MY DAY: NON-BREAKING NEWS
By Dr. Ester Davis
What is the matter? What is the answer? Why are students in the “greatest country” in the world irregardless of race, creed, color, economic status continuing to fall behind their universal counter parts? United States student global ranking declined to a new low this week as reported by the PISA. And while being slightly ignored in the past, this year all major news networks reported on the doom-day report. The Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide evaluation of children’s scholastic performance, performed first in 2000 and repeated every three years. It is a view for improving educational policies and outcomes. PISA aims at testing in three competence fields: reading, mathematics, science, the three major highly successful activities global markets are looking for.
As you can well imagine, the report is quite controversial, but there has been no ‘breaking news’ since 2003. The latest results, from 2012, show that U. S. students ranked below average in math among the world’s most developed countries. Teenagers in places such as Vietnam have outpaced their American counterparts in their average scores in math and science. Students in Ireland and Poland did better than the U. S. in all three subjects measured. Amazingly applauding is that other countries that were behind us, like Italy and Portugal, are now catching up, while we are falling further behind.
I am obviously a part of the American public that is gravely disturbed by this news. I have reports from the PISA dating back to 2003 and the improvement is non-existence. In America, we spend near $115,000(US Dollars) per student. That’s outspending most countries, but this does not, has not, translated into better performance. One country, Slovak Republic, spends about $53,000(US Dollars) per student. And if honesty takes a seat at the table, most of these countries cannot affords these dollars.
Every problem deserves a solution or the effort is needless. What should America do? Sure, we can invest in early education, lower college rates, but we can also ‘bite the bullet’ on the tough decisions. Place stronger emphasis on math and less on competitive sports. That’s real breaking news.
