What should be done about the sad state of American education?

More pizza and soda for lunch.

How do you plan to pay for these improvements?

Whats wrong with US universities? Any list of world leading colleges is dominated by US schools. The U.S. has the best university system.

Also, you seem to believe that college can only be measured as a ratio of dollars in vs dollars out. This is not how you measure edu-cation. This is how you measure vo-cation.

Professional education in colleges had not been the traditional role of college.

We were #1 in education in 1970, so all we have to do is look back to see what we were doing right then and copy it, problem solved.

Pay? Most of what I suggested include cutting cost. Our university system is BIG, that doesnt make it the best.Our universiites run the gamut from really shi'ty podunk state U - to Harvard.

Has to be as wrote:

How do you plan to pay for these improvements?

How does cutting costs improve science education and literacy, increase the number of highly qualified teachers, and improve distance learning opportunities?

where to begin...

less kids going directly to college - more take free online MOOCs for "13th grade" to be sure they are prepared to college/have the desire

dumb high school kids spend 12th re-learning the crap they missed before

embrace failure and provide other tracts instead of force-feeding

stop stigmatizing people with only high school degrees

abolish the department of education and give the money back to the tax payers

change the mentality of education from "pass-exam get-degree" to a lifetime of learning

get rid of liberal-bent majors (gender studies, social work, african american studies, etc). You can minor in these as long as you have a real major (no lighter than english).

label each major with the average starting salary of the previous year's class (include descriptive statistics beyond mean)

immediately end all forms of public student loans - they've already done enough damage, we don't need anymore.

The problem with education in this country is that the country as a whole does not value education as much as it should. The nation is not serious about fully investing in our children. It will never be #1 again because other countries are doing a better job at meeting the needs of their children.

1. People say we need better teachers but are not willing to invest in the profession to attract more talented people. Why would talented people be interested in being a teacher earning a starting salary of 34K when they can be making 100K in the corporate world? The only people in the teaching profession are those who are willing to sacrifice a lot because kids make them happy and sadly we don't have enough of those folks in the world.

2. Conditions in the classroom have to be improved. Most new teachers quit in the first 5 years of the profession. The reasons vary, but many see that it's difficult to work and really educate kids in a class with 30-40 students. How do these kids get the help they need if they only have one adult for that many students?

Anybody who has been in a room full of kids knows that a room with 40 students in no longer a classroom, but a zoo. No matter how good the teacher is at classroom management, she/he can't control that many hyper middle schoolers, let alone get them to pay attention.

Class sizes need to be manageable. between 15-20 kids is what a teacher can handle and teach well.

Reducing class size takes dollars and that's not what we as a society are willing to spend. We're ok with spending billions more on military budgets, but when it comes to improving education all we can say is cut, cut, cut. Our priorities are not in education. That's the simple fact, so no matter what we try, it will not work if we don't fully fund those education initiatives.

Abolish all forms of government intervention in the field of education. At a minimum, that includes cutting all public funding of schools, abolishing all government departments and agencies that impose educational standards and control the curriculum, repealing all teacher licensing laws, and abolishing the institution of government student loans and government-guaranteed student loans. Every aspect of education should be turned over to the free market.

In a capitalist society, the biggest and most lucrative market is for products and services that target the largest classes, i.e. the NON-RICH. Observe that there here are far more Camrys sold than Ferraris. The profit motive in a competitive, unregulated free market is the ultimate incentive to raise industry standards. Autonomous individuals are capable of making much better decisions as to what type and length of education is appropriate for them given their ambitions, abilities, and means than a central government run by self-serving politicians and bureaucrats who actually care nothing other than positioning themselves politically.'

Government-run education has failed, unquestionably.

For Universities I would get rid of most General Education class requirements for degrees and invest way more in online courses.

For High School I would greatly speed up the pace of teaching for honors students and allow them to graduate much sooner. 4 years is a joke.

A country "as a whole" does not value anything, education or anything else; only individuals hold values. And many people disagree with yours.

The reason "we" can't invest more in better teachers is because public education suffers from the same flaw inherent in all socialist schemes: there is only so much stolen loot to go around. Schools in a free market (in which private schools wouldn't have to compete with public ones) would be able to pay their teachers more if their finances were self-generated by their own PROFITS.

"But we should raise taxes to provide more funding to public schools!" Nope. There were always be enough opposition to taxes to prevent that from happening.

i think that we all know what has happened to education since the civil rights movement

TAA wrote:

For Universities I would get rid of most General Education class requirements for degrees and invest way more in online courses.

For High School I would greatly speed up the pace of teaching for honors students and allow them to graduate much sooner. 4 years is a joke.

Why get rid of Gen Ed classes? Many types of classes satisfy the GE requirements and students benefit from taking courses outside of their intended major. It is in these classes that students learn what they really want to study as well as learn to be scholars, thinkers and leaders. There is more to college than pushing the technical training to be a dentist or hedge fund manager. No job is one dimensional.

Indi believe there is a role for online courses in the near future but I don't think it will be used to improve education, generally. I work in higher Ed and the enthusiasm for MOOC's has definitely faded in the last couple of years. I believe that online education is a great fit for continuing education for professionals or as a resource for traditional students.

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories – next door to Washington State University – is running its own algebra, physics and writing classes for workers.

Founder Ed Schweitzer, who started the company as a professor of electrical engineering, has long been skeptical of what students are paying to supposedly learn:

Until recently, Dr. Schweitzer was involved in all the hiring decisions, presenting every engineer who wanted a job with a problem to solve. The experience, he said, made him wonder if some universities needed “to have a degree recall program, because sometimes [the schools] are shipping defective products.”

Abolish all government funding and indirect subsidies like government-backed student loans.

Well you did ask?

a. compulsory military duty

Don't know about you? But can any of you think

back on the last day of school having a teacher

that made you cry? I can.

That's the teacher you want.

You teachers out there need to keep a journal of your last day of school

speeches and memories. There's a gold mine in the sky :)

The problem with education in the US is inequality. The quality of education in schools can vary so much from state to state, and even within schools in the same county they are in different areas (high vs low income). While up-to-date technology is nice, I feel that it's not entirely necessary, as the money used to constantly upgrade computers, etc could be better spent in pedagogy. Universities from the English-speaking world are great, but that comes at a cost to students, who have to bear the burden of the loans they've taken out to pay for tuition, etc. Something needs to be done about lavish spending by universities to reduce the cost for students.

If you want to see a sad state of education, come to France. Every area is affected, from primary all the way to higher education.

This is coming from an American who did his bachelor's in France.

Just as other posters mentioned above, we stop telling everyone they need to go to college. Not everyone is cut out. Look at the Germanic countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland): they have strong apprenticeship programs that give people real, marketable skills. Then the Hoch/Fachhochschule which are like universities, but focused on practical applications rather than fundamental (i.e., basic) research.

I find there's a massive difference between France and Germany, which I ascribe to their respective education systems.