Amy Choi's Essay 'Do American Schools Are Doing Right'

There are many problems in the American public education system today. Some of those include the quality of teachers, who have no real passion for the job, and are only allowed to remain in the position because of tenure privileges. Another issue is the state budgets that are allowed for public schools, with some states investing billions of dollars, and others prioritizing it lower on the list. In hot debate today is standardized testing, and the negative effect that it has on high school education, with the limits it places on teachers and what they have time to teach in the classrooms.

Education is an integral part of society, School helps children learn social norms as well as teach them to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. In West Trenton Central High School was only 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. These school have lower test scores and high dropout rates. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often form low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial factors to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and

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.

Over the course of many years, several things have changed, including technology, science, and people; however, our culture and idea of education have not. Some of these problems include teachers that are not being as valued as they should be and students who are changing both physically and mentally, but are still not being supported by our education system. The education system itself is also problematic as well, but it can be fixed with a change in our culture. Teachers and students are the base of the education system, and by not helping them, the system is not helping itself. Students are gaining new emotions and viewpoints, but the education system has had a hard time keeping up, even teachers are changing but are still undervalued.

There is an abundance of importance in the public school system. Most successful careers start with elementary, middle and high school education. So it is safe to say it is vital to maintain a major funding for all public school’s systems across the country. Of course funding isn’t the only broken piece of a perfect school system because not every school is in an appropriate environment. There are many factors that follow what type of funding each school gets and also how much. Many schools are placed in low income or areas in poverty, this causes students to have harder learning environments. The question is what would be a strategy to fix the gap in public school funding and where and how do you spend it? This could be solved by smart public school allocation, better pay structure for

Now a lot of people may ask, how can we fix our very broken education system? First of all, we need to upgrade the Standard Common Core. What i mean by upgrading is that we need to change it to make it better and more advanced. We should also try to fix how we teach literacy, math and other subjects. And last of all, focus more on education than almost anything else because if we don’t, we’ll be left behind in the

Many may believe that the United States school system is flawless; that no other countries school system or organization is as advanced as ours, “just like our government.” Those people need to come into the realization that our school system is broken, we need to be realists and not dreamers when it comes to something as serious as our education. Our school system has not been putting in the needed or required effort to reach the goals of true education or a good education that we, as students, deserve. Schools have been cheating us of what we deserve. Although some may believe our school system is perfect, it is not; our school system is broken and it needs to be fixed.

Oklahoma as of today is ranked 49th nationally in per-pupil expenditures and ranked 48th in teacher pay (Klein 2). Putting Oklahoma as one of the worst states to be educated in the United States. “Oklahoma is consistently ranked near the bottom for education funding and teacher pay” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth And Job Creation” 3). When there are state cuts that need to be made, the departments of education are one of the first that usually tend to suffer. Since the 2008 economic crisis, Oklahoma has continued to cut the budget for education; even though the economy has since then gotten better (Perry). Budget cuts in education affect all parts of the education process for the students. “Some school districts have ordered teacher layoffs and shorter sessions” (“Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer” par 4).Schools are now struggling to keep their heads above water. Each year from the budget cutting, schools have had to lay off teachers, cut entire programs, and have limited resources used to educate the students. Even the teachers’ retirement system is suffering, being one of the top poorly funded pension programs nationally (Ash par 3). Seeing as that the schools have to cut down classes and programs, administration has had no other choice than to increase class size, overwhelming teachers tremendously. “Oklahoma has 1,500 fewer classroom teachers and 40,000 more students since 2008-2009” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth

Today, however, it seems as if the public has lost track of the importance of a great educational system. The main issue today’s public schools faces are funding problems. There is not enough money allocated to support the growing needs of school across the nation.

In today’s economic environment even the wealthiest states and districts are having to cut funding for education, while districts which were already teetering on the edge are now in an even worse position. In some schools children have to face not having enough books, paper for copies, severe overcrowding,

Schools need more money for textbooks, technology devices, and pay for teachers. Without this money, there is no way education can improve.

In American society, there is an urgent need that is not being met: a quality education for our nation’s children. In fall 2016, about 50.4 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. An additional 5.2 million students are expected to attend private elementary and secondary schools (Redford, Battle and Bielick). From humble origins in a one-room schoolhouse, American Education has grown into a behemoth that is

The first step to having each and every child succeed is to have qualified teachers. Many teachers in Finland are actually overqualified for their positions compared to teachers in the United States. Every teacher is required to have a three-year master’s degree and only 10% are accepted into the educational program. The faculty in Finland have adopted the motto “Whatever it takes”, that drives Finland’s 62,000 educators in 3,500 schools. The teachers throughout Finland will do whatever is needed for each child to succeed. The administrators and educators are leaders in

Although Finland’s education system was progressing after WWII, the system still faced many challenges that would lead to a call for reform in the 1970s. The article, “Ten Years On: Progress and Problems in Finland 's School Reform” provides eight features of the school system that were inadequate at the time and urged for reform. Some of the main issues at hand included but are not limited to social class separation in the school system, lack of connection between general and vocational institutions, and the low aspirations of the folkschool teachers. Along with the problems of the education system, the author also included the six propositions that were suggested for the objective of reforming the system. The propositions included: making the school structure comprehensive, more opportunities based on cognitive and ethical aims, a clarification of learners’ needs, the reform would need to be implemented through experimental trials, vocational education would need to be stressed as equivalent to general education, and for reform to spread from the north to the south. The call to action was declared by politicians, teachers’ unions, and the literate citizens. The legislation that was brought forth was the Basic Act of 1970 and it would require:

Who wants to read yet another dose of “how to change our schools” given that everybody thinks they are an expert on the topic and the debate, if it can be called that, has been mired in the stagnant swamp of politics? Well, to answer my own question, not many people who have a life! My hypothesis regarding the plethora of well-intentioned (95% of them anyways) misguided, ineffective reform plans is that none of them really consider four variables that are crucial to any new effective reform efforts. In their simplest forms the three considerations are: