Since 2000, the American high school graduation rate has been steadily on the rise reaching an all-time high of 93% in 2020; however, we need to begin acknowledging that the high graduation rates being touted as success is misleading and an outdated metric of educational achievement in America. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, we saw the drastic increase of the American high-school graduation rate over the last 20 years. This is solely due to the focus on test scores and standardized testing marks with a focus on test material more so than actual learning. A curriculum focused on test scores emphasizes on passing a standardized test rather than learning the necessary skills needed to be successful citizens.
Statistics clearly show that the United States education system is terribly broken. In 2019, only 37% of high school seniors were proficient at reading. In the same year, only 24% of high school seniors were proficient at math. These numbers further decreased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. How is it possible that there is a 93% graduation rate of high school students when only a very small fraction of these students are proficient at reading and math? Why are high schoolers graduating when they can barely read, write, or do math?
When education is discussed among politicians vying for candidacy, the real problems facing the public school system are never identified. In fact, much of the rhetoric pontificated by each party lacks the substantial data and facts needed to put forth practical solutions that actually make sense and provide relief from the problems within the education system today. With respect to education, most of the rhetoric from politicians is not aimed to fix a problem, but to rile up and generate outrage among their base. Not even Americans understand the problem that exists nor do they understand the magnitude of problem.
Furthermore, the men and women who are at heart of the education issues who witness the problems on a daily basis are excluded from the discourse. In a nation where the institution of family is failing and where the standards of parenting have been greatly diminished, it is preposterous that teachers are not involved within the conversations surrounding the problems of public school education. Teachers spend almost the same amount of time with children as their parents, are tasked with educating them, and equipping them with the skills needed to be productive citizens in this country, but not one politician on either end of the political spectrum has suggested to listen to their experiences in the classroom. What makes matters worse is that teachers are never consulted about the education policies in spite of these policies consistently producing failing results.
On the right end of the political spectrum, much of the talking points with respect to education hover around the culture wars and not education itself. For example, both President Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis have waxed eloquent about gender, race, and sexuality being taught inappropriately in schools. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, but it usually focuses exclusively on what schools shouldn’t teach, rather than on the fact that they currently can’t seem to teach, period.
The Democrat party is even more hopeless. Like Republicans, Democrat rhetoric with respect to education has been predominantly based on creating policies to rectify disparities that exist among race, identity, or class identities by using tax dollars in a charitable way to address those disparities. However, unlike the Republican party, none of these initiatives addresses the real problems occurring in education. Although the Biden Administration has sought to advance “educational equity” within the administration’s education policy, it has only addressed student loan forgiveness, redistributing tax dollars towards low-income and predominantly minority school systems, and ultimately prioritizing certain groups of students based identities rather than addressing the issue around learning.
In order to fix the quality of education, several things have to happen, and unfortunately, not all of them are entirely within educators’ power. For example, parents need to become a more integral part of their children’s education, and they must do it in ways that go well beyond what’s currently defined as being “active” within that child’s education. The culture of scholastic excellence starts at home; children should not be entering school as if their minds are a blank canvas. Parents must be the foundation that schools build on top of. This means extra schoolwork at home, and above all, children should know how to read before they enter grade school. This works for groups like the Jewish and Asian communities, who value formal education; why should it not be the norm in America?
However, when it comes to education policy, there is also the problem that the current metrics of success in American education are both archaic, and poor indicators of actual success. Tests can be gamed, and a student’s score may not correlate with any actual skills in reading, writing, and math. This is particularly true of the disastrous Common Core standards that were rammed through by President Obama, which do nothing but confuse children (and often, even teachers and parents) with their arbitrary impenetrable assignments and questions.
Further, to the extent that tests are used as metrics, they must have actual teeth: they should be taken at the end of elementary, middle, and high schools, and if students cannot pass these tests, they should not be eligible from promotion to the next level of school. Standards must be enforced; and not only enforced, but raised across the board; America’s standards are tragically low, compared to the rest of the first world. How are American children supposed to compete with students from other countries in the global job market when we have minimal scholastic expectations?
And lastly, the amount of education taxes that parents pay should be an itemized bill sent at the beginning of every school year. If tax payers understood the costs of educating children in comparison to the return on the investment of educating those children, American attitudes towards education would change overnight.
It is vital that education become topic of discussion as we inch closer to the election in November, and not just as a football in the culture wars. Yes, there are many things that should never have a place in American education. But the presence of objectional books in a school library is only a problem if the students in that library can read in the first place. If we want them to go on being able to od that, then need to revive the standards and methods which once made education in this great nation the envy of the world.
