America 's Education System Has Been A Concern For Many People

America used to thrive on its education system and that is why it became one of the greatest nations in the world. Education is the backbone of our country, and we must give high priority to improve its current condition. Unfortunately, in the past couple of decades, the education system has been regressing. It has been on the decline and not as effective. The quality of education in a country has an influence on GDP growth, social cohesion and social well being in general. In order to improve the quality of education in the U.S., the following must be taken into consideration: the structure of our education system must be reanalyzed, we must compare and contrast our education system to systems of other countries with higher rankings, and finally, there must be a solution.

Many people know that the U.S. does not rank very high in education. You hear about how they are always trying to improve education, but they still fall short of where they strive to be. In Anu Partanen’s “Finland’s School Success, What Americans Keep Ignoring” she addresses this issue. She points out what Americans are doing wrong, what Finland is doing right, and how the U.S. can improve the education system in many ways.

America is a country that currently spends more money on public education per student than any other nation in the world; nevertheless, these good intensions have achieved only slight positive outcomes. For instance, in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), an authoritative test used to measure the education levels of students from 53 countries, American students ranked 12th in reading, 17th in science, and 26th in math. No doubt, a question like this one has been argued for decades “ what exactly is happening in foreign countries that allows them to out-pass America in terms of academics?” The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way is an illuminating book by Amanda

The American education system has been transforming since the founding of the country in 1776. For most of the beginning of the country’s life, education was reserved for those who could afford to send their children to England to get a proper education. When education systems started to form in America, it was still a majority of white males from wealth that were the only students.

In an intelligence-based economy, education is important to national prosperity and individual success. Huge achievement gaps and opportunities must shrink to non-existence, and every student must receive a well education that prepares them for college and careers in the world as it is today. Comparing the United States education system to other countries shows that the United States scored lower than nineteen other counties and education systems in reading in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment. Germany and Poland in particular are two countries that have now surpassed the United States. During the same study, scores showed that twenty-nine nations outperformed the United States by a large amount in mathematics, and in science, there have been twenty-two education systems that scored higher than the United States (Heitin).

In the United States, literacy rate for both female and male sits at 99 per cent. This percentage translates into Americans having the ability to read and write and to use basic numeracy. However, over the past years the United States,in comparison to other developed nations has been constantly ranked in the bottom tier for low educational attainment. According to Pearson- the world’s leading learning company-, United States ranks fourteenth out of forty countries in the category of “cognitive skills and educational attainment”. This decline is sadly portrayed through the “32 million adults in the U.S. [that] can not read, [which is] 14 percent of the population...[as well as the] 19 percent of high school graduates who can not read”. Moreover, the rising inability of American students to compete in the global job market is yet another indicator of the growing failure of US education system. There is little emphasis on learning foreign languages or in understanding the relations and operations of other countries. This void in the international job market is now being filled with students from South Korea, Poland, United Kingdom, and Finland. In order for the United States to start effectively competing in the international job market, the spotlight should shift away from the ‘liberal arts versus technical universities’ debate or from the concerns over the debt students accrue whilst attending universities. Indeed, these are problems that need to be fixed but these problems

The United States is often referred to as the best country in the world in many areas. It may be, but far from it in education. Out of a total of thirty-four countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, it ranks just fourteenth in reading, seventeenth in science and twenty-fifth in math (Walker). Despite America's status as a country, America's education is failing because of the large emphasis on standardized education, and the flaws of the students, parents, and teachers. How to fix the education system remains to be a problem.

The United States used to be ranked higher amongst other countries when came to education. People came from all over the world to study here. Unfortunately, for the past years it have been ranked in the twenties amongst other countries based on standardized testing. Now its time to revamp our education system, but the question is where we should we look. Based on student performance, the only countries that have proven that most components of their system works is Finland and Korea; Finland being ranked one and Korea ranked two. In order for the U.S. education system to move in a positive direction we must make significant changes in the structure of our system. First we need to raise the qualifications for becoming a teacher because in some states you don’t even have to attend and educational school; all you have to do is pass a test. Secondly, we need to expand the time of school so that teachers have more time to teach the kids and the students can have more interaction with the teachers. Although this is where we need to look, we don’t need to adopt their entire system.

The United States spends more money on education each year than any other country in the world, yet the education system is not thriving. Three decades ago, America was the leader in the quality of high school diplomas, yet, students in the U.S. rate 31st in math literacy and 23rd in science in comparison to the rest of the world. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York) The country that is famous for being the most advanced and innovative country in the world is yielding a generation that is falling behind in the global education race. Public K-12 education is worsening simultaneously with the growing competitiveness of universities. Part of the problem is that teachers are not being paid sufficiently, and many find themselves being laid off. College is getting exponentially more expensive each year. These are only a couple of the issues that the american education system faces today, but the list carries on.

Nowadays the United States is not known for their educational system. Countries like South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have surpassed the United States buy large margins, in terms of educational success. While other countries are constantly revolutionising their education system, the United States’ education system has not changed in decades, leaving the U.S. unsuccessful. The U.S. continues to fall behind these same countries that are thriving. Due to the fact that the U.S. education system not developing as time went on, leaving them now with a multitude of flaws. The gap between the educated and non-educated, along with the length of how long students are in elementary and high school, are two consequential problems in the United States’ educational system that need to be addressed.

America: the land of freedom and innovation. For upwards of two hundred years, America has impressed the world with the courage of her people, her ideas, her ingenuity, and her tenacity. Her very name is synonymous with the dream of freedom and the idea that one can make something of oneself regardless of beginning social status if only one works hard. America gives her working citizens, overall, an amazing quality of life compared to most of the world. However, she has her problems: political unrest, social justice issues, issues defining the Constitution, school shootings, police brutality, and many more concerning issues. Some purport that many of America's problems could be solved with education. However, that in and of itself is a problem. America's educational system is corrupt and not her own. It is an age

In the march of 2009, President Obama lauds Korea for education. “Our children –listen to this—our children spend over a month less in school than children in Korea every year,” Obama said. “That’s no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy.” (Web) In the 2001, my parents decided to abroad me and my brother to USA, not because they think US education is better, but they do not see future in the Korea education. Korean education is cramming method of teaching, and US education is discovery method of teaching. I had been experience both education system, and both has cons and pros. Korean education system based a relative evaluation, though US education system based on absolute evaluation. I think US education system is better, because US system emphasis on level overall educational standard, nevertheless Korean education system emphasis on drafting the best student.

Finland is a country with a well known reputation for excellent education. Finland is ranked twelfth in the world for education, whereas the United States of America is ranked fifteenth (Iceland is number one). (Human Development indices) Finland also has the highest PISA scores in the world. (Human Development Indices) The U.S. used to be the top, but now we are slowly falling behind. Perhaps the U.S. should examine the Finnish education system and use some of its ideas to revamp our system.

For this course, I examined the history and current model of the successful Korean educational system looking for lesson that could be applied to the American system. Data was presented showing that the Korean system excels in international achievement tests, (Pearson, 2014), secondary and tertiary graduation rates (OECD, 2013a, 2013b), and that while both countries struggle with socio-economic achievement gaps, that Korea was able to effectively educate students from low socio-economic status (SES) families to a national standard (Akiba et al., 2007; Byun & Kim, 2010; Ladd, 2012). The data showed that while Korea is not the best in the world at educating the richest 10%, that award goes to Australia and New Zealand (Ladd, 2012), they

Martti Hellström stated, “Like the leader of an orchestra. I try to get the best out of each and every person in our school.”(Salberg, 2013, p.36). Martti Hellström is the headmaster of the Aurora Primary School located in Finland. Pearson is a leading company in education that provides most of students’ educational materials such as textbooks. Pearson also holds a standing of countries on an index that measures cognitive skills and education. The cognitive skills are measured by looking at global exams (such as the PISA) while the education attainment is measured by literacy and graduation rates. On the Index of cognitive skills and education, according to Pearson’s’ Global Index, Finland ranks 5th and the United States ranks 14th overall in the world. Since 2012, Finland has maintained its ranking on the index of cognitive skills and education while the United States fell from 11th to 14th position. The top four countries on the index of cognitive skills and education (South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Hong-Kong China) maintain fierce competition and have ranked above Finland since 2012 (Pearson). Why is the United States not in the top five rankings? The Eastern countries maintain the mentality to succeed in life while western countries, such as Finland, provides an exceptional education for those that aim to become professors and teachers.