Katie Scott
10/23/09
4:47 PM
This articles is about how the United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is pushing for an increase in budget for the US Department of Education in order to change the current system and get American students caught up to students of other countries. When assessed on basic competencies, by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), students in the United States are scoring much less than students in other countries. According to the PISA, in 2003, the US ranked 18 out of 40 nations tested on reading. And in science, the US ranked 29th out of 57 countries in 2006. Duncan claims that he does not know the solution to this problem with our education system in America, however, an increase in budget is definately going to need to be a vital part of the improvements.
I think that these numbers are very shocking. If I were to have guessed before reading this article, I would have thought that The United States would have ranked much higher up. I knew that our scores were not the highest, especially in areas such as math and science. However, I did not realize that our students were lagging this far behind. I agree with secretary Duncan that something has to be done and it is going to take money to do it.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/22/public-education-funding-oecd-opinions-contributors-mark-rice.html
3 comments:
I've always wondered why the US have been descending from the top in education. Great post!
This information doesn't shock me as much as I thought it would. I knwo quite a bit about the educational systems in other countries and while we don't necessarily have a bad one, we could have an educational system that's waaaay better.
This doesn't really surprise me, i know several people who grew up in other countries and they all seem alot more intelegent than I. I once had a conversantion wiht a friend who grew up in western Europe and they were amazed that Ididn't learn much multiplacation until I was in third grade. at the same time i feel like children are stressed enough as it is and I do not want to add to that pressure, I think that kids should be allowed to be kids, becuase you are only a child for a little while.
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