Fixing America's Public Education System: A Full Assessment

Introduction: Inequities in the Educational System

Our educational system was created to enable equal educational opportunities for all people. However, even a superficial analysis of the system reveals that our schools are rather inequitable in funding, opportunity, and quality. The education of the next generation is the responsibility of the last, and rather than as a single-handed effort, the entire community needs to take an active role. From the teacher in the classroom, to the parent at home, to local school boards, to state and federal governments, change for the better needs to be addressed to ensure the quality of our nation's future.

Teachers' Role in Improvement

Teachers play an essential role in our educational system. They are there to lead, guide, share, and nurture the intellectual, emotional, and whole student through their adolescent academic journey. Teachers contribute many strengths to the system, including their knowledge, vitality, energy, care, and passion for the betterment of children. Most people can remember a teacher who made a positive difference in their own life, and that goal is one that drives many educators. Teachers also bring security to their own field through teacher-led and governed unions. However, the strengths that teachers bring into schools are not often returned in kind.

As employees in the public sector, teachers work in the not-for-profit realm. Naturally, within an organization that does not function for profit, salaries are lower than those of organizations operating for monetary gain. One of the most commonly heard complaints from educators is low pay. The amount of work required to teach using best-practice methods monstrously overshadows the time actually spent with students. This lack of compensation for preparation leads to teachers investing less effort in lesson planning, which in turn leads to a decline in the quality of education delivered to students. The central question is how to increase public school teacher pay to a satisfactory level while maintaining the support of the taxpayers who supply the funding — a particularly contentious issue in areas with aging populations that do not directly benefit from the local school system.

In order to retain excellent teachers while satisfying taxpayers, a community consensus on the issue of teacher pay is necessary. Local and state representatives need to become more actively involved in local educational politics. Teachers are highly educated professionals — with increasing numbers holding master's degrees and even PhDs — yet they earn only a fraction of the salary paid in other fields requiring the same level of education. While a teacher who genuinely teaches out of love for the work is the ideal for every district, those dedicated educators still need to make a living. It often seems as though state government penalizes individuals who choose education as a career rather than the more lucrative path of corporate America.

Parents' Role in Improvement

The role of the parent is to assist their children through their educational journey; however, one of the major issues in education today stems from parents themselves. Parents tend to fall on one extreme of the spectrum or the other. Either they are far too involved in their children's lives — to the point of suppressing their individuality — or they are completely uninvolved. Parents who are overly involved often choose a path for their child regardless of that child's individual interests. These parents believe they are acting in their child's best interest, but they frequently produce rebellious and unsuccessful children, never truly recognizing their child's authentic identity. On the other hand, parents who take no active role in their children's lives often raise children who drop out of school, feeling that no one cares about them or their futures. Such situations are also frequently accompanied by a devaluation of education, which makes it difficult for students to find meaning in their academic work.

In order to improve the role of parents in public education, parents need to be held more accountable for their children's behavior and outcomes. Since parents lay out the boundaries within which a child constructs his or her own life, a parent who models negative behaviors should bear some responsibility for the results. Required parent meetings — not optional ones for those who choose to attend, but mandatory ones for every parent — should be implemented through schools. Parental involvement should even be built into graduation requirements to communicate how essential parents are to their child's academic success. Many parents genuinely wish to help their adolescents navigate the academic, social, and emotional pressures they face each day. Knowledge and awareness of those pressures will foster change through ideas, action, and simple understanding — ultimately allowing parents to better appreciate their own importance in their child's success.

In a true attempt to address community needs, realities, and desires, local school boards are created for the citizens and businesses of the community to ensure that students exiting the school system are prepared to become productive members of society. These boards consist of local business owners, public service members, citizens, church officials, and other key community figures. Although the broader community is represented, the school itself is often lacking in meaningful representation. While the school board's stated agenda is to serve the community, many internal realities — such as standardized testing demands and operational constraints — are not adequately considered, making some agenda items difficult or even impossible to achieve in practice.