Sunday, March 27, 2016

Free 10 points yay

Funny quote of the week: "Everyone line up by color!" - Ms. Valentino 2k16

On a more serious note, let's talk about our education system. There's a reason America's education is only ranked 14th in the world. In fact, the highest Western nation on the list comes in 5th (Ranking America). The main problem is that our country fails to distribute the education funds equally to all socioeconomic groups. The gap between each social status is getting bigger and bigger, but the government does nothing about it. As Rebecca Strauss, an associate director of a CFR program, states that "wealthy students are achieving more, and the influence of parental wealth is stronger in the United States than anywhere else in the developed world." While the majority of developed countries invest more resources into lower-income school districts, the U.S. does the exact opposite. Here, most K-12 public schools are funded through local property taxes while the private schools are funded by rich upperclass families.

In STEM fields, the US is ranked 36th globally.
This chasm, however, does not stop at high schools; it continues to get larger in college. The gap in annual per-pupil spending between the most and least selective colleges is now nearly six times larger than 40 years ago. Even though it is becoming increasingly necessary to have a college education for success, fewer people are able to afford the hefty costs to essentially get a piece of paper. This results in a vicious never-ending cycle that will continue through generations. Since the poor parents will never have earned a college degree, they will not make enough money to send their kids to school, in turn causing their kid's kids to not get an adequate learning experience either. America's government needs to find a way to provide higher-quality education for all Americans, rich and poor, without expending the tight budget.


1 comment:

  1. Hi Eric,
    I really enjoyed how you took a topic discussed in class and researched it further. It is pretty shocking to see how poorly the education system is in terms of funding considering how well off America is compared to most of the world.The cartoon accurately depicts how everyone is talented, but sometimes they feel like failures due to things such as standardized tests or GPA's.

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