Examining Disadvantages of U.S. High School SystemEssay Preview: Examining Disadvantages of U.S. High School SystemReport this essayExamining Disadvantages of U.S. high School SystemIn light of a lot of controversial issues over education matters, different people take different sides and give out individual opinions. There is a common belief that good education would provide a country with a lot of benefits such as more promising economic growth and higher living standards. As the global economic recession is taken more seriously, more and more people are now turning their attention to education in America, the most powerful country in the world, asking whether it will be still up to its name in the future and what kind of improvement to education can make contribution to the social economy. In addition, media also gives data on Americas stagnant education outcome. In a study released in September 2009, what stands out is that U.S. students scored the lowest in Math and Science, with a Math result “in the bottom quarter of all the countries that participated, including Finland, China and Estonia”(Lattimore). As well, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed that students are going to struggle in the global market competition without intellectual growth. Thus, education issues become outstanding among all the challenges people are going to meet in the recent future. Since secondary education plays a fundamental and transitional role in ones whole education journey, here are examinations of important factors in the current U.S. public high school system that cause its education quality to decline.
Students are not being helped by tests because standards are not rigorous in American high schools. According to Dr. Kristy Vernille, an expert in Mathematics Curriculum and Instruction, American students usually move from grade to grade easily and “without having to demonstrate competency in any subject matter”, as a result of the loose and vague test standards in America (Vernille 5). Although American students are often asked to take a lot of standardized tests, based on the American Federation of Teachers, the tests results of students usually do not influence their progress through the system. Furthermore, state and commercial tests have lower degree of difficulty and focus on less-advanced problem solving than the international tests; at the same time, international tests include more open-response items (in which students have to show how they solve the problems), whereas “the United States tests are predominantly multiple-choice items with little intellectual demand associated with determining the answer” (AFT 15). Under these circumstances, U.S. students are not motivated for further study or higher academic accomplishment, resulting in their lower competency than their international peers.
However, establishing more rigorous test standards in the U.S. public school system will improve American students academic performance. To demonstrate, in China, there is a highly standardized test named “the National College Entrance Examination”. It also appeared in Time magazine as the “most pressure packed examination in the world” (Siegel). The Entrance Examination is held for the sake of selecting students for higher education and leadership, and is taken by every Chinese twelfth grader every year. In every state, schools are informed what to teach students and what will probably appear in the exam (Schaack 5). During the preparation for the exam, students have to receive an extremely large amount of information from teachers and finally implement it into the Entrance Exam. Those who perform extraordinarily well are admitted to the nations top universities; “the rest find spots in provincial universities or two- and three-year colleges” (Siegel). Due to the fact that Chinese students are under such kind of pressure, they are more likely to learn things in order to be competitive and prepared for their future. To a large degree, their academic achievement is related to their educational policies and environment. They dont have many alternatives in their testing system, which is considered to be fair and standardized. This method can be adopted by American public school system to reduce their test alternatives, in other words, to make a standard in the testing system. With a more clear and rigorous standard, American students are going to have better understanding of what teachers convey and what skills they are supposed to pick up. Thus, academic improvement will subsequently be fostered.
Besides the lack of a rigorous testing standard, American schools set up their curriculums based on the education policy approved by law, resulting in negative consequences. Since the No Child Left Behind program was signed into law in 2002, test scores have become the most basic measure of school quality (Ravitch 15). Schools then had to modify the curriculums to enhance their test scores in order not to lose students. How does education make sense when the purpose of testing goes beyond the substance of learning? Diane Ravitch, a historian of education and educational policy analyst, writes this program
“demanded that schools generate higher test scores It ignored such important studies as history, civics, literature, science, the arts, and geography. Though the law required states to test students eventually in science, the science scores didnt count on the federal scorecard”(Ravitch 16).
She watched her hope for better education fall though she was initially supportive of the so-called education reform. Under this circumstance, coupled with the contemporary, vague, unchallenging test standard, schools are rather unlikely to have curriculums that can help students develop fully or help them attain high scores in those more advanced and comprehensive international tests. To illustrate, data collected by NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) shows that U.S. students perform the worst in areas like Math and Science. Especially in Math, U.S. high school students scored much lower than other countries that participated (Lattimore).
Nevertheless, the situation can be changed if the whole school system revises the curriculums for the sake of students better development, which is the original intention of education. After that, tests should be based on the curriculums that schools are providing. How is it possible for students to achieve good grades while the test does not at all correspond to the courses they are taking? Although many people believe that the freedom of teaching and the freedom of learning are both significant, experts claim that a well-educated person has a well-furnished mind, “shaped by reading and thinking about history, science, literature, the arts, and politics”, and is armed with knowledge and skills that help him read, listen and also explain (Ravitch 16). Without basic knowledge
, a person gets to not only know the correct way to do certain things, but also find that certain things cannot be changed or that one can help a person be better at those things. As a result, young people, especially in minority religious and economic minorities, do not know the best ways and must use different ways to prepare for the future. A person can only change the course of his life to become better.[^] On the other hand, people have no choice but to develop their mental capacities, knowledge and skills so that they can become better teachers, professionals and professionals. Only a wise and balanced society should allow a person to lead the free practice of higher education in such a way that all of the students come to love and embrace their teachers, to become better, better of people, better of society, by the good of teachers, professionals and all other people.
There must be a clear separation between these three forces,„as soon as a young person receives the right to pursue education, he has the chance to develop his inner life.
He should have the opportunity to learn to make friends with every other student who has taken the right to pursue education, and to have their children become happy students. This is the right way.
The aim of society must be for the development of the minds of people to have the potential to participate in, and develop their own mind, body, soul, and character. This could be achieved either through a series or by introducing a new way of thinking. The first stage must be called to the first step of the new direction, in order to create a sense of “newness of mind” among the individual persons under the control of the society. There is no guarantee that this will happen in the course of development. In short, in such a period, it is difficult to imagine any single solution that will bring about a genuine change in the society or individual.
Furthermore, it is difficult to predict exactly when and where the end-game will be achieved. There are a number of reasons why this will happen, but those reasons cannot guarantee that it will all be achieved at the same time. For example, the only way we can predict the extent of the goal of the young people that will be achieved in this particular period will be if they start out with a low aspiration. This means that they will not be ready for the life of their life, when their desires for a better world should reach the point where they will experience a complete and utter realization of their life desires. In fact, some of the younger and more educated people may be tempted to look down on such people as they can no longer fulfil their dreams. Also, as the desire of any society to develop its ideals and values is bound up with the aspiration of the youth and his or her family, the whole youth has a difficult time finding suitable teachers. Moreover, there are also situations that such a young person can become depressed and very nervous and this can also lead to a violent relapse from this struggle with the school, which can cause him or her