America’s Education Problem and Why the Government is to Blame

by Christian Harker

Why do you think America has such a problem with education today? Public schools fail to properly educate students, but still overwork them. American students have performed worse on globally standardized tests than most other developed countries, schools still cause such high levels of stress and poor mental health among students, and they have begun to teach kids with a lack of open-ended questions that causes them to believe they are performing terribly when they fail. As Aldous Huxley said in Brave New World, “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them,” so it must be asked whether schools are purposely designed to condition these students to perform poorly and believe so little of themselves (234). The truth is, American school systems are only performing so poorly because the government limits them. The addition of the new Common Core system gives the government lots control over what our students are taught, and how they are taught it.

American students have proven before just how poorly they perform compared to most other nations. For example, “In 2012, U.S. high school students scored below the mean on the math portion of the Programme for International Student Assessment test  ranking 26th out of 34 nations involved,” and despite how poorly they performed in 2012, “In 2015, American kids did even worse, scoring near the bottom on the same exam” (Bernstein). On top of their poor performance in math, students have proven to perform poorly in basic english too. “Seventy-four percent of professors and 73 percent of employers told Public Agenda that American students lack basic grammar and spelling skills. Roughly the same percentages said they also lack the ability to write clearly”, but this isn’t the only thing America has fallen behind in with regards to their education (“American…”). Poor performance in both math and english has now caused a decrease in American students in college. “In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States had 30 percent of the world's population of college students. Today, that proportion is 14 percent and continues to fall,” and with a falling rate of American students in college, it will be hard to see that number improve anytime soon (Meisinger). It is easy to see how America’s students are failing academically, but how is the government responsible for this poor performance across the board?

The government has been enacting legislation in an attempt to expand its control over education with the Common Core system. An example of this is “The 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act” which “has given states more power,” which would normally seem beneficial since local governments know more about their community and can adjust Common Core requirements and enact better legislation because of it. However, this isn’t the case because “Local politicians tend to dumb down standards so test scores aren't too low” (Mathews). Another example is the attempts to extend Common Core further to colleges. If this were to succeed, “Even home schooling may not help if colleges all convert to the new testing standards based on Common Core guidelines.” This is because “The tests are what drive curricula, and home school curricula will need to adapt to the new tests in order for the students to be admitted to college” (McManus). Normally, this expansion of regulation on education wouldn’t be this detrimental to students’ performance, except the problem is the way it forces us to teach our students

Common Core’s requirements cause teachers to have to teach in ways even they believe aren’t efficient. For example, when asked about new Common Core standards, “Fifty-six percent of English language arts teachers said ‘building students' general knowledge’ is not getting enough attention”. In the same pool of teachers, “Forty-six percent said the materials provided to boost content do 'a poor job.’”, and  “Thirty-two percent said the number of students gaining the necessary background knowledge has dropped”. This problem though, persists even further, because when asked about writing instruction, “More teachers (36 percent) said ability to write "well-developed paragraphs or essays" had worsened than said it had improved (27 percent)” (Mathews). English isn’t the only department that is taught poorly though. The math department is also often criticized by students for being “too much answering and not enough learning” (Schwartz). This stems from the problem that “There is too much emphasis on the answer in math and not enough on the process to get there”. This often leads to students becoming too focused on the wrong things in math class. “Students often feel that math is either right or wrong” and because of this, they don’t end up learning from their mistakes (Petty).

What else is wrong with America’s schools besides just what students are taught? One problem is the mindset American students to have. Generally, students have adopted a very fixed mindset due to the strict requirements of Common Core. The problem is, students that develop a fixed mindset generally “do not believe that their intellect can change, and therefore can't grow as students” (Petty). Mindset isn’t the only impact schools have on our students. Students in America today have a severe problem with mental health. “According to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), one in five students have a diagnosable mental illness” (“META…”). Anxiety is one example of these mental illnesses that run rampant among students. In fact, “anxiety is the most prevalent mental health disability affecting students across the United States.” “Research suggests that almost a third of the country's adolescents have struggled with an anxiety disorder during their childhood”. This terribly high rate of anxiety inevitably leads to students performing worse in school. “Anxiety is characterized by rumination and negative or distracting thoughts”, and students who are more easily disheartened and distracted eventually leads to “diminished performance across a wide range of school-related tasks” (Minahan).

Ultimately, it’s clear that it’s the problems with America’s Common Core system that cause students to not only perform far below other nations academically, but suffer from higher rates of mental illness due to the stress it puts on students. The only question left to ask is why has it been a problem for so long, and why hasn’t it been fixed yet? There should be more pressure put on the government for answers to these problems and a solution, as our kids’ education is one of the most important things for the future of America.

Works Cited

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Bernstein, Andrew. "Is There a Cure for the Collapse of the U.S. Education System?" USA Today, Sept. 2019, p. 46+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A602366469/ITOF?u=nysl_li_harb&sid=ITOF&xid=40c68d74. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.

Mathews, Jay. "Common Core Standards Were Supposed to Revolutionize Learning. Have They?" Washington Post, 29 July 2018. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A548170572/ITOF?u=nysl_li_harb&sid=ITOF&xid=5c3afdd1. Accessed 17 Dec. 2019.

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Meisinger, Susan. "Education Gap Threatens U.S. Competitiveness." HRMagazine, Mar. 2007, p. 10. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A160633093/ITOF?u=nysl_li_harb&sid=ITOF&xid=56e9a656. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.

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Minahan, Jessica. "Tackling Negative Thinking in the Classroom: Helping Anxious Students Change Their Negative Thinking Patterns can Reduce Stress and Improve Their Performance." Phi Delta Kappan, Nov. 2019, p. 26. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A606482637/ITOF?u=nysl_li_harb&sid=ITOF&xid=7bde08d6. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.

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