This episode is over the U.S. education system. In 1994, Congress approved the Goals 2000 Education America Act, which established eight goals for the nation. Goal five was this. By year 2000, United States students will be the first in the world in mathematics and science achievement. But an act of Congress alone wasn't enough to get the job done. We're in the middle of the pack then and we're in the middle of the pack today.
The statement by Paul Lehman, in my opinion, pretty much encompasses the problem with the U.S. education system. There are several contributing factors to the middle-of-the-pack status, and reforms to address these factors have in large part failed. The main injustice with the U.S. education system is that it's in the middle of the pack and the reforms to try to address this have not worked.
There are several ways in which the U.S. is mediocre in its education ratings. You could look to high school graduation rates as one. In developed countries, it can range from 90% to 49%. The lowest was Mexico at 49%, and the U.S. was at 77%. You could also look to college degrees. Only 16% of college degrees were in the STEM field. Very important degrees, very important field, and very low compared to other countries. You could also look to preschool enrollment rates.
In developed countries, it can be around 90%, while in the U.S., it's at 64%. So almost immediately, a large number of students are already off to a worse start because they got started later. You could also just look at raw testing rates. For 15-year-olds in the US, they came 22nd in reading, 26th in science, and 34th in math. So either very mediocre or maybe even low for math. Compared to other countries, there's also a huge wealth gap.
The average money spent per child can range from $20,000 a year in richer neighborhoods to $6,000 a year in poorer neighborhoods. this causes a lot of problems like those poor schools will most likely have worse teachers uh our school in general and will inevitably under prepare their students compared to other schools that had more money spent per student and those students who are who are less prepared will inevitably do worse on these tests that try to rate the education system.
Has justice been served? No, justice has not been served, but reforms have been attempted in the past. These reforms, however, as I said before, have in large part failed. Paul Lehman explains a failure of a reform that would require students to pass a test to graduate. The intention of the reform was to incentivize schools to better prepare their students so they could pass the test and graduate. He puts it this way.
State after state quickly created a test that students would have to pass for promotion and graduation, and state after state saw large numbers of students fail those tests. It soon became apparent that large-scale failure is politically unacceptable.
It alienates the public and causes kids to drop out. So how did the states respond? Instead of committing the resources needed to improve education, they typically postponed the date of enforcement and either lowered the passing score or made the test easier. Testing has long been given the task of somehow fixing the U.S. education system. It has in large part failed because it doesn't get schools and districts to create a better teaching or better curriculum.
It has also had the after effect of changing the curriculum to reflect exactly what is on the test. Many students will agree that a lot of things they learned in school were just memorized for the test and forgotten, never to be used again. What are the best ways to right the wrong? There are several options to reforming the education system, they just have to be seriously implemented in a universal way. One is reimagining schools to fit students' needs and break the traditional model.
to hopefully help better children's learning experience another is different reforms away from testing and said focus on other reforms because as was proven before testing really hasn't done the job at least effectively
Another is cheat teachers as professionals and invest money into training higher salary. And as in other countries, trying to attract the best and brightest people, like maybe the people who are graduating from college who are trying to become doctors or lawyers, trying to get some of those.
people to try to be teachers so they can hope that so they'll teach the next generation and hopefully create a better teaching environment better curriculum stuff like that And close the wealth gap between different schools so some schools are not way underfunded compared to others and won't underprepare lots of students. It'll immediately help the testing rates of schools because all students at least will be prepared the same.
As Paul Lehman said, the U.S. is in the middle of the pack. Reforms have attempted to address this, but they usually use testing as an easy fix when it really hasn't yielded any substantial results. In short, justice has not been served. The solutions are right in front of politician and school board's noses. They just have to put the effort, the money, and the planning into them.