One of the worst K-12 education systems in the world

[mommusic]

I think the truth is, some schools are outstanding, and some schools are just warehouses where kids who are less mediocre than others get A's and think they are learning enough to go to college.

Not to mention the vast numbers of kids who drop out for various reasons. What kind of job can you get these days if you don't even finish HIGH SCHOOL? Right.

[2016BarnardMom]

There are a gazillion reasons why comparison's are not valid. Some countries only provide higher levels of education to kids who are deemed talented from a young age. Some countries only test their highest performing kids. Some countries meet the health care needs of all children. Some countries make sure all kids have heat, electricity and food.

I think we put too much blame on schools. Schools have no control over parental involvement, parental value on education, poverty levels in their communities, crime in their communities, etc. Kids learn best when they are healthy, well fed, have low stress levels and have parents who value an education and are involved in their childrens' educational process. Teachers and schools can't do all that and can't be held accountable for all that either.

[turbo93]

There is not a single problem but a ton of them. Uniform education standards is one of the big issues, but not the biggest. The biggest issues as far as I can see are:

- lack of parental involvement
- excessive reliance on testing
- incredible difference between consecutive grades at times
- too much focus on grades
- too much focus on athletics / EC's
- incredible variation between teachers

: : : :

I could write a mile long list... ain't gonna get fixed...

[LoremIpsum]

Since you are a member of the older generation, I am sure you have witnessed the erosion of the basic and thinking skills of "my" generation

I went back to finish my BA after 25 years; one graduation requirement was to take a writing exam. Here I sat in this big classroom, writing an essay without the benefit of a spell-checker, being forced to write in sequence with the first draft being the final wording and without benefit of having Google on hand for minor fact verification. How positively retro!

[Bay]

There is something incongruous about the president of one of the best universities in the world publicly stating that its students come from the worst education system in the world. What does that even mean? That Princeton can transform the worst product into the best product like some sort of superhuman time machine? Or does it mean that being the worst isn't really all that bad or irreparable? Or something else?

[atomom]

We should just stop taking those international tests, then.

LOL, Xiggi, I've had the same thought about the Pyramid game show!

I'm very happy with the excellent public schools my kids attend.

[sorghum]

Or does it mean that being the worst isn't really all that bad or irreparable?

The best few individuals in a generally bad system can be pretty good.

[SteveMA]

Yawn......when the rest of the world starts educating all of it's children, from the severely mentally handicapped on up from age 5-18 in the pre-undergrad system and counts those kids into their statistical data and the US falls outside of the top 10% or so, I will worry then. For now, the US system is unique to the world because of the above. If we wanted to be like the rest of the world ALL schools would teach using the rote method and not allow students to learn to become free thinkers-think "teach to the test to the extreme".

In the US until we address the real issue behind failing schools (and it isn't the teachers or the administrations) we will see numbers like this continuing. Those of us in great school districts with high numbers of high achieving students know that these numbers are not even close to reality for us. We see the foreign exchange students come in and really struggle because they just don't have the background education our kids do....

[Canuckguy]

Or something else?

I think it is something else, bay. Shirley M. Tilghman is Canadian. She graduated from one of Canada’s very best universities and is a world class molecular biologist. From what I learned from friends and family members who attended that fine institution, it gives no preference to anyone and the grading is tough but fair. Most impressive of all, it never had a Jewish quota.

This is where Tilghman’s perspective comes from. We are right back to what starbright said in post 21 again, aren’t we?

[SteveMA]

Starbright is wrong that looking at the top 5% is a "good" way to compare systems. Look at the middle 40% or so--where are THOSE kids statistically. That population is the bread and butter of your society. They are the worker bees that drive your economy. In most countries those kids are in unskilled jobs having completed their education at the age of 16 or 17. In the US those kids are in highly skilled jobs requiring advanced education. They are your middle and upper management people in the business world, etc. Many of those people are doctors, engineers, etc. as well.

[Marsian]

SteveMA -- Amen to posts 38 and 40!

[Beliavsky]

Originally Posted by xiggi

Fwiw, one might think that your position on the correlation of SAT scores with wealth and the "elite" disparity is ... a further indictment of the public system of education of the United States.

Isn't the public system of education supposed the biggest equalizer, and isn't the system supposed to educate everyone?

No, the educational system is a multiplier, not an equalizer. It cannot do as much for low-IQ kids as high-IQ kids. Here is what I wrote in post #33 of the "Mismatch caused by racial preferences" thread.

I am aware of the advantages of high-SES kids. They have parents who value education and send them to "good" schools, who are familiar with the college application process from their own experience and who use sites like this to get fresh information, who have the money and motivation to provide coaching in sports and music and for standardized tests.

There is another non-PC reason that "privileged" kids outperform the "underprivileged". They are smarter and more studious on average. The undergraduate and graduate degrees possessed by doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, college professors, and other high-status parents signify above-average intelligence, which is usually passed on to their children. Even if the children of janitors and doctors go to equally good schools, the doctors' kids will compile better academic records on average because they are smarter.

[CTScoutmom]

Regarding immigration, when you look at immigrants who are supposedly better off when they come here, you need to look carefully at the comparison. Are they better off than the average citizen from their home country? Yes, but are they an average citizen? Think of the resources they needed to pull together just to come here. I would argue that in many cases, they are NOT average, and had they pulled together those resources, and used them at home, they would also be better off. Yes, some of them are better off here, simply because they never would gain access to those resources at home, but many of our own citizens would do just as well as them if they made the same level of effort. Unfortunately, we don't expect that effort from most.

Steve is right, we educate ALL children, and that is part of the "problem." Not so much the idea of educating all, but in how we do so. Would we be better off as a nation if we had elite public schools for the "best" students, but also have appropriate schools for the remainder of kids? Some will argue that we already have that, with private schools filling that void - but only if we agree that those private schools are doing a good job of identifying and funding students who cannot afford to attend on their own.

[Bay]

It seems odd to me that one of the top educators in the world (isn't that what a Princeton president is?) would make a public statement about the US educational system that is not true. How do you all rationalize that?

[mythmom]

@post #42: According to a dear friend who is a cognitive psychologist, only 40% of intelligence is heritable. Other studies show that a program like Head Start not only raises the IQ of the kids who attend but of their friends as well. So I am not ready to rule out the kids of the janitor.

I teach at a community college. I don't see a lack of intelligence among my students. There is a great disparity between the worst students and the best, though. (I just helped one student transfer to Columbia. He starts in Janurary.)

The biggest problem with the bottom students is not their skill set, though that is a problem in some cases. However, the biggest challenge is to arouse curiosity and a desire to learn new things. Any movie, book, song or idea not already part of their culture is immediately suspect.

Our schools often do a poor job of involving the student in the process of learning. It's an assembly line approach that fails to connect the child to the human rewards of understanding the world.

As long as students believe that $$$ is the only reward at the end of the journey, students will resist learning anything that they can't immediately see putting dollars in their pockets.

True learning is much more roundabout.

I teach English which is automatically viewed as pretty worthless, even though language skills are fundamental to success in many areas of life.

The Texas Republican Party had a plank against critical thinking in schools because it encourages children to question authority.

Unless we can connect the student to his/her learning and students actually want to know things for themselves, education will be at risk.

That said, I doubt this is better in countries where the only goal is to ace a standardized test that determines one place in society.

I haven't seen a decline in students in the 30 years I've been teaching. For a while there was a real dip in writing skills, but that seems to have righted itself a bit.

I wish we could promote curiosity, a sense of mastery, and true self-esteem as the beginning of learning.

My students are shocked and dismayed that they are required to actually read a Shakespeare play on their own. At first they ask for something in English, LOL. However, when they see they can actually master Shakespeare they start to see themselves differently. They could easily be reading Shakespeare in sixth grade. Malva Collins, a brilliant teacher in inner city Chicago, did just this with her inner city minority students and recording the results on film. It's truly amazing the language mastery and insight her students achieved.

Sadly, Sandy has done such devastation here, the Shakespeare play must be scrapped for this semester in my Intro to Lit. classes.