what is the best way to improve education in the united states

Terminal updated: April 2017

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Back in 2014, Pearson released their Learning Bend. This education cess service gathered the information of The Economist Intelligence Unit, did extensive desk research, and interviewed the earth's education leaders to study each nation's power to prepare students for the modern workforce.

What did they evaluate?

Including but not limited to, contributing factors were:

• the amount each nation spends on education
• average school attendance
• the salaries and earning potential of teachers
• test scores in math, scientific discipline, and literature
• employment rates
• average salaries

Based on the info, researchers had created a ranking system identifying the top 40 countries in the world.

Interpreting the Report'south Findings

Looking beyond the numbers, there are several important conclusions we tin can draw from this written report:

• Significant financial investment in a land's educational activity system does non necessarily produce academic returns.
• The countries with the best rankings brand basic skill development (similar numeracy and literacy) a high priority.
• Non-cognitive skills are equally important. Countries who excelled in the report also valued communication, leadership, teamwork, global citizenship, problem solving, emotional intelligence, and entrepreneurship.
• Try is more valuable than inherited intelligence.
• Clear, measurable goals and outcomes are essential.
• It really does take a community to raise a child; the leading countries relied on the accountability and involvement of a well-utilized network of people to educate their students.

Then what?

The Learning Curve 2014 concludes E Asian nations are best in education. With South korea on top, followed by Japan (2nd) and Singapore (tertiary), these countries have clear learning outcomes and a strong culture of accountability and engagement among a broad community.

As for the leader, the education arrangement of Southward Korea has transformed the land over the concluding 50 years, leading to an expanding economy.

Is South Korea's Education System One to Mimic? [Infographic]

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The Underground of Success

South korea does deserve some praise. After all, their students rank uncommonly loftier in reading, math and science. Information technology's as well noteworthy that nearly 65% of young adults (ages 25-34) have a university degree. This graduation rate is significantly higher than the average 9% of other nations examined by The Learning Curve 2014.

To many, the success of Southward Korea is enviable. Merely is that the right mindset to have?

Let's take a wait at some of the factors contributing to South Korea'southward "success:"

• All 12 years of elementary and high schoolhouse instruction is virtually the demand to prepare for the Suneung, known equally the College Scholastic Power Test. The result is the access to the land'southward meridian universities.
• Southward Koreans spend more than $17 billion on individual tuition, accounting for well-nigh xv% of consumer spending.
• Four out of five students seek out private pedagogy.
• Students attend classes from 9am to 5pm. Then, from 5pm to 10pm, students attend a hagwon, or cram school.
• Of those who have graduated from university, only 75% are employed. Of those, 24% are overqualified for their current job (a pct that is iii times higher than the earth boilerplate).
• Students written report depression interest and satisfaction rates in schoolhouse.
• Stress associated with academic functioning and career outlook is the leading reason teens contemplate suicide.
• The #one reason for suicide among 15-24-year-old youngsters in South Korea is stress associated with bookish performance.

In 2015, Due south Korea was the 3rd in math and science subsequently Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2016, the pedagogy system of this land stayed debatable: despite high ranks, South Korean kids seemed to be those paying for that success.

One-time students describe the Korean education equally stressful and disciplinarian, emphasizing high force per unit area and high performance:

"To be a South Korean child ultimately is not well-nigh liberty, personal pick or happiness; it is well-nigh production, operation, and obedience." (See-Wong Koo)

"In my three years of high school, not once did any teacher ask me what I would like to practice or what I would like to study in college. No one really cared about my interest or what I'd be better at." (Dongyoung Shin)

What About the US Education?

Despite the above-mentioned man gene and stresses Southward Korean youths take to overcome for didactics success, statistics say it all. And many US educators and parents wait at OECD and Pearson reports as a roadmap for enhancing the academic learning of their kids.

Everyone wants to be among the world's top nations in education, don't they? And while some name reasons why the Us education system is failing and concord the The states needs to reevaluate the current learning opportunities for students, the question remains: What are the best tactics for improving our teaching organization, taking into business relationship the fact nosotros don't consider going to extremes, as is evident in South Korea?

To find the answer, we went to several educators and didactics professionals with the but question: "If you lot could name three fundamental ways on how to better the US education system, what would they be?"

Respondents:

	proper noun	occupation	contacts
1	Jeremy Kun	Graduate TA Mathematician Developer	spider web
2	Frank Franz	Social Studies teacher James Madison High School	web
3	Travis Ward	Physics and Math tutor	LinkedIn
iv	Jason Jurotich	writer instructor (Philosophy and English language)	YouTube T
v	Brandon D Stiller	Biology teacher at New Trier High School	web
6	Laurie Alluvion	National Board Certified instructor and teacher trainer	spider web
seven	Mitchell Timin	Ph.D. from UCSD Science & Mathematics tutor	Quora
8	Jake Lopata	Teaches Economic science at SUNY Academy at Albany	T
9	Jim Cullen	history department at the Upstanding Culture Fieldston School NY	web F
10	Michael Mazenko	AP English Teacher in suburban Colorado	web T
11	Austin Walters	University of Illinois educatee studying Informatics	web T
12	Ken Halla	Pedagogy Technologist Teacher at Fairfax Canton VA	spider web
13	Evan Winograd	AP and Sabbatum Ii Physics & Math Tutor	web T
14	Quincy Smith	one-time instructor and founder of ESLAuthority.com	web T

By combining their suggestions, we've come up up with several ways to better the US teaching system.

[Back to tiptop]

Respect and Encourage Teachers

1. 1. More respect for teachers. Higher pay, fewer classes, and less classroom time, with this actress fourth dimension being used for training and curriculum evolution. Subject area should come in the form of training with temporarily reduced class loads. / Jeremy Kun
   2. Treat teachers differently. They are responsible for each new generation of learners and should be regarded as some of the most influential individuals in the country. Teaching should be considered a peak level profession with higher salaries. Teachers would quickly teach to inspire and and then students tin can acquire versus merely to retain their job by passing yearly tests. / Travis Ward
   3. More freedom for teachers. Hire the best teachers, pay them well, and let them teach in the mode they best run across fit (trust and mild oversight). / Jeremy Kun

The Importance of Instructor Education

1. 1. People demand to empathise that we are a land of immigrants.  Office of this professional development that teachers in about all areas of the country also demand is in the area of teaching students in their class who are English Language Learners.  Studies of teachers in America show that the majority do not feel they have the skill prepare in society to meet the demands of second language learners in their classrooms. / Laurie Flood
   2. Enhance the standards for becoming an educator. Require more stringent training for teachers in their actual subject (c.f. the extremely low standards for degrees in math education). / Jeremy Kun
   3. Teachers will need more grooming in order to suit to the way of mathematics pedagogy that the Common Core Standards and the National Quango of Teachers of Mathematics propose.  The old manner of teaching formulas and procedures is but a portion of the picture.  Students understand the utilise of these formulas and procedures (and think them) when they can derive the formulas themselves in interesting activities done with manipulatives and visuals to make mathematics real and existent life.  Then, students need to utilize these traditional formulas and procedures solving real life issues and have whole class discussions nearly their findings.  This makes mathematics a field of problem solving, which it truly is, rather than but a field of disparate numbers.  The legacy will be a generation of adults who tin can utilize mathematics seamlessly to solve real life bug, instead of generations of adults who country, "I never really understood mathematics," every bit we take at present. Teachers need time to get the professional development to teach these new standards and to create lessons that are targeted and relevant for their students./ Laurie Inundation
   4. Continuous Education for Teachers. Provide annual seminars/workshops/classes for teachers. In club to stay competitive with the world, our teachers, the backbone of the education arrangement, need to be continuously growing and learning new skills and means to finer teach our youth. / Jake Lopata
   5. I take a page from Amanda Ripley's volume (The Smartest Kids in the World) and say that nosotros should brand information technology harder to become a teacher, trying to make the profession more of a first than a last resort. Finland and South Korea, though opposites in many means, agree on this. / Jim Cullen
   6. Eliminate the available degree for certification and provide internship opportunities combined with a graduate program for instructor certification. / Michael Mazenko
   7. Update and amend pedagogy curriculums yearly. Utilize a forum setting among teachers that teach the aforementioned subjects across several schoolhouse districts. Permit instructor to larn from each other. This could include summer retreats to acquire from and network with each other. No single instructor following a prepare strict level of rules from a book will ever become the best instructor. You need multiple teachers coming together iteratively to achieve the all-time level of teaching and improving upon information technology each year. / Travis Ward

Providing Personalized Learning Opportunities

1. 1. More personalized learning for students. / Frank Franz
   2. Move away from standardization and uniformity of learning focused on a one-size-fits-all system that is excessively focused on available degrees for all equally a measure of success and accomplishment. In its identify, the system should develop and promote career and technical pedagogy at grades 6-10, offering greater choice, including graduation at sixteen for students pursuing associate degrees and trade certificates. / Michael Mazenko
   3. Teachers need to work one-on-i with students to run across if proficiency is achieved and re-teach if necessary. Reduce class size to brand this a possibility. / Frank Franz
   4. Learning needs to be individualized both in pace and format. / Ken Halla

The Importance of Basic Skill Evolution

1. 1. Focus on reading analysis skills. / Frank Franz
   2. Stay the course with the Common Core Standards.  Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions out in that location about the Common Core Standards.  These standards focus on critical thinking skills and learning all of the traditional curriculum (and more than) in a manner that allows students to solve real life problems.  This is critical for U.s.a. workers to stay competitive in a global workforce.  We accept barely begun the process in this state, and a misinformation campaign is forcing some states to rethink whether they volition use the Common Cadre Standards or not.  This is a fault. Also, in that location is a view that the Common Cadre Standards and loftier stakes testing are intertwined.  The high stakes testing was a function of the previous standards and No Child Left Behind legislation.  This does not take to exist the case if teachers and parents raise their voices confronting high stakes testing./ Laurie Overflowing
   3. We demand to have anybody using standards based learning. / Ken Halla

How Schools are Structured

1. 1. Students in the States are not pushed to learn, nor do they have any motivation to. Kids in the US dream about playing football, merely kids in Germany what to solve problems (for example). The civilisation plays an of import office hither. We have to brand education interesting again or things will merely get worse./ Jason Jurotich
   2. Make schools more progressive environments. Permit 4 day school weeks, increment or decrease the lengths of days, allow students to teach, allow students to rate teachers so that information technology enforces teachers to care and take to try. / Travis Ward
   3. Reduce the distorting role of sports in school life, which engenders misplaced priorities for too many people. / Jim Cullen
   4. Become completely digital and let the students investigate a lot more. Well-nigh of the world's info is online and we don't need professors only repeating information technology./ Jason Jurotich
   5. As teachers and schools have begun to retool to teach the Common Core Standards, in that location needs to be a moratorium on strong sanctions confronting schools that get poor scores in some areas in the next few years.  Teachers and students need time to conform to the new standards.  In California in the 1990s, we adopted standards that were precursors to the Common Core Standards.  The state gave united states of america a few years to retool in guild to adapt to the new, more than rigorous standards. / Laurie Flood
   6. Classrooms should be used for discussion of lectures that are on video.  Khan University video lectures are an example of lectures that should replace classroom lectures.  The classroom is best used for discussion of material previously seen on video.  Testing can also be washed via computer and internet if at that place is a system to forbid cheating. / Mitchell Timin
   7. Career Exposure. Students need access to the careers that are bachelor in today's economy. It could be a course, a seminar, a work study, etc… merely the point would be to familiarize students with real world careers and jobs that could be bachelor to them someday. This would help student be more than focused on what career or field of piece of work they would like to pursue when they reach college, saving them fourth dimension and money. / Jake Lopata
   8. Restructure a school finance system that's based on local property taxes. It's deeply regressive and, once more, out of touch with the rest of the earth. / Jim Cullen

Teaching Styles

1. 1. More thinking/analyzing and less memorizing. Innovation and creativity are based on understanding things, not on something memorized. / Jason Jurotich
   2. Have a practical skills program in addition to an academic program.  I understand that this arroyo is successful in Deutschland.  An academic educational activity is non advisable for anybody. / Mitchell Timin
   3. Disquisitional Thinking and Trouble Solving. Focus on education students how use and apply their minds to tasks or problems. These are skills that are usable in any career field. / Jake Lopata
   4. Teachers then need to move from passive (in terms of the student learner) to facilitators for pupil learning. / Ken Halla
   5. Make math/science relevant. Example: for the football game players, a wide receiver lines up 15 yards left and he catches the ball 20 yards down field.  How far did the quarterback throw the ball?  The Pythagorean theorem (and only about every fleck of math) can be applied to common real life scenarios.  Non only does a existent example make the topic more tangible, it also makes the topic more interesting. / Evan Winograd

How Students are Evaluated

1. 1. More enervating ways to testify you know something. Exams based on retentiveness don't cutting it, but on the other hand, evaluation systems need to be a lot more demanding to find out what the educatee really knows. In that location has to be objective rubrics that allow for universal, international proof that a student really knows his stuff. / Jason Jurotich
   2. Reduce some or most of the high stakes testing that sucks time and creativity from students who need it about starting in 3rd grade. Weeks and weeks are lost to didactics to the tests and and so taking the tests. The best performing countries (ane example is Finland) practise not spend time and money on such testing. / Brandon D Stiller
   3. Decrease the emphasis on standardized testing as a measure of rigor and accountability, and replace that with back up for a child's whole education, including social-emotional needs. Included in this is devoting funding and resources to providing social supports to students and families in terms of nutrition, health intendance, child intendance, counseling, supervision, etc. / Michael Mazenko

The Role of Mail service-Secondary Education

1. 1. Brand mail-secondary education more than affordable so that student loan debt does not limit students and graduates. / Brandon D Stiller
   2. Make scholarships for service to the country more lucrative. If 18 year olds spend a few years giving back (eastward.g., in the Military machine or AmeriCorps) while their minds mature and earn all or near of their tuition, room and board, they volition exist able to afford higher and mayhap be in much better position to make the most of their educational opportunity. / Brandon D Stiller
   3. Treat college like an option instead of the ultimate goal. Real globe programs like internships, apprenticeships, and even gap years are effective in preparing students for life afterwards school and don't leave yous with a mound of debt. / Quincy Smith

Civilization

1. 1. The US has an attitude problem. There is a stigma that math (and school in general) is slow / uncool.  For example: http://mathfour.com/commentary/att-in-my-day-commercial-is-killing-math-students – this commercial drove me crazy. Information technology took me about 5 seconds on Google to notice this article that shares my view. / Evan Winograd
   2. I believe educational activity needs to start at an early age in the home. When I was younger, my family would practise math problems at the table and turn it into a game. Every bit a result, I was ahead of the curve in all of my math classes (Certain, there may be an statement made that I had a natural disposition to math, but I believe that nurturing a skill at a young historic period can assistance the brain develop to support that skill in the time to come). Every bit a young pupil, despite my parents' efforts, I did non read equally much as I should have. As a result, my vocabulary, albeit not bad, is worse than I would like it to be. / Evan Winograd

[Back to meridian]

From the Student'due south Point of View:

Professors and teachers shouldn't exist the just ones allowed to sound off. Students have opinions also. After all, they're the ones we are encouraging to do amend — let'due south learn what they need.

Austin Walters:

1. 1. Exercise not discourage students. Practice not presume incompetence or that they do not want to larn. Information technology is important that every person is encouraged to learn. I wrote about my experiences here: http://austingwalters.com/delight-excuse-my-grammer/
   2. Give students some autonomy, which helps support longterm motivation. Perhaps accept a suggestion box, which allows the students to ask questions anonymously related to whatever subject (obviously filter out inappropriate questions). And then every friday, or some other designated date, respond the questions in a fun way. Peradventure bring in some snacks and make it a "fun" day.
   3. Engage students by telling stories and using metaphors. It'southward important that students stay engaged and doing so by providing them with funny/interesting stories helps maintain motivation.

Here's groovy post on Reddit with several more suggestions from students to consider:

1. 1. 
   2. 
   3. 
   4. 
   5. 
   6. 
   7. 
   8. Feed us. Seriously! Yous'd be amazed at how circumspect we can be afterwards a fun sized candy bar!

For more than opinions and thoughts on the topic, please check:

1. 1. • 7 Ways to Repair the Public Education System, by Anya Hollis for The Huffington Mail
      • How To Fix Teaching In America, by Robert Reiss for Forbes

What Happens Now?

Education is withal at the center of many debates. Experts conduct surveys and do enquiry to notice out what else nosotros can practice for a better education system in the US. Statistics are all well and fine, but some become further and let students share thoughts on the problem.

After all, who see it ameliorate?

Ane way of letting them speak is through essay writing. Academy Globe News published the article where shared the excerpts from the essays immature people sent to take role in the international essay contest.

The topic was "The Ideal Higher Education Model for My Country," and that'southward what American students said.

Anne Hentzen, University of Missouri-Kansas City:

1. My vision of an ideal higher education model would nearly require a complete overhaul of the current college education model in the United states of america. Colleges could remain privatized in order to retain academic freedom. Nonetheless, the government should fully fund students' tuition and textbooks until the students achieve at to the lowest degree a Bachelor'southward degree or equivalent."
2. Professors work even harder than some of those in authoritative positions. So, the salaries of administrative staff, departmental heads and sports coaches would need to be lowered.

Other issues of the U.s.a. education, from the students' point of view, include teachers "looking for one type of student but" and "the reduced level of the teaching staff."

Tin can the U.s. learn from their mistakes?

As 1 of the world'southward leading adult countries, the U.s. is constantly under scrutiny regarding areas in demand of improvement. However, didactics should remain at the top of everyone's priority listing. As The Learning Bend 2014 points out, our children aren't the only ones at stake hither; our unabridged country depends on a sound and capable workforce.

Information technology's time for Us leaders to stop wasting coin and start to seek out a solution. Allow's mind to educators and students who are in the trenches, and let'due south allow them to atomic number 82 us to the brighter future.

[Back to acme]

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