Education Web Resources

Disillusionment with Public Education Growing in the US?

The media has been reporting heavily that swelling numbers of parents feel dissatisfied with the public education system in the United States. How does this affect the children, many experts wonder? If we look at the high levels of dissatisfaction as speaking to a basic problem in education then it becomes very clear that the issue could well be more than one thing, but a combination of factors. Lower levels of funding prove to be upsetting for both administrators and teachers who want more resources available not only for better wages, but also to enhance the curriculum and the buildings themselves in efforts to help students learn more effectively. When budgets are slashed, as has been the trend in the recent economic down turn, then students end up bearing the brunt of things by being forced into large classes that are difficult for a single adult to manage.

This, in comparison with the results of the testing over the past couple decades, has left many arguing that the problem is under qualified teachers and academic administrators. These faults, they say, are compiling to create a perfect storm in which children struggle to learn and are often sent first to counseling for any behavioral issues and then off to be prescribed drugs which are intended to modify their behavior. For those on this side of the debate, it appears to them that it is parents who are not helping children get a solid foundation in discipline that they can then apply to their studies. This is, in some respects, an age old debate that has been going on since the days when people first began educating children in systematized groups, but it is definitely getting more intense in the US today.

With so many teachers, students and parents being upset with the system, it remains unclear exactly what must be done despite the consensus that action is indeed needed.

05.10.2010. 09:27