Education

Education Failing in the United States Education in the U.S. is almost at a point of no return. It has become very controversial, over the years, if it is working or not. It appears that over the last decade or so the educational system in the U.S. has taken a turn for the worse. The U.S. tends to lag behind other nations in testing and percentage of children that graduate and so on. The system also is far under funded to make improvements to it and it keeps getting worse. The financial status of the educational system in the U.S. is at a point of depletion. In the Los Angeles School District 2,600 teachers lost their jobs because of short falls in the budget. While in the Saint Vrain School District in Colorado is facing a 12 million dollar budget cut. Teachers all over the country are taking pay cuts in order to keep their jobs. With all these cuts and shortfalls in the budgets of school districts how can we keep teachers working as teachers and not pursuing another profession' Let alone the financial status of school districts are hurting but the financial status of homes are struggling. With both parents working to pay the bills they have little time to spend helping with school work. Without the support of the parents at home the struggling student is just overlooked. Then there is non-traditional family units; his and her households. Students are passed back and forth between homes and still expected to keep focused on their education. The student in a non-traditional family unit faces many different obstacles than the normal family unit. With all the lack of parental support at home it takes a well disciplined student to excel. There has also been a decline in programs in schools over the years. The loss of music and arts in schools plays a main role in the failure of students in other educational areas. Music and arts teach the mind how to be creative and opens the mind to deeper thinking. These abilities help students with classes such as math and language. If there was still music and art programs in every school, the score on standardized tests would increase. If the scores on the tests were higher then the teachers or school districts would not need to spend most of the year teaching the tests. They could focus on really teaching the student the material and not just the test. Teachers are also at the center of the fall of the educational system. There are many teachers out there that care about the success of their students but they are over shadowed by the ones that do not care. The ones that care are sometimes trying to teach subjects that they are not qualified to teach because of the budget cuts and so they are put into a bad situation. Then there are the teachers that just don’t have the qualifications to be a teacher but they are. They have no compassion for the student that struggles, they just pass them on. Students are also to blame for the failure of the educational system because they don’t always put forth the effort. Not all students fail, just the ones that don’t have the support from their parents. They just do enough to get by and sometimes that is not enough. The students sometimes don’t learn as fast as the class is taught but don’t bother to ask questions until it is too late. The cost of a college education is the US also puts a mark on the failure because of the expense is so great. In other countries education above the high school level is covered by the government; but in the US the student is solely responsible for finding the funding to cover the costs. With all the cuts in government funding for schools and universities, they have to make the money to pay the teachers and professors somehow, so the cost for higher education keeps going up. With somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 dollars a year some students struggle between school and working to pay for it. Over in other countries the students don’t have to worry about the financial aspects of going to school. They can just focus on learning. With the lack of funds for students in the US to pursue a higher education the pressure is on for the students to provide for all the educational needs and to survive under all the pressures of life. In conclusion because of the lack of funding for education in the US the system has hit a point that is critical. Unless parents show support for teachers and their students the system will keep failing. If the government doesn’t find a way to fix funding problems in schools and put programs such as music and art to help open students minds the system cannot succeed. When teachers don’t care about the students and just teach the tests, and not everything the students need to learn, the system will come up short. We all need to figure out why these problems are occurring and find a way to make it right our education system will continue to lag behind. We need to put in a little more effort and support in finding the solution to the problems, and that can push our education system back in the right direction. We are on the verge of becoming an under-educated nation, and all we need to do is act and we can change that. Turnitin Originality Report • Processed on: 05-12-10 3:05 PM CDT • ID: 136688137 • Word Count: 934 • Submitted: 1 education failing By Jonathan Hitt   Similarity Index 0% What's this' Similarity by Source Internet Sources: 0% Publications: 0% Student Papers: N/