What Are The Pros And Cons Of The American Education System

The American education system has many flaws. It is becoming more and more ineffective. To society, school is a competition especially in colleges and universities. People care so much about the grade they get that they forget the real reason why we even go to school; to learn. All everyone cares about is the grade that we receive. It has become so bad that we have lost sight in what’s really important; our growth as humans. We are taught that we need to get good grades in order to go to a good college, we are constantly judged on how well we do on tests using a grading, and most of the material being taught to us doesn’t even prepare us for what’s in store in the real world.

Over the last two decades America’s educational system has been descending on the national ranking chart. According to Rankingamerica.com, countries like South Korea and Japan are leading the charts in education while the U.S is rank number fourteen. There are many attributes that play a part of this destruction, but the overuse of the unforgiving arrangement of standardized testing has a strong presence. Though, standardized testing has been around since the 1800’s but the tests that are implemented today are no match for educators or students.

The use of standardized examinations have long been debated in American society. In fact, the last several years have seen an immense shift from the prioritization of standardized testing to more holistic measurements of student achievement. Despite this shift, many school districts across the nation and college/university entrance requirements still place a significant, if not pivotal, emphasis on test-taking and standardized exam results. Throughout this paper, I will explore 1) the history of standardized testing, 2) arguments for and against its practice, as well as 3) situate the consequences of its use in one of the three philosophical goals of schooling. All of this will subsequently paint an investigation into the purpose of schooling in American society.

For roughly thirty years, international test scores have shown that the United States is falling behind in the education rankings. Many Asian and European countries have much higher test scores. Professionals have argued for years that these rankings are “Threatening the country’s economic growth”(Carnoy). One test in one year compared to all these countries is very inaccurate and should not be taken so literal. Being that the US is so large, each state is in charge of their own education systems. Many different rules and the way exams are graded could be a variable that is being overlooked year after year. Another variable being overlooked is social class(Carnoy). In many countries, only those who come from middle to upper classes may go to school(Carnoy). Along with that, many there are various regulations that are much

In case you have been living under a rock for your entire life, you may have noticed that the education system of America is a complete disaster. To put it delicately there are many flaws with the current system we have in place. One of the major flaws of the education system is that it takes an insane amount of your time and money all for just a fancy piece of paper. The system also can implode too easily; all it can take is a student to just not care or just a bad teacher for bad things to happen. We can look at several different essays that show how the system is flawed, through the academic journey of two students. We can see that the education system has a great cost, how the level of a student’s success is determined, and how the

America’s test scores are barely average compared to other countries. 470,000 15-year-old students took the OECD test in math, science, and language arts. The test was scored on a 1,000 point scale. The U.S average score in math was 487 meaning that 24 out of the 34 countries ranked higher. This includes Finland who scored a 541. In science, America scored an average of 502 which placed them at 17th. Once again Finland was a leader on the scoreboard. Finally, in language arts the U.S scored a 500 putting them in 14th place. Finland still ranked higher; they were in the ranks with places like Shanghai. “The brutal fact here is there are many countries that are far ahead of us… this should be a massive wake up call”, says U.S Education Secretary Arnie Duncan (Hechinger). So why is education so important?

Education in America has drastically decreased in efficiency in the last fifty years. Schools in America do not care about their students, or their education; they care about the test scores achieved by their students. The American education system is severely flawed in many ways. These flaws are more dire than they are made out to be, since they incapacitate the ability of their students to learn the material taught. This occurs because it is more important to pass a class than to retain the information they obtain.

The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.

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

Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” Recently, there has been discussion about whether the method of standardized testing is best for our education system. There are a lot of flaws that come with the system of testing. Opposers argue that with all of the flaws, the testing significantly holds American citizens back from greater potential to success. Standardized testing weakens America’s education system, because it can cause teachers to “teach to the test”, does not truly measure intelligence or abilities, and cannot always reflect what a student has learned.

Since the release of the annual report by Program for International Student Assessment in December of 2010, many in the government and community are searching for ways to reform the American education system to give American students a greater opportunity to succeed. According to the report, one cannot ignore the fact that American students are not testing as high academically as other nations in the world. There are many contributing elements that have brought America to her knees in the education system, however, the obsession with standardized testing is found to be more of a stumbling block than a stepping stone in the education system. To understand how to rectify the problem, we must look at all the facts presented to us, compare

I would like to take the time to discuss the issues that standardized testing is causing college bound students. Standardized testing is an evaluation of a student's performance on one particular day and does not take into account factors that could affect the test such as, the students rest, nutrition, the testing environment, and emotions of the student.. Standardized testing has caused teachers to move to a way of teaching called “teach to the test”, which can overall hinder a student's learning potential, because they are simply learning the information for the test and will quickly forget what they learned. Along with other reasons, the “teach to the test” method has damaged students creativity and creates a boring learning environment.

Prince EA, a motivational filmmaker, poet, and speaker, made a YouTube video about the United States education system, he opens with a quote from Albert Einstein that states, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” To put this into perspective, standardized tests represent the tree and students represent the fish. Most students don’t process information in the same way. In Fact, it’s widely accepted that different approaches to learning have numerous advantages to stimulate

Recently, the amount of standardized testing in the United States increased drastically. “Students are taking between ten and twenty standardized tests, depending on the grade. A total average of one hundred thirteen different ones by graduation”(Locker). A few years ago the United States, along with other nations, was given a test to assess the academic strengths and weaknesses of each nation and rank them accordingly. When the results were released and the United States was ranked near the bottom, the nation decided to start incorporating more testing through school. Between benchmark, TLI, PARCC, and common core standards, teaching pedagogy changed once again. Standardized testing has had a negative effect on teachers

My English class when I was a high school junior was characterized by exactly what people complain about when they belittle standardized testing and the classroom environment it creates. Namely in the area of teaching to and gaming the standardized tests.