preview

American Education : Where Does The System Blunder?

Decent Essays

American Education: Where Does The System Blunder?
Insightfully proclaimed by Ralph Waldo Emerson “We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation- rooms, for ten or fifteen years and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing” (Brainy Quotes 2). According to the Program For International Student Assessment, a global survey that assesses students’ abilities to apply math and reading to practical situations, America is ranked twenty-seventh in mathematics and seventeenth in reading (1). When compared with higher achieving countries, American students know many skills, but struggle to apply this knowledge to real world situations. Thus, students who enter the professional …show more content…

Over ten-thousand students are being taught by unqualified teachers. Often, these teachers lack appropriate training in subjects such as discipline in the classroom and proper integration of technology into the learning environment. This does not mean teachers are not attending such trainings, in fact, most new and experienced teachers are required to be present at these events. The problems lie in the trainings themselves. “Seventy-one percent of elementary training in reading instruction is not based on practical research that produces positive results” (Noonan 1). Also, only nineteen percent of training in mathematics is parallel to standards of higher achieving countries such as Japan (Noonan 1). Also, lacking qualifications often stems from an early lack of guidance. New teachers are often prepared in an inconsistent and unsupported fashion. Often put into challenging classrooms with little guidance or supervision, nearly fifty percent of new teachers leave education in the first five years because of frustration with being left unsupported. With college entry standards and Common Core assessments demanding more from students, educators too, must be reevaluated and extensively prepared. License recommendations, teacher preparation programs, and program approval must be made stricter and more rigorous. If teachers are unprepared for the scrupulousness of standards, how can America expect promising results from its

Get Access