The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Solution to Education in America
Mathias Sanchez Ramos
Florida Gulf Coast University
Dr. Allison Bacigalupi
IDS 4910 – Integrated Core Senior Seminar
Spring 2022
Abstract
The American Education system is one of immense highs and catastrophic low. Part of the
American Dream that so many who come to this country seeking a better life for them and their
family attempt to find and discover for themselves. Education used to be the pathway towards a
successful career, in an era where a high school degree opened countless doors, and college
degrees allowed you to create new doors. That era has long since passed, with the oversaturation
of high school and college graduates, the value of a degree has never been lower, regardless of
the career path of the individual. Students have been graduating, but none of them have been
learning, and in this article attempts to describe the growing pains of the education system in the
United States in an isolated vacuum. Identify the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Solution to
the modern problems with the modern education system.
Keywords: American Education System, Highschool Degree, College Degree, Modern
Education, Modern Student, Issues within American Education, Retention Rates of Students in
America, Value of Degrees in America
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The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Solution to Education in America
“We should by now have learned that we cannot force
education upon anyone against his or her own will.” Jergen Herbst, Author of `The Once and Future School
350-Years of American Secondary Education`
There is a love of learning, shared among all humans. Learning is a passion most humans
have. Like many people living in developed, first world countries, with the wealth to afford
formal education, without the stress of basic needs hovering over me, I was able to indulge my
time in learning as much as I can, based on both my interest, and what was required from me.
Though I never was satisfied with the education I received, especially during Primary and
Secondary school. It seemed too rigid, to stale, and frankly outdated. There was never a time I
felt challenged for the right reason. Most of the challenge from school was learning to manage
multiple high-level courses, increased workload, extra curriculars, personal social
responsibilities, and just personal time. This in turn, made my enjoyment of learning into a
crutch, as I would try and enjoy as many subjects as I wanted, but would suffer the consequence
of being a “gifted” student despite never feeling like I was any more or less intelligent than any
of my peers, including non-gifted students.
I always wondered why that is. Even as I finish my college experience, I must admit it didn’t
feel any better despite being free to choose my subject of study, because the curriculums and the
methodology was still just high school but for people who wanted something more challenging. I
aim to better understand why I felt the way I feel, if I was alone on this subject, and what can be
done to improve it?
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Review of Literature
As I read through many published articles on the trends of the education system during
the late 20th and throughout the 21st century, I compiled a list of ideas that I recognized most
articles shared. These ideas stem from different research done, as well as statistics from
different organizations on the effectiveness of different levels of education, and the response
of the students based on their education. Not only the parts criticized, but the parts praised as
well. The idea of this writing is not to demonize the American Education system, as it is very
well crafted. The issue I stand from it is its execution.
Why do we go to school?
I believe in basic education, as an educated society leads to better innovations and quality
of life for not just the citizens of the nation, but the nation including its economy, its
resources, its environment, and its identity. There is a reason why the ancient Spartan
warriors were known as “warrior poets.” They were not uneducated barbarians; they were
trained in both mind and body because they are two sides of the same coin. It stems to argue
that those who are uneducated, can claim ignorance towards their viewpoints and opinions on
the world and the events that unfold, and as such they are justified in their ignorance because
they truly do not know better. This is not a fault on their own but stems from what a lack of a
proper education can result in. I also understand that there are increasing viewpoints against
public education due to certain people feeling that it acts as an indoctrination camp for
certain ideologies and the rise of homeschooling, even when you disregard the COVID-19
pandemic, paint a picture of the public’s opinion on public education.
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Who designs schools?
“No child left behind” act of 2001 paved the way towards a future where more students
graduate high school and go on to bigger and better things. I believe that it is both one of the
most fascinating and crippling bills ever implemented towards public education. The bill
gave the Federal government the autonomy the enact certain reforms towards the public
education, mainly primary and secondary education, and allowed for certain standardization
of education across the country. The bill itself was well meaning though its results speak for
itself. In 2015 the bill was literally “left behind” as the Obama administration enacted Every
Student Succeeds Act, ESEA, which replaces the autonomy of the federal government and
dumps the education issue back onto the states, with federal financial support. The states’
education agency is now the main benefactor to the wellbeing and education of their
students.
This change stemmed from backlash against the CLB act of 2001 due to the dissociation
between regulators and students, “due to the over reliance on standardization test and exams,
which became a blight on students who had no interest in exams or were not very good test
takers” (Giroux, 2006 pg. 4), as it would cripple their chances on both graduation and the
belief in their own abilities. The government agencies in the US tend to have a disagreement
in the way things need to be run, and when they bicker, the students begin to suffer as a
result.
Standing for reform apparently means supporting rigorous testing, a back-to-basics
curriculum, higher standards, more homework, more science and math, more phonics,
something called accountability, and a host of other often daunting initiatives. Some
educators worry about the fallout from these measures, such as the proliferating plague of
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standardized testing, but don't know how to oppose them without casting themselves as
obstructionists clinging to a failed status quo.
Consider the analogy, for example, between liberal and conservative approaches to crime
and to education. On crime, one side says, "Start with the criminal. Ask what turns people
into criminals, what motivates criminals, how we intervene in that process, and how we can
alter the conditions that promote transgression." The other approach says, "Never mind who
the criminals are: State the rules, catch the violators, and punish them hard so they won't do it
again."
When it comes to schools, one side says:
"Start with the student. Ask what motivates kids, what blocks
them, what gets them to muster their own best learning resources." The
other approach says, "Never mind each particular student's wants and
needs: Post the curricula, test all students, and punish those who fail."
(Ansary, 2007)
Testing provides another revealing example. Teachers have always used myriad formal
and informal tools to see whether kids are learning what is being taught. No one is against
assessment. But testing in the context of today's school reform is not about finding out what kids
know; it's about who gets the test results.
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What is the goal of education? Many Americans believe that the goal of education
is to teach America’s youth a variety of critical thinking skills that will ideally enable them to
achieve success and become contributing members of society. To evaluate what students gather
from their learning experience, America’s educational system employs the use of a multiplicity
of assessments, ranging from standardized tests to essays, projects, and other examinations
created by individual teachers across the country, a critique by CaseStudy.com states how
“America’s educational system places high value on testing precisely because it is believed to be
an indicator of retention; teachers use tests to determine how much students have learned in
class” (2018). American society at large equates high test scores with high intelligence and vice
versa. I feel testing is important primarily because it challenges students to demonstrate their
understanding of what they have been taught. Having said that, I believe American education is
test-driven.
Only on-site teachers can really make a broad ongoing assessment that gets at a range of
achievements and takes the individual into account. By contrast, “uniform standardized testing
whose outcomes can be expressed as simple numbers allows someone far away to compare
whole schools without ever seeing or speaking to an actual student” (Ansary, 2007). It facilitates
the bureaucratization of education and enables politicians, not educators, to control schools more
effectively.
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Who is school designed for?
Many people believe that a good education leads to a good life. It is something we are
taught to believe, and something that many of us hold very dear. As mentioned previously, we
discussed who stems to gain from education programs, and usually the students are the last piece
of that puzzle. But what makes a good student a good student? What makes a bad student a bad
student? I truly believe in the idea that there are simply bad students, not just bad teachers. Some
individuals truly were not made to sit 8-hours a day, 5-days a week in the same classroom
listening to the same individual speak on the same subject for hours on end, only to be handed
assignment to do in their free time at home, along with the plethora of other assignments by other
individuals whose classes they also must sit through for hours on end, 5-days a week, 8- hours a
day.
There is a fine line between laziness that comes from adolescence and a true lack of
interest in the process of education. This can be easily proven when you discuss the interest of an
individual, they will have millions of things they are interested in and not one will be a subject
they are currently studying in school. These can come from a variety of reasons but the main one
the articles seem to focus on is a general disinterest. A child has “no choice but to go to school
until the age of 16, and most will choose to finish out of obligation, because its what they’re
supposed to do, and to not be left behind by their friends” (Kridel & Bullough, 2007 pg. 13-14) .
Unless the individual themselves is a first-time graduate of their family, which is common in
low-income households, or migrant households, they are doing it out of social obligation. Once
someone is forced to do something, regardless of how they might have felt about the situation
beforehand, they will most likely grow a disdain towards the task and will do anything and
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everything in their power to cut corners, or disregard assignments if they can get away with it.
We call this “senioritis.”
History of Stigma in Education in America
Historically, you went to school because your parents were wealthy enough to send you,
or your family had enough pull/power to send you to school. The education rates in America
since its inception till around the mid-20th century, post WW2, was relatively low. Generally,
only the rich and powerful were able to afford an education, and “the rest of the common folk
tend to focus more on trade-oriented careers.” (Herbst, 1997 pg. 227-228). This created a stark
separation between the “educated” and “uneducated.” Uneducated people did not refer to
themselves as uneducated, simply lacking a formal education, but educated individual did refer
to them as uneducated. This stigma bleeds into today with those who have not finished high
school or did not wish to pursue a college degree are viewed as lower-class members of society,
because they are not a part of the system that other people are. The system they believe is the
only way to be accepted as a functioning member of society, which allows us to better ourselves
and our community. This of course, off the backs of those “uneducated” who are required to
keep society functioning.
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Education as a Business
As mentioned previously, what do those who design education programs/curriculums aim
to gain from designing them the way they have been. What is their true purpose? Is it to teach the
minds of the nation’s youth? Or to earn a profit off the labor of underpaid and underappreciated
teachers?
“Schools are like factories. They take raw materials (kids and
textbooks) and, through years of education, forge a valuable product:
young adults prepared for college, life, and work. In this analogy, teachers
work the assembly line, supervised by the principal.” (Camp 2014)
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the US Department of
Education, found that “of the eleven million children ages 15-24, 4.7% of them dropped out of
secondary education in 2017. Approximately 523,000 ex-students” . (Rumberger, 2010 pg. 45)
In defense of the education system, this is only an increase of 0.7% from 2010, an increase of
only 83,000 students, or the total student population of FGCU, times five. The National Federal
Student debt is currently calculated at 1.6 trillion dollars, and roughly 13.3% of national
graduates are unemployed as of 2020. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, was enacted to curtail
the decreasing graduation rate of primary and secondary students, as well as to superficially
inflate the public education system’s quality, as during that era, “41% of secondary students
claimed to be unsatisfied with their education. The average salary of a college graduate in
Florida in 2019 is $45,000, and the cost of living in Florida in 2020 is $55,255.” (Unger, 2008 pg
145)
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“This is the trend of American Education. Waves of students unsatisfied with their
learning experience. Drones of college graduates of STEM degrees, unable to find employment.
Thousands of young adults, in crippling debt.” .” (Gray et al., 1999 pg. 92)
People rarely associate education reform with the business world. State and local
governments have traditionally held the reins, with varying levels of input from the federal
government. Therefore, it may be surprising to learn that this country’s most consequential
education reforms over the past half century have closely tracked regulatory trends in the private
sector.
In a recent paper, Stephen Sugarman of the University of California, Berkeley, School of
Law traces the progression over the past half century of five regulatory strategies for education,
which he asserts mirrored contemporaneous business reform approaches in the broader U.S.
marketplace.
Sugarman analogizes the historic lack of equal educational opportunity for many students
to “market failures” in the business world that require corrective regulatory action. Education
reforms, when successful, can correct these failures and yield positive results, such as a more
highly skilled workforce and a better-informed populace. He begins his analysis with the
“adversarial legalism” approach, which in the 1960s shifted power from local school boards to
judges to end racial segregation in U.S. schools. Empowered by Brown v. Board of Education,
reformers brought lawsuits seeking “equal educational opportunity” for Black students.
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Without subsequent political enactments to change practices, however, courts became
less useful regulatory tools in education. A judge could order desegregation, but courts could do
little to noncompliant schools other than shut them down, a result that, of course, would have
harmed the students the orders were meant to serve. Sugarman notes that housing policy
reformers saw a similar combination of “limited judicial reach and reduced judicial reception” to
their claims, which doomed adversarial legalism in the housing industry.
As tensions between parents and local school boards rose, Congress shifted power to
education policy bureaucrats, Sugarman writes. The idea behind this “command-and-control”
approach was that government-employed professionals knew how best to serve the public
interest. These agency-backed bureaucrats employed “sticks”—direct demands on regulated
entities—and “carrots”—conditions attached to monetary provisions for regulated entities.
In education, federal and state officials gave categorical grants to local schools—the
carrots—conditioned on those schools improving outcomes for racial minorities, low-income
students, and special education students—the sticks. In 1965, Title I of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act provided increased aid to low-income students, but legislators attached
elaborate accounting and reporting requirements to ensure the funds reached those students.
Noncompliant schools could lose funding if they failed to accommodate these students.
This change happened just as food stamps, Medicaid, and other government programs
shifted from command-and-control systems in which the government controlled the means of
distribution of goods and services to systems in which consumer-citizens were empowered to use
their government-provided funds to buy those same goods and services from businesses.
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This market-oriented “choice” model exploded in the education sphere with the rise of
charter schools—which Sugarman describes as private schools receiving public funds. Often run
by private non-profits, charters can contract with for-profit school management organizations to
serve their students.
Sugarman writes that,
“While relatively freer from the command-and-control constraints
of traditional public schools, many charters have suffered from
mismanagement and sometimes outright fraud, given their reduced
oversight and often ambiguous testing criteria. Moreover, Sugarman notes
that research does not clearly establish that competition from charters
consistently makes public schools improve.” (Sugarman, 2019)
Sugarman then outlines the early 2000s approach of “outcome-based” regulations in
which private industry was required to meet federally determined government objectives. Given
the unintended negatives of unchecked market-based competition, regulators sought to
encourage efficiency without constraining the private sector. For example, to slow climate
change, governments required firms to obtain permits to emit CO2 while also limiting the
number of permits available. This scarcity motivated companies to find creative solutions to
reduce their emissions without sacrificing profitability, Sugarman asserts:
“No Child Left Behind seemed like a viable bipartisan initiative
that could work, but testing issues and other irregularities plagued its
administration” (Sugarman, 2019)
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According to Sugarman. He presents NCLB as a cautionary tale to businesses using outcome-
based measures, warning that unless the right outcome “can be defined, measured, and not
seriously scammed,” failure is certain.
Sugarman lastly considers “management-based” regulations that emphasize both
procedure and outcomes. Sugarman describes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2011
Food Safety Modernization Act, which requires food processors to adopt their own food safety
plan and document their compliance with that plan, with input from third-party auditors. Visiting
federal inspectors can offer further suggestions, but the food processors decide how to fix any
issues.
Sugarman cites California as an example of a jurisdiction that employed a managementbased education strategy. California in 2014 shifted from a basically uniform per pupil funding
structure coupled with large state and federal categorical grants to a state funding structure that
gave additional weight to English language learners, low-income students, and students in foster
care. Schools receiving increased funding must adopt three-year accountability plans showing
how they will improve outcomes for these students, Sugarman explains. These accountability
plans must address a minimum of eight general goals, with execution left to “local control.” Due
to the program’s novelty, Sugarman notes that definitive conclusions about its effectiveness
should only be drawn after more time has passed.
Even though many of the problems animating these reform movements persist, Sugarman
views the reinvestment of local authorities with some power—subject to state and federal
checks—as a good sign. He suggests, however, that realities like high income inequality might
continue to hamper reform efforts, and he notes the added challenges reformers may face with
the proliferation of virtual instruction.
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Educators typically take issue when their schools are called businesses. Nearly all schools
are non-profit, and educators take pride in working purely on behalf of the public good. But we
are, in fact, businesses. Rather than deny reality, we should seek to embrace what other
enterprises have done to succeed and incorporate them, where possible, into making our service
offerings better meet the needs (current and future) of our customers. At the very least, we must
learn to maximize our efficiency and effectiveness as teachers by beginning to view our schools
as competitive businesses offering a precious service- namely, education.
Businesses operate by providing a product or service to their customers. Schools operate
to provide education (a service) to students (customers). However, the customers are not actually
students but rather parents, guardians, and families. Less evidently, taxpayers are the most
important, yet often forgotten, customers of education as we all know that an educated public is a
safer, more affluent, and happier one. If we are to acknowledge this, should we not expand our
schools’ service offerings to not just educating adolescents between the ages of five and
eighteen? Could we provide educational services to parents, custodians, CEOs, the incarcerated,
politicians, and the rest of our broader communities?
To fully discharge our duty as educators, we must identify and incorporate all available
ideas and methods. We must serve all customers rather than just the traditional and obvious ones.
What services can your school borrow from the private sector to provide to a broader array of
customers?
The EDUCATION business is a business these days considering the way that the point of
convergence of preparing center these days are not around giving the best tutoring to their
understudy anyway the point of convergence of teaching center are around giving ranker or
advancing those cherries on top had taken teaching starting there preparing center. In any case,
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when in doubt, the cherry on top gets incredible engravings by his own determined exertion and
self-study. The mark of these guidance local area is to attract understudies by making them fool
by abandoning the paper that this child had taken preparing from our preparation place other
days same child yet other preparing place gave a business that this child had taken educating
from our preparation place.
Futureproofing the Future + Argument
The education system has improved in recent years but is mired by traditional programs
and functions that are no longer relevant or efficient in this fast-paced world where the students
can become more well versed than the teachers. How can we expect to keep up with the demand
when the supply of learning is so low? I believe that many of these answers come to
mismanagement. Mismanagement of resources, of wealth, manpower. There is a stigma in
education and the need for it, and how that need can be exploited, both intentionally or worse –
unintentionally. I believe that the education system can begin to get better, to provide a wellrounded education to students who are interested in the subjects being taught, while still
providing a source of revenue for the state/nation without turning it into a business model.
Which approach will improve education? Whether a particular alteration is an
improvement depends on what is altered and who's doing the judging. Different people will have
different opinions. Every proposed change, therefore, calls for discussion.
The necessary discussion cannot be held unless the real alternatives are on the table.
Today, essentially three currents of education reform compete with each other. One sees
inspiration and motivation as the keys to better education. Reform in this direction starts by
asking, "What will draw the best minds of our generation into teaching? What will spark great
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teachers to go beyond the minimum? What will motivate kids to learn and keep coming back to
school?"
In this direction lie proposals for building schools around learners, gearing instruction to
individual goals and learning styles, pointing education toward developing an ever-broader range
of human capacities, and phasing in assessment tools that get at ever-subtler nuances of
achievement. Overall, this approach promotes creative diversity as a social good.
This is the America we are raising our kids in. This is the future of public education.
“Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in
commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being
overtaken by competitors throughout the world. …… The educational
foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of
mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. … If an
unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the
mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have
viewed it as an act of war.” (Ansary, 2007)
Not accounting for individuals who pay for college because they do not qualify for aid or
scholarship, requiring them to obtain employment outside of college, and if that employment
does not pertain to their major, likely an internship that likely does not pay them fiscally, but in
`experience`, experience that is required because education is expected, so it has almost no value.
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Ask executives why they are so committed to improving the public schools, and you are
likely to hear an explanation that includes a good measure of enlightened self-interest. Their
analysis is simple and straightforward. In a demanding competitive environment, U.S. companies
cannot prosper unless the schools graduate a continuing stream of well-educated, selfdisciplined, motivated young people. Students who finish high school with minimal reading,
math, and communications skills will not be able to work effectively as part of a team, operate
sophisticated machinery, solve problems, or take initiative in behalf of their customers. In short,
they will not be able to do today’s jobs well, let alone tomorrow’s.
The problem with this reasoning is that the chronology is off: the skills crisis it forecasts
has already arrived. Nearly three-fourths of the people who will be at work in the first decade of
the twenty-first century are already on the job. The economic future of the United States depends
more on the men and women in the country’s factories, offices, and shops right now than on the
skills and attitudes of future high school graduates. If today’s workers can do today’s jobs—and
tomorrow’s—their companies will thrive. If they can only do yesterday’s jobs, sooner or later
their companies will fail. Most of the U.S. work force is prepared for yesterday’s work.
The academic skills that business finds unacceptable in today’s high school graduates are
the same skills employed workers possess. If this statement sounds implausible, given all we
have heard about the steadily worsening condition of the schools, consider these findings from
the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Since 1969, NAEP has regularly tested the
educational achievements of fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders in the country’s public and
private schools. Its findings, published in Accelerating Academic Achievement: A Summary of
Findings From 20 Years of NAEP, contradict the conventional wisdom: academic performance
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in the United States has not fallen off dramatically. Overall, student achievement levels have
changed very little in the past two decades.
In math, reading, and writing, test results have been basically stable since the 1960s. In
science and civics, students lost ground in the 1970s but regained it in the 1980s. While genderrelated disparities are almost as sharp as ever—girls, on average, write better than boys; boys, on
average, outdo girls in science and math—performance gaps among racial and ethnic groups
have narrowed perceptibly, mostly through gains in basic skills among black and Hispanic
youths. Nevertheless, the remaining gap is huge. On average, the academic skills of black and
Hispanic high school students compare with those of white middle school students, not with their
white high school peers.
Thus, it is not the performance level of students that has declined. Rather, the demands of
the external competitive environment have increased. Twenty years ago, U.S. companies could
hire graduates who performed at this level without compromising their competitive capabilities.
Today they cannot. The degree of competence that the averages reflect is too low to equip
students to work successfully in self-managed teams or to use new technology to the fullest
possible extent. That is one reason more and more companies are testing applicants’ basic skills
and requiring some college or technical training for entry-level jobs. But until competition forces
the issue by requiring dramatic changes in the way companies operate, managers often fail to see
what this change implies for existing employees. Then skills deficits that have remained well
hidden become unmistakable, and the education system in America, fails at the one job it was
designed to do. Maybe in the future we can see reforms, but only if those in power can see the
virtue of reformations, despite the profitability of today’s teachings.
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