School System Flaws

Faults of the School System

In recent years, America has fallen behind the developed world in many of the core subjects such as math, science, and world history (Owens). This trend is just an effect of the larger problems within the American school system. The American school system has become corrupt and twisted to a point where students no longer benefit, but are detrimentally affected by its policies. Reforms such eliminating negative competition, allowing personal expression, removing unnecessary stress, and focusing on comprehension rather than testing are necessary to properly educate and develop the students within the system. One of the education systems most prominent issues is a result of competition between students. Competition

By forcing state-wide evaluations of students, teachers are forced to teach for the curriculum deemed necessary for the standardized test rather than focusing on more important material or the student’s comprehension (Williams). By requiring these basic tests, teachers must rush a students learning of a subject and puts the focus on memorizing basic facts or equations rather than truly having a deep understanding of the subject. These tests also fail to provide an accurate representation of the student’s ability. Due to the mass number of tests that must be graded and the impersonal manner of it, graders often are forced to look for a strict format that may not appeal to all students. This is apparent in grading essays where the grader is given a strict rubric. If a paper does not follow the strict guidelines but still answers the prompt in a clear way the writer may still lose points. It is unfair to evaluate a student’s academic success based on one test. This becomes an even bigger deal when considering education after high school. Colleges rely so heavily on standardized testing that a lower level student may get into a better college simply because he/she got lucky or the high level student was not a good test

The curriculum often focuses on subjects that more often than not are useless to students later on in their life. Rather than teach students to use pythagorean theorem, schools should teach math that will be used in a variety of fields and then have classes to take that will be more beneficial to student who know exactly what they want to do later in life. Schools also lack classes that prepare students for college and the rest of their life. Many students coming out of highschool lack basic skills such as how to file taxes, manage money, or apply for jobs. These issues could be easily remedied by a simple class that covers many of these essential skills