Because social status means more to kids than education in school.

There are several factors to consider. What other country on the face of this earth….

1. Creates laws that caters to the needs of children who do not speak English. Think about it…how are they going to do well on a test administered only in English when they aren’t taught in that language?

2. Integrate special needs children into the classrooms and includes their test scores in the national average? This certainly isn’t done in Korea or Japan. As a matter of fact, in many countries, special needs kids are left completely out of the picture!

3. Have a population made up of children who come from either single parent homes, or homes where both parents work long hours. There is no parent support at home!

4. Believes that being “Politically Correct” is more important that doing what is best for a child.

there are many reasons why the US is falling behind. you touched on some of them.

I think it all boils down to lawyers. Those that go to law schools and years of studying are dragging the educational system down.

Teachers can’t do or say anything in the classroom that might make lil’ Johnny feel bad. no scolding, correcting, you can’t even tell him he’s wrong. you can only use positive reinforcement. “Johnny, I think it’s great that you answered the question of who was the first president, and although Michael Jordan would be a great president, can you think of anyone else who might have been the first president of the US? chopped down the cherry tree…” if he goes home and says the teacher said he was wrong, his parents will sue

in turn, teachers get frustrated and stop trying. however, the principal can’t discipline them or even suggest a better method of teaching or heaven forbid fire them b/c they’ll go running to the union who in turn will block the move pending a hearing and/or lawsuit.

then you have the politicians arguing over every penny that should go to the schools to run better programs and get better materials. instead, they’re busy “redirecting” those funds to causes their lobbyists are paying them to fund.

Speaking as an educator, the full blame can’t be on the Educational system. There isn’t as much parent involvement as there used to be. Students are coming to school not receiving the morals from home. You’re right as educators, we are limited to what we can do with the students. Even with instruction, students come in without the slightest interest to learn so that limits what can be done in the classroom. When parents and educators get on the same page, there should be an improvement

Even thought my answer may imply I’m a racist /bigot I’m not just telling it like it is. Ur answer it has nothing to do with money. U can lead a horse to water but u can’t make it drink. Our test scores are what they are because of minorities in general plus all the illegal aliens..Example, if we sent all the Mexicans in the U.S. back to Mexico the I.Q. of both countries wud go up. If u went to every school in this country and separated the scores by kids from European decent and then everybody else, the test scores for the whites wud be much higher but they will never do that because they don’t want the truth to be known. It’s in all the news papers showing the high drop out rates for blacks and hispanics to prove what I say. All the top scoring countries have something in common, their populations aren’t considered melting pots.

Hi, are you interested in improving the system?

I am. And I need a lot of help. Contact QUEED if you want to make a difference.

see www.QUEED.org – and our plans for opening a Charter School

Why American Education is so bad:

1) American education’s official point is

The Fluid Intelligence (smartness) could not be developed. You born with it.

It contradicts with believes of educators from other countries as well as with common sense.

As a result – here education is considered as mere training

In other countries – as brain creativity development

2) Technical Progress!!!

School could not compete with TV and Video Games. Look, TV and games keep your attention by sending high level pulses into your brain – bright colors that change; extreme situations; strange artificial sounds. You brain stops react on regular level signals. You brain lives in “virtual world”.

If you spend in that “virtual world” several hours per week – you are not able to solve any complex problems because you will fail to concentrate as much as higher order thinking requires. So, if you live in “virtual world” nobody can give you good education. You will not handle it.

I teach using European approach – if my son plays few hours on computer – everything is useless – his brain does not function the way it used to. However, he still can solve all the problems that he has in his school… When we found it, he stopped playing video-games and computer games. Our rule is – No TV, no computer/video games/game boy. As a result, he is able to learn.

3) Political games in schools. To make everybody happy, teachers frequently are not allowed to teach students the way they would like to.

someone already mention to you that teachers are not allowed to make student feel bad…

4) There are a lot of historical reasons that I know of. Thus you can check “social promotion”. Officially it is not here anymore… But really it is there, and it is alive…

Whole language approach … Officially it is gone, but a lot of my students could not read because it…

The problem is that people don’t want to do what works anymore for whatever reason. You need order in the classroom. That means that the students have to respect their teacher, be quiet, do their work, etc. Kids aren’t going to do that on their own, so you have to discipline them. Not go psycho-nuts abusive on them, just use normal discipline techniques.

But discipline and rules and all that go against our default lazy, indulgence culture. So many people in education think that setting any kind of rules or structures of order qualifies as barbaric, outrageous, oppressive, etc. They have no practical sense, just their trendy theories. So, the trend for failure will continue. (Also, parents not reading themselves to set an example or encouraging kids to do their school work, leads to what we have today.)

It’s sad. I think we’re headed for a total breakdown in society, if our society rests on the education levels of it’s members. Will anything reverse these developments? I hope so, but I’m not counting on it.

Partly parents don’t make the kids mind, we would rather spend our money watching sports than putting into schools, to many parents on drugs or working two jobs. America is in real trouble, and in more ways than one!!! The government knows that uneducated people are less likely to vote or pay attention to what is going on, so they can rape the country and nobody will know or if they do, they won’t do anything about it!!

for me far more than anything else i would say there aren’t enogh parents involved in their kids entire educational process from helping and checking homework at home to discipline, to parent teachers conference to passing tax levies

because you curriculem is harder than most countries and you have more pressure put on you at a younger age.