EDITORIAL – U.S. fails in education

The current situation in secondary education in the United States is worsening, slowly but… The current situation in secondary education in the United States is worsening, slowly but surely. And it’s time our lawmakers faced up to the facts.

The results of a nationwide test released yesterday show that the writing skills of American middle and high school students are deteriorating. According to The New York Times, only about one-third of eighth grade students and about one-fourth of high school seniors are proficient in writing.

Since the last time a similar test was administered in 2002, there have been moderate increases in the writing skills of underperforming students.

But what is worrisome is that the writing skills of high-performing eighth and 12th graders have either reached a plateau or decreased.

These poor test results are symptomatic of America’s overall deteriorating education system.

Schools are under-funded, teachers are deficient or underpaid or both and curricula often caters to material that appears on standardized tests. Through it all, one thing is clear: Children are not learning.

As a global superpower, the Unites States’ failing education system is all the more disgraceful. America is falling behind internationally, and it is going to take more than just legislation or an ill-thought-out national standard – like President George W. Bush’s largely harmful No Child Left Behind Act – to amend what’s broken.

For one thing, we need to start placing more emphasis on teachers. Part of the problem with education in America is in the amount of unqualified teachers fresh out of college with little experience or expertise.

While it is certainly necessary to hire young teachers and build interest in the profession, we need to make sure that young teachers are able to meet high standards and educate students effectively.

Even Pitt, which only offers a master’s degree in education, should look into developing an undergraduate program to encourage more thorough training for young aspiring teachers not planning to pursue post-graduate degrees.

However, low starting salaries and a general lack of respect for teachers dissuade many young people from being interested in the profession.

The United States should be putting more resources into teachers both to incite interest in the field and promote current educators to do better. Teachers rarely start above $40,000 per year in the United States, and it is common for teachers with little experience to start at less than $30,000 a year.

Incessant testing and “teaching to the test” plagues the U.S. education system, too – in other words, teachers only cover what could be on a standardized exam instead of working on improving the skills students might have beyond that.

According to Will Fitzhugh, the founder of the Concord Review, national assessment tests have difficulty determining the ability of students to write because they only provide short samples that students have to jot out in a limited time frame. However, alternatives such as longer graded papers would be difficult to implement and expensive to conduct.

There is no easy solution for the United States’ falling educational performance. It is difficult to teach to a national standard, especially in an area such as writing, where abilities can differ greatly between students.

But because there is no easy solution doesn’t mean U.S. citizens have an excuse to sit back and relax. As is commonly said, the children are our future.

A skill as important as writing should not be allowed to flounder simply because the problems causing it are difficult to solve.