Paper 1

America’s Public Education System: Made by Adults for Adults

            With America’s status of a world superpower, it would be expected to offer top-notch education to all its citizens.  However, the failing status of America’s public school system is not a secret.  Statistics have been created and published ranking America near the bottom of all developed countries.  The quality of our nation’s public education is wallowing under an unequal disarray of public educational standards and the bickering of adults making the needs of our children a last priority.

            Although America is seen as a world superpower, our public education system is failing.  Basic math and reading proficiency rates are far below acceptable in this country.  According to the film “Waiting for Superman” our nation’s capital has only 12% proficiency in reading and Mississippi is only sporting 14% proficiency in math.  Although these statistics represent the lowest proficiency ratings in the country, not even a quarter of the children in these states will become proficient in basic subjects such as math and reading.  Not only are these statistics shockingly low but there is a large discrepancy in proficiency ratings between all of the states proving the state of disarray that is America’s public education system.

There are many different aspects that affect our public education system.  The film “Waiting for Superman” explains the process as follows:

The Federal Government passes laws and sends money to the states but the states fund schools too, and set their own, often conflicting standards. And there are more than 14,000 autonomous school boards making school governance a tangled mess of conflicting regulations and mixed agendas.

            All of this division and separation of influencing aspects governing our public education system makes it impossible for any reform to take place.  This is the nation of The United States of America, and yet within our current public education system, a child can fail a test at one school while passing a similar test at another. 

            “Waiting for Superman” also has a segment where Dr. Robert Balfanz at Johns Hopkins University describes schools where over 40% of students don’t graduate on time as “dropout factories.” It is alarming that an American public school could possibly be described as a dropout factory at all.  One of the worst schools described in “Waiting for Superman” was Alain Leroy Locke High School in Los Angeles, California.  Locke’s students read between a first and third grade reading level and 800 to 900 students out of 1,200 would drop out between ninth and tenth grades which happened for fifteen years.  Keep in mind this is only one out of over 2,000 of America’s “dropout factories.”  If a school is putting forth such devastating numbers they should not be allowed to continue without reform, for the sake of the children living in the areas that require them to attend these “dropout factories.”

Statistics such as those at Locke High School tend to be more common in less privileged areas.  In Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work,” a child’s quality of education is shown to be dictated by social status.  Anyon’s essay reveals real-life examples of differentiating learning environments, depending on the social status of the children attending.  If you’re a child lucky enough to be born to well-to-do parents, you will receive superior education urging critical thinking and abstract thought, according to Anyon, preparing you for managerial- and CEO- type positions.  On the other end of the spectrum, if you are unlucky enough to be born into a destitute family, you will receive basic education that requires specific answers, pushing critical thinking to the wayside.  A child cannot be expected to have any academic confidence if their teachers don’t even have enough confidence in the students’ abilities to even attempt teaching more than basic facts and concepts.  Once again, the children are not a priority having been put behind social standards and their expectations.

Even though a 0% dropout rate may be an overzealous goal for a whole nation to achieve, having one school, such as Roosevelt High School in California, which was extreme enough to be mentioned specifically in “Waiting for Superman,” with 57% of their students not graduating, is not acceptable.  Figures that alarming indicate a flaw in the system, a flaw serious enough that our nation’s leaders of the public education system need to drop everything and address it immediately.

            As indicated in Anyon’s essay, one teacher in a “working class” school, where parents hold blue-collar jobs such as factory positions, was quoted as saying, “simple punctuation is all they’ll ever use.”  Go to another school, such as one Anyon describes as an “affluent professional school” where the parents’ careers are along the lines of lawyers and cardiologists, and the students are encouraged to express and apply ideas and concepts, be expressive and thoughtful, all while being able to choose appropriate methods and material to complete their work.  Anyon’s essay includes descriptions for three more levels of education designated by class, which range between the working class and professional affluent schools exampled above.  There is nothing united about The United States of America’s education system.

Consider all of this chaos mentioned so far and teachers’ unions have yet to be discussed.  Teachers’ unions had started in an honorable position, wanting better situations and supplies for teachers so they may provide better education to their students.  Although they may still have a place in the system, they have become a hindrance to the very thing they were originally fighting for. 

One major issue, especially in New York, is tenure.  A teacher is granted tenure after just two years of teaching. Once they are granted tenure they cannot be fired, even if they produce no results for the children.  “Waiting for Superman” mentions a horrifying example of this in New York.  Six hundred tenured teachers are awaiting disciplinary hearings in a reassignment center.  These teachers collect full salaries and accumulate benefits while waiting around an average of three years for their hearings, costing the state of New York $100 million a year.  No other job guarantees you a position, even if you are performing as required.  Layoffs happen all the time, and yet these teachers can be completely incompetent without a passing thought about what it does to the children.  $100 million a year could provide all New York students in one of Anyon’s “working class” schools an education equivalent to those in the “affluent professional” schools.  This situation in New York is yet another example of the backward priorities of the education system in America.

There is a phrase, “our children are our future,” that has been uttered countless times over the years, and so far our actions regarding the public school system have made that phrase hypocritical.  If our children are our future, then we must not care much about our future, or else the quality of education our children are receiving would be a first priority. 

A child’s quality of education should be based on the fact that they are a citizen of the United States of America, not their individual social status that Anyon’s essay proves is occurring, with tenured teachers they’re stuck with or funding issues at their school.  A child’s future should not come down to chance, like the lotteries that are run for acceptance into a charter school when their only other option is a system set up to make them fail.  Watching “Waiting for Superman” and looking at those children’s faces when they don’t win the lottery out of the public education system is devastating.  Every child should have the same opportunity, regardless of their family’s status.

Our children are our future and with the system as it is, our future looks bleak.  There needs to be a new system put in place, the United States Public Education System, where all schools across the country have a standard for students and a standard for teachers.  All American citizens need to be given the same opportunity to receive quality education from quality teachers, regardless of their social status.  Those standards need to be decided upon and then, and only then, what is needed to make those standards happen should be discussed.  What teachers, principals and educational boards should all conform towards the new United States Public Education System, rather than the other way around.

Our education system should not be made by adults for adults.  All of the differences and disagreements among adults should stop.  An unequal disarray of educational opportunity should not be given to our nation’s future generations.  Children need to be a first priority because they are our future, and not a single student deserves to be the victim of these adult issues.