Problems with the public school

Every once in a while an angry article comes out talking about how terrible the public education system is, how it's a sham, how we ought to get rid of the whole thing entirely.

The first thing that comes to mind when we think problems with the public school system is class size.  Class size makes a difference in children's education. It just makes sense.  If there are fewer students per teacher, the teacher is more able to address the needs of individual students.  Studies show that smaller classroom sizes can have long-term benefits for students as well - including fewer children being "held back a grade" and fewer discipline problems.

Things as simple as differences in learning styles or language barriers can cause huge problems in the results of a test, causing the school to look worse off than it might actually be. Additionally, a Harvard University study found that students in the bottom 10% of achievement were 33% more likely to drop out of school in states with standardized graduation tests. 

And, very simply put, just because a school has a higher test core doesn't mean that the students are learning more.  We all have experienced long periods being taken up preparing for the test. In order to reach these high test scores, teachers are having to instruct students in test-taking skills. During school time, we spent countless amounts of time reading last year's answers for standardized tests rather than learning something.

Of course, of all these under-funding is one of the biggest problems for many schools.  Schools often keep textbooks for up to a decade, meaning that their material is out of date (Here's President Obama's solution to out-of-date books: an e-textbook in every student's hand by 2017).

 

It's clear that there are improvements that need to be made to the education system, and that a lot of these problems are because of a lack of funding and general support.