Do you think Kentucky is in the upper half of America in terms of education?

 

Do you think Kentucky is looked to as a model of education?

No. No state in the country should be considered a model of education. There are good reasons why our students' math and science proficiency lags far behind those of most of the developed nations of the world.

No. No state in the country should be considered a model of education. There are good reasons why our students' math and science proficiency lags far behind those of most of the developed nations of the world.

 

Agreed. What do you see as the solution?

Agreed. What do you see as the solution?

There is no magic bullet and the topic of what is wrong with our country's education system should probably be left for a thread of its own. Just a couple of my suggestions would be to boot the federal government and the NEA out of local school systems. They push things into curricula that do not belong there and reduce the time spent on teaching students basic skills that equip them to solve problems.

 

Our culture is probably an even bigger handicap than the federal government and NEA efforts to gut our education system in pursuit of higher teacher salaries and better benefits. Students hear from parents, the media, and unfortunately even from many teachers that math and science are difficult subjects. Consequently, too many kids end up pursuing nearly worthless college degrees that they believe will require less effort.

 

I base my opinion that American culture is mostly to blame for our very weak public education system on the fact that recent immigrants to this country dominate academic competition - particularly in math and science, despite their relatively small share of the population.

 

The less value that a culture places on education, the worse qualified high school and college graduates are for prepared to succeed. That is why Washington, DC can spend $29,349 per student and still find that 83% of 8th graders are not proficient in reading and 81% are not proficient in math.

There is no magic bullet and the topic of what is wrong with our country's education system should probably be left for a thread of its own. Just a couple of my suggestions would be to boot the federal government and the NEA out of local school systems. They push things into curricula that do not belong there and reduce the time spent on teaching students basic skills that equip them to solve problems.

 

Our culture is probably an even bigger handicap than the federal government and NEA efforts to gut our education system in pursuit of higher teacher salaries and better benefits. Students hear from parents, the media, and unfortunately even from many teachers that math and science are difficult subjects. Consequently, too many kids end up pursuing nearly worthless college degrees that they believe will require less effort.

 

I base my opinion that American culture is mostly to blame for our very weak public education system on the fact that recent immigrants to this country dominate academic competition - particularly in math and science, despite their relatively small share of the population.

 

The less value that a culture places on education, the worse qualified high school and college graduates are for prepared to succeed. That is why Washington, DC can spend $29,349 per student and still find that 83% of 8th graders are not proficient in reading and 81% are not proficient in math.

 

Sad and funny at the same time. Money doesn't solve this issue.

I know of several substitute teachers who basically work as close to full time as you can get due to the large number of teachers calling in sick, which brings up another point. How can substitute teachers teach any class? I mean they teach any class that a regular teacher calls I. Sick whether or not they are familiar with the subject matter or not, no wonder our educational system is going downhill. When you have someone teaching a subject they don't know speaks volumes IMO.