Where is the United States educational system on the outstanding-failure scale compared to the rest of the world?

Public education could use some reform because its curriculum is currently based on The Industrial Revolution. We, as a country, are now in a technological revolution and I would like our schools to reflect this in their current affairs.

In my opinion , the United States educational systems are not the best compared to worldwide education, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. is failing. It’s a fact that North Korea, China, Singapore, India, etc. have better educational systems, but does that mean that U.S. educational systems are failing?

The only real way we can compare the U.S. system with the rest of the world is the PISA test. This test shows that wealthy schools in the U.S. rank in the top of the world and schools with poor students rank with third world countries. Most other countries have a more uniform outcome than we do in the US. It’s true that students from the U.S. don’t score as well on the PISA international test. In fact, ever since the first attempt at international test comparisons (not an easy thing to attempt), the U.S. has always been roughly in the middle of the pack.

The U.S. has led the world as a dominant economy and dominant force in innovation. I don’t think standardized tests mean much at all and the U.S. educational system is mediocre compared to the rest of the world, according to an international ranking of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and countries.

Hence, the U.S. system continues to have superb results in overall national impact. So back to the question of why other countries have better educational systems than the U.S. and whether that really means the U.S. educational systems are failing. Umm, no! Some might say failure, but the facts state that U.S. educational systems are roughly in between outstanding and failure and increasing little by little.

—

As Grace mentioned, the U.S. is simply mediocre when it comes to education. I don’t know about anyone else, but for a first world country, I think we should be higher on the scale. When it comes to educating our future generations, we should constantly be trying to get a leg up.

Hear me out; we put so much money into being the best military but maybe if we put more into our ‘mediocre’ education system, we would finally be smart enough to maintain world peace. According to The National Priorities Project, In 2015, military expenditures accounted for about 54 percent of our discretionary spending. In contrast, education accounted for only six percent of the budget. Although I see the importance of having a strong dominant military, that’s just insane. Although those statistics may have changed a bit since then, we need to figure out what we value as a country and apply it to our budget.

Budget is not my only issue relating to this system. Another thing Grace mentioned was that the PISA test  shows that wealthy schools in the U.S. rank in the top of the world and schools where poor students rank with third world countries. Not only is that screwed up morally but it is sad to think about. It’s like we almost set up poor children in our country for failure and then expect them to succeed. Paying more money for school should grant your child better education than others, but as a first world country that has a human right to education, poor children should receive better education than a third world countries, even if they can’t pay for it.

I could go on for days about why I think our education system is failing us but the truth is, we have it better than most people worldwide and we should be grateful for that, if nothing else. – Tiegan