Education in America

While there may be more than one factor that can affect how a student performs in school, the only one that will truly improve the quality of education that student gets in grades K-12 in the American educational system is the level of involvement of the parent. Whether that means the parent ensures their child is behaving at school, going to bed with enough time to get a good night’s sleep or simply making sure their child is doing their homework, the problem will never move towards a solution without parents accepting that their child’s failure in school is their failure as a parent. This seems like a harsh accusation but students’ performance in the American education system has been holding steady if not declining for quite some time now, despite our greatest efforts to throw money at it.
In 2008, the U.S. spent $10,995 on each elementary and secondary student compared to an average of $8,169 for member countries of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). South Korea spent on average $6,723 per student, a noticeable difference of more than $4,000, yet consistently outperformed American students in math, science and reading. If we are spending more on education than South Korea, why are their students scoring higher than our students? The answer is simple: money can’t solve this problem. Children growing up in South Korea are raised in a culture of education. They spend 8 hours a day in school only to come home and get tutored or spend the rest of their night going over school work. It isn’t a choice for children to go to primary school and then on to college, it’s part of their lifestyle. When asked about his school’s dropout rate, the principal of an all girls’ high school said “No one just drops out of school, they may transfer, but to drop out of school is a major disaster.” The statistics back it up. While in South Korea 93% of all students graduate high school, that number drops to 75% in America, more than 1.2 million students each year don’t graduate. This kind of success rate can only be accomplished when everyone around the student pushes them towards that goal. Parents in South Korea not only care that their children go to college, they border on fanaticism that their child gets into the right college. If this mindset were adopted in America it would undoubtedly benefit the students, parents, and society as a whole.
Another option that can help students comes from the aspect of the schools themselves. Making the schools competitive between one another in order to get more students and from that the money their parents spend on school and school related activities will force them to perform better. The outdated system that exists now in which students go to schools depending on where they live isn’t working. Inevitably you get better schools in areas that have more expensive housing and worse schools in areas where houses are cheaper. This is one of the ways in which people with higher incomes get their children into better schools, the other is sending them to private school. Control of the money needs to be taken away from the government, teachers unions, and administrators and given back to the parents, students and taxpayers who will be able to spend their money more wisely than others can. Parents can be given the option to change a school’s management if it’s underperforming. This “parent trigger” will be an ultimatum hanging over faculties heads. If they know that their jobs are in the hands of the people their supposed to be helping and it can be taken away and given to someone else if they don’t perform, that’s enough to motivate them to take their jobs seriously, and there’s not a job more serious than educating those who will lead the world tomorrow. This will tie job performance to job retention, something the education system in America has been lacking for a long time.

In conclusion, the quality of education in grades K-12 will only improve if we start taking individual responsibility for how our children preform and are given a way to relieve teachers who can’t teacher and replace them with their more effective peers. While money does play a role in the big picture, unless it is spent wisely, it’s wasted, as it has been for too long.

The average expenditure per student for public education in the U.S. comapred to South Korea: http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/money-cant-buy-genius/

The South Korean educational experience: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/world/2008-11-18-korea-education-usa_N.htm

School reform options: http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/22/losing-the-brains-race