Education plays a fundamental role in the development of any nation. History is witness that those nations who did not recognized the importance of education were doomed, and education played a key role in the success of the developed nations. A successful country like America faces many challenges regarding education. Some of these challenges are: how to better achieve educational opportunity, and to find ways to deal with such problems and educational dilemmas for American children.
To find the answers and solutions to these problems we can not ignore the dialogue of reforming of schools, instead, new ways of education, restructuring of American schools, and recommendations to improve might be the only answer to these problems. In the following paragraphs, problems like weak curriculum and poor standards in the schools have been identified, and recommendations have been made to eliminate these problems.
Also the problems and errors regarding the distribution of funds by the government for the schools have been addressed, and recommendations have been made that these funding should be distributed equally and accordingly to the states. The federal government should take this issue more seriously and assist the states on a greater level. It is a very sad fact that even now when we have entered the 21st century, a first world country like America which is supposed to be a role model for the rest of the world is facing the problem of poor standards in their schools such as goals, expectations, and requirements.
There is a great contradiction on people’s standards vs. the school’s standards. People set high standards that are very hard and sometimes impossible to achieve by students and teachers, whereas some schools do not match these standards and even pass kids who cannot read or have poor educational skills. In order to have high academic standards there has to be high performance in public education systems. The system needs to be changed fundamentally.
Teachers can play an important role and should come together on a common platform to achieve a common goal and that is the improved quality of education. Good communication between school, school boards, and school administration is very important, so teachers can be heard and listened to. School should only hire highly qualified and proficient teachers. Students are usually introduced to a weak curriculum, most of the times they end up taking nonacademic courses than academic.
School days are very short and because of poor standard in teaching students lack the opportunity to learn material in efficient ways. Some of the recommendations to make the system more efficient are to increase the number of days in school year, students should be allowed to take special courses and they should not be restricted to stay in general educational programs only. To make the curriculum strong it should include the maximum number of required academic courses. The requirements have to be very content. There has to be tougher disciple and smaller classes in order to eliminate the problem.
Policies and programs should be controlled, and counselors should have to have control over curriculum, and how the teaching occurs. Other recommendations to improve education include strong leadership by principals of school. Along with the teacher’s proficiency in the area of teaching, there has to be staff harmony. To motivate teachers toward these changes, their school life style has to be upgraded too. Teachers should have their own office their own phones and better working conditions and attractive salaries. State should get greatly involved in the public education as well.
Graduation requirements for students should be set by the state, and local districts should also have the ability to control schools. Local counselors should be given more authority and they should be authorized to hire or fire principals. Parents with low incomes who are unable to give their children basic school education should be assisted financially, and children should have more freedom to communicate and interact with teachers. Groups in the school should be more flexible depending on the student’s abilities.
The same teachers should stay with a group of students for two or three years so they have a better chance to learn the weaknesses and strengths of the students, and it is easy for them to help the students along the way. Middle schools should be in the separate buildings. Efficient high schools should be encouraged and assisted in their efforts whereas the ones who are doing poor as far as standards are concerned should be shutdown. All the mentioned recommendations of high standards, comes the high prices. Financial issues cannot be ignored in the real world.
All these reforms and the implementations of new ways of educations are possible if the financial obstacles are taken care of. Currently funding for schools comes from three different sources: it comes from districts, state, and federal government. 40% to 60% comes from district or property taxes, 60% to 40 % comes from state taxes, and 5% to 15% comes from federal taxes. “In some states there is five times as much spending on students in some school districts as in others $15,744 versus $2,932 during 1994-95 in Illinois, for example” by Patricia Albjerg Graham, article#1.
If we observe the above data, it is very noticeable that federal government is playing a less active role in financing the education. One way to provide high quality of education is that federal government should get more involve with the current schooling system. Parents in general public can play their part and instead of criticizing the present system, they should elect the candidates in the government who give higher priority for the education and reserve more funds for the improvement and reforming of the school systems.
