Education Trends: Strongly Negative, Sprinkled With Positives
The last two decades have brought many changes to the world of education, some of them positive, many of them negative. With respect to the latter, perhaps most revealing is that the United States continues to lag behind other countries in science, reading, and math. There are many factors that are contributing to this drop. For example, a wide socioeconomic gap continues to exist with a growing number of students living in poverty. Impoverished students cannot be expected to learn if their basic needs are not met. Just as the gap in socioeconomic status is widening, so is the achievement gap. Minority students tend to fall behind their peers in academics.
Politicians have not improved the educational system in the United States. For example, politicians and supporters of the No Child Left Behind Act strongly promote standardized testing. Standardized tests perpetuate clustering, so that students of lower socioeconomic status are placed in low-achieving groups. Standardized tests encourage rote learning rather than deep concept learning.
Many politicians insist on taking away teachers’ rights. For example, many politicians want merit pay for teachers. Merit pay does not take into account the natural composition of classes. In other words, some classes inherently have low-performing students. Therefore, test scores would be lower, and therefore salaries lower. Another example of being against teachers’ rights is what happened recently in Wisconsin. Its governor nullified collective bargaining, effectively eliminating better working conditions and tenure. If the US follows this trend, the US cannot be expected to retain and hire phenomenal teachers.
The weakening economy has been detrimental to education. Many programs have been cut or reduced, such as foreign languages. Cutting foreign language education is foolish as languages help us compete in a global market. Other countries require students to learn a second language from an early age, the United States lags behind. Also, class sizes have increased. The student-teacher ratio has worsened, creating havoc for teachers and less personal time with students.
Another factor that greatly affects education is that of technology. Technology has been both a blessing and a curse. Regarding the curse, technology may play a role in widening the achievement gap. Those who are lower socioeconomically have less access to technology. Technology is a huge expense for districts. Thanks to technology, such as phone cameras and text messaging, student cheating has become more sophisticated and harder to detect.
As for the benefits of technology, students can research topics with the push of a button. Never before has learning about any subject been so accessible. Computer programs help students learn new skills. Teacher computer programs allow educators various lesson plans and help keep grades accurate.
A beneficial educational movement, character education, is a response to a negative trend, social incivility. Character education is school-wide efforts to teach students to be part of a community by fostering positive character traits, eg, honesty, trustworthiness, perseverance, hard work, etc.
Education will never be short of trends. Education is a reflection of society and vice versa. As mentioned above, incivility created character education. Technology creates diverse learning experiences. The positives mix with the negatives. It may seem that the negatives far outweigh the positives. This may be the case, but over time trends can change. Let’s hope the trends once again favor the US so we can once again be the leader in education.