Plamondon 1

Charlie Plamondon
Mr. Conrad
ERWC- Period 5
1 May 2016
United States Education- Failing
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.
Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. -Martin Luther King Jr. For
decades, education has been a pinnacle achievement in the United States. For decades, American
education has ranked first on a global scale. But now and for the past few year education has
been on a decline. As the rest of the world keeps improving their education system with new
methods of teaching, less standardized testing, and a higher focus on higher education, the U.S.
is quickly falling behind. Federal mandated legislation is the main problem. Common Core is
one of the biggest problems that is crippling the Education system here in the United States.
Teacher's Unions, limited funding, and a lack of motivation, harm education just as much. The
future that lies ahead is unpredictable. As time progresses on a global scale the United States
needs to let go of its current education system and adopt new ways of learning, teaching, and
promoting higher education. Education is a disaster and must be reformed. American Education
is failing, it is failing students, it is failing the economy, and it is failing the sustainability of the
United States.
Twenty years ago the U.S. ranked first in the world in the number of young adults who
had high school diplomas and college degrees. Today we rank ninth and seventh, respectively,
among industrialized nations. (DeWeese) In just twenty years how could this be? On reason is

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that we are excelling in the wrong categorise. Our focus on funding and class size is too large.
We, [rank] second in the world in the amount we spend per student per year on education =
$11,152. The U.S. is also a leader in having some of the smallest classroom numbers in the
world. (DeWeese) We spend so much with little benefit. The graph to the right shows the
amount spent on education and the correlation to how students score on test. (Avila) We allow
teachers unions to limit class size so teachers dont have to work so hard and allow them to keep
raising their wages. Along with
that we are ignoring the root of
the problem. Tom DeWeese states
in his article that, It is simply a
fact that over the past twenty
years America's education system
has been completely restructured
to deliberately move away from
teaching basic academics to a
system that focuses on little more
than training students for menial
jobs. The fact is, the restructured
education system has been designed to deliberately dumb-down the children. (DeWeese)
Schools spend so much time on teaching hypothetical problem that may never occur in real life,
students read books so old that the educational value in them has diminished, and the most
common life skills are never taught. Speaking from my personal experiences, I have never been

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taught how to do my taxes, pay bills, learn how to budget properly, buy a car or house, etc.
Instead of education teaching life skills and basic skills to survive modern society we read
Shakespeare and learn how to find the angle of a triangle. Overall, as time goes on it only gets
worse. Students are unprepared for what lies ahead after High School.
One of the biggest problems facing education is Common Core. In an article titled
Thinking About the Common Core Standards subsection Pros and Cons Marie Deifer writes,
It seems that the main reasons for this push for common core curricula standards in education
are more closely connected with international competition than with the desire to improve our
teaching and learning skills as a nation. (Pros and Cons) Federally mandated Common Core is a
fail piece of legislation that is hurting students. One reason is that common core standards, do
not guarantee improvements in testing on the global scale or even a national scale.(Pros and
Cons) The push on testing is far out of hand. Common core forces teachers to teach material so
fast and and a large rate just so students know all the material for the test: The arrival of the
tests will pre-empt the already too short period teachers and schools have to review the standards
and develop appropriate curriculum responses before that space is filled by the assessments
themselves. (Karp)
Common Core is also a program created on ideal situations/aspirations in education by
people who have funding and students already ahead of the learning curve. (Pros and Cons)
This is saying that common core actually benefits the student already ahead and hurts the ones
that are behind. Its is a system that doesnt allow for students to accel on their own and hurts one
that dont want to try to begin with. The curriculum between states is also different. Common
core standards do not represent a meaningful improvement over existing state standards (Porter)

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Some states have higher scores while others have lower scores, in the end it is back to the same
spot overall as before Common Core was created. Jose Vilson put it:
People who advocate for the CCSS miss the bigger picture that people on the ground
don't: The CCSS came as a package deal with the new teacher evaluations, higher stakes
testing, and austerity measures, including mass school closings. Often, it seems like the
leaders are talking out of both sides of their mouths when they say they want to improve
education but need to defund our schools. . . . It makes no sense for us to have high
expectations of our students when we don't have high expectations for our school system.
Vilsons view on Common Core is accurate. What so many think is a good idea do not
understand what comes with it. Like he states Common Core is a package deal schools and
states do not get to choose what is best or most practical. They are told what to teach and how.
If they do not comply their funding gets cut and then the student suffers more.
One major change that occurred with the rollout of common core is Multiple rounds
of budget cuts and layoffs that have left 34 of the 50 states providing less funding for
education than they did five years ago, and the elimination of more than 300,000 teaching
positions. (Karp) There are also many different types of schools in any given state. Schools
that are in lower income districts and communities suffer the most while schools in districts
with relatively high income per capita only get by. When funding gets cut it is the student that
suffers not the school. Defunding schools in general is not a solution to the problem. Fixing
where to money goes, how it is spent, and creating a way to better save and limit waste is a
way to limit the amount of many a chools gets. But cutting funding based on test and
performance is not the answer.

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Another major issue with United States education is not just Common Core but how to
properly prepare student thrive on a global scale. A new Council on Foreign Relations wrote a
120 page report titled U.S. Education Reform and National Security. In the report the council
states that, The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to
compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its
leadership role (Klein) The ability for the United States to keep its current position on a
global scale is very dependent on how it educates in future leaders. Educational failure puts
the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk,"
warns the Task Force, chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools,
and Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state. The country "will not be able to keep
pacemuch less leadglobally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester
for too long,(Klein) Both Klein and Rice agree that at our current rate the United States will
lose its grip on many foreign matters including the economy. Both agree that education
reform is a must to ensure sustainability in United States. The report also listed many
disheartening statistics on education. One of which states that More than 25 percent of
students fail to graduate from high school in four years; for African-American and Hispanic
students, this number is approaching 40 percent. (Klein) With one fourth of our students
unable or unwilling to succeed at a level of education that is achievable by anyone is
shocking. These individuals then go off to work at a low paid unskilled job that in many cases
is very hard to get. Another fact that the council found regarding college bound students
clearly shows that education is at an all time low:

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-A recent report by ACT, the not-for-profit testing organization, found that only 22
percent of U.S. high school students met "college ready" standards in all of their core
subjects; these figures are even lower for African-American and Hispanic students.
-The College Board reported that even among college-bound seniors, only 43 percent met
college-ready standards, meaning that more college students need to take remedial
courses. (Klein)
The Council also stated that, The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security
fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global
awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion When all combined the United States is on a crash
course when it comes to education. With less and less student graduation and a lower percent of
students are prepared for higher education it becomes clear that something is wrong.
American Education is failing, it is failing students, it is failing the economy, and it is
failing the sustainability of the United States. Common Core is a disaster. If not only fails student
but schools and communities. New reform to education is need now to higher the graduation rate
for high schoolers. And to raise the percentage of students that are better prepared for college and
the real world. Education is a disaster and must be reformed.

Works Cited

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Avila, Alexander De. "The Graph That Shows How Badly U.S. Education Is Failing." New Mic.
N.p., 30 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 May 2016.
DeWeese, Tom. "Public Education Is Failing." Education. Ed. David Haugen and Susan Musser.
Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "American Education Fails
Because It Isn't Education." NewsWithViews.com. 2007. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web.
29 Apr. 2016.
Karp, Stan. "The Problems with Common Core." Rethinking Schools. N.p., 20 Sept. 2013. Web. 29
Apr. 2016.
Klein, Joel I. "U.S. Education Reform and National Security." Council on Foreign Relations.
Council on Foreign Relations, Mar. 2012. Web. 01 May 2016.
Porter, A. C. (2011). In Common Core, Little to Cheer About. Education Week, 30(37), 24-25.
Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
"Pros and Cons." The Common Core. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.