American Education: Not Worthy of an “A”

In the height of the economic recession circa 2008, the CEO of a McDonald’s supplier experienced difficulty finding competent workers for the modern factory jobs. The position entailed basic communication skills, literacy, and the ability to solve a problem. These traits were lacking in the recent high school graduates of Oklahoma public schools. In rapidly evolving and fast-paced financial markets, a quality education has become the foundation for success, and the education being offered by U.S. schools proves to be a faulty base for structure. In Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World, Ripley demonstrates the American education system's need for rigor by providing personal narratives …show more content…
PISA, or Program for International Student Assessment, was developed by a scientist named Andreas Schleicher. Schleicher promises PISA can reveal which countries are teaching students to think for themselves by asking questions that require more creative thinking, including solving new problems in math, reading, and science. Ripley herself took the PISA test that has been administered to kids across the world, and she verified PISA tests critical thinking. She reported that the test demanded problem solving skills and the effective communication of ideas and opinions. Several tests existed before PISA, focusing more on memorization, and “those tests usually quantified students’ preparedness for more schooling, not their preparedness for life” (Ripley 15). Over 300,000 teenagers from forty-three different countries have participated in the PISA testing, and the results puzzle people worldwide; Finland scored the highest. American teenagers rank twenty-sixth in math, seventeenth on the science section, and twelfth in language arts. This is especially alarming as proficiency in math is considered the most reliable indicator for future career success. Furthermore, the scores reveal the American system’s dependency on socioeconomic status to determine the quality of education. The results of PISA show, “a gulf of more than …show more content…
Ripley’s discussion of these standards reveals the American education system’s lack of prestige and effectiveness. One constant factor in the highest achieving education systems is the extensive schooling of the teaching staff. Finland, the highest scoring nation on PISA, has not always had such high standards for educators. In the 1970s, Finland’s teaching colleges were of mediocre quality; consequently, the entire education system was average. Unlike the U.S., Finnish officials took the initiative and rebooted all teacher-training colleges. Each program was either dropped or made highly selective, only accepting the best and brightest. In the decades following, Finland reached levels of academic excellence rarely seen in any nation across the world. The country boasted when a Finnish teacher reached the highest level of education, and every teaching college is as prestigious as an Ivy League school, pulling from the top ten percent of high school classes. Furthermore, an economic recession resulted in less government regulation in Finnish schools, and the highly educated teachers flourished under the autonomy. In the U.S., programs like No Child Left Behind would be rendered useless as the schools would be in the capable hands of the teachers. Therefore, raising standards for teachers not only advances