 3 to 25…." has compiled the rankings, based on data from six international educational monitoring organizations. These organizations include – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council (UNESOC), The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS).”
[i] So how does America rank? Very poorly. We rank 20
th.
The Pew Research Center vouchsafes these findings, reporting, “One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out 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.”
[ii]
Why do American children do so badly on these evaluations? Is it the dedication of the teachers? Teaching is not a job one does casually. It takes a certain profile to want and to be able to spend all one’s waking hours, day after day, year after year, in a room full of children. So consider the recent wave of teacher strikes. Why were they striking? If you followed the states where these strikes were occurring you realized that these men and women were turning out by the tens of thousands, not so much about salary as about the children under their care and the conditions under which they were forced to teach.
But there is more, and this report spells it out.
[i] 2017 World Best Education Systems – 1st Quarter Report. May 5, 2017.
https://worldtop20.org/2017-world-best-education-systems-1st-quarter-report. Accessed: 8 June 2018.
[ii] Desilver D. U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries. Pew Research Center. 15 February 2017.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/. Accessed: 8 June 2018.
As a retired teacher and teacher educator, I don’t disagree with the points made concerning smaller classes, teacher aides, better teacher pay, etc. even though all of these are teacher oriented. It always amazes me that so little attention is given to the real needs of students. Here is a short quote from a chapter in a textbook that I wrote some years ago that I think is just as relevant or more so today.
“[I]t appears that about 25% of the students who enter school will drop-out before graduation. Drop-outs are students who vote with their feet. They choose to get out of an environment that they perceive as negative. Of the remaining 75% who finish high school, about 50% go on to college. Of those that go to college, about 50% graduate. Thus, a college preparatory curriculum only meets the needs of about 20% of the public school population.” https://davidcenter.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Ch2_Ecology.PDF
The problem with the public schools goes far beyond monetary considerations. Among other negatives, it has a one size fits all curriculum and a generally repressive approach to administration. My wife and I had two different students from Europe (Germany, Hungary) live with us and attend the high school where my wife taught. Both of them were puzzled by the repressive atmosphere in the H.S., which had a very good reputation. One of them asked me, “why do you run your schools like prison camps?” One of my sons went to high school in Germany for a while and was impressed enough with how they operated that he said that if he could he’d stay and complete H.S. there and this was in a city that had been part of the former communist east Germany.
My oldest son who also went to this same H.S. was in rebellion against it his entire H.S. career. The principal said he was not up to meeting their high academic standards, which I knew not to be the problem but the principal was unmovable in his opinion. The son graduated with a C average but had such high test scores that he was recruited by a prestigious university. He subsequently did a double UG degree in engineering, was offered graduate support from the universities engineering, mathematics and physics programs. He subsequ3ently did a masters in engineering and then went to medical school and became a radiation oncologist. This kid was a prime candidate to be a high school dropout and very well might have been had he not been in a family that knew what the problem really was and was able to moderate its effects.
That same son now has two sons of his own and he has never let them attend public schools and says that they never will.
Amazing, enlightening story! Here in NC there is increased legislative push to fund charter schools through vouchers which takes away funding for public schools. Do you think public education is a failed system that needs to be replaced by some sort of private system? What did your son do for his children?