Many times I’ve heard that, especially public schools in United States are not good. This confuses me because at the same time you guys have many of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the world. As far as I know, you also have “evolution” topic/subject in your curriculum as well.

40 comments

  1. we’re dealing with more problems than many countries we compared to, tht being said theres a ton of room for improvement

  2. It’s variable. We have many individual school systems. Some are not good at all and some are probably among the best in the world.

  3. The trick with American schools is that they are funded at the local level. This means that a school in a rich neighborhood will have more money and be able to pay for better facilities and better teachers compared to a school in a poor neighborhood. So the sort of education you get in America will vary widely based on where you live.

    Our best schools are very very good. Our worst schools are awful.

  4. Both. It certainly has its problems, but those problems also tend to be grossly exaggerated.

  5. Public schools are paid for by tax dollars. Richer areas usually have better public schools. Inner city and rural schools are usually poorly funded.

    There’s also the issue with densely populated areas having 1,000+ kids per grade. My mom’s graduating class size was 1500 in the lower middle class suburbs of Chicago.

    Whereas I had a class size of 200 in a very wealthy suburb outside of Detroit. So we often had excess to redo the football stadium, get laptops for every classroom, etc.

    This is a super simplified explanation ofc but I hope it explains a little.

  6. If we say they are bad, it’s because we have a high bar to compare them to. I was a public school student across four states and I received an excellent education.

  7. Entirely depends on where you are.

    My district is excellent and I’m really happy with the education my kids will be/are getting.

    Other districts aren’t so great.

    Our schools are funded and governed primarily at the local level. Some districts have actively engaged parents and good funding others not so much. It makes a huge difference no matter how good the teachers are. We have our kid reading in her spare time and go to museums and whatnot. Single parents barely making it don’t have the resources for that.

  8. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that you get out of it, what you put into it, and many aren’t willing to put in the work.

    Plenty of people excel with a public education, so it can’t be that.

  9. Evolution is taught in just about every school in the nation, including most if not all private Catholic Schools. Has been since the Scopes case.

    Just because a poor quality school teaches it doesn’t mean it’s no longer poor quality.

  10. Both? There are some really bad public schools in the United States. There are also some really great ones. It largely depends on where you live.

  11. Was the education itself bad? No it was far above average. Did people do cocaine in the bathrooms? Yes, this is what was bad. This is what most Americans mean by “our school system sucks”. Generally they’re above average at actually getting an end result compared to the rest of the world, they just suck to be at and take the most idiotic routes to get from A to B.

  12. It really depends. There is so much variability here. I honestly think it depends more on the students, their families, and their environments, however.

    For example, my public school district had a really high dropout rate. Yet our magnet schools are considered some of the best in the country. To give you context, at our magnet we would constantly place nationally in academic competitions, most of the students would go on to the most prestigious universities (often with scholarships), and we had amenities like a scanning electronic microscope in our science lab and took field trips to Europe and Asia. Other schools in the same district were considered some of the worst in the state.

  15. Some states are awesome. Some not so much.

    If Massachusetts was a country it’d be in the top 10 public schools in the world.

  16. There is no “American education system” so there’s not really an answer to that question.

  17. It depends… schools are administered on the local level, so there is a vast range of school quality. I’d say in general, wealthy suburbs have better schools than poor ones and inner cities. Blue states have better schools than red states, especially the South. Some of the legacy of bad schools comes form segregation and the forced integration, when many white families chose to send kids to private schools and thus states and local governments gutted public education budgets.

    But in places like the upper middle class suburbs of Boston, New York, Chicago, etc. you’ll find excellent public schools.

  18. It varies immensely.

    > As far as I know, you also have “evolution” topic/subject in your curriculum as well.

    What you “know” does not reflect reality.

  19. Highly variable based on location. In some places, we have outstanding public schools.

  20. It really depends on the state and even the city in many instances. Washington State has some very good schools.

  21. The American Education system is an extremely complicated topic. Some people who say that it’s “Bad” may be talking about issues specific to their local school systems, such as banned books, poor funding, incompetent teachers, etc.

    Some people who say that schools are “Bad” might be referring to problems like Bullying, Teen Pregnancy, Teen Suicide, Low Graduation rates, etc.

    Other people might take issue with the overarching method in which schools are run. They may talk about Too-large classroom sizes (Too many students for a single teacher to properly teach), over crowding, lack of vocational training classes, too many or too few standardized tests, too much parental involvement, too little parental involvement, no food programs for underprivileged kids leading them to go hungry throughout the day, too little or large a focus on physical education, too little or large a focus on STEM subjects, outdated course material, antiquated teaching methods, untested new-age teaching methods, the lists go on and on and on.

    If you ask a dozen people what’s wrong with their school system, you may get a few overlapping problems, but you will also get tons of very specific, micro-management style problems with their local schools in their area.

    —

    If you want MY opinion, I’m going to give you my thoughts from the Big Picture side of the equation.

    – Good teachers don’t get paid enough so there isn’t an incentive for people to learn to be good teachers.

    – Bad teachers aren’t fired when they should be which can literally lead to ruining students life.

    – There is too large a focus on rote memorization in schools and virtually zero focus on learning critical thinking, deductive reasoning, and personal adaptation. This can lead to many students cramming and forgetting material for tests and decreases overall comprehension.

    – There is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR too much politics involved in the education system.

    – Schools in general seem to do a very bad job of actually teaching children their legal rights outside of the Bill of Rights.

    – Schools focus far too much on pushing kids towards collage degrees rather than offering realistic vocational options.

    – Middle school as a whole just completely and utterly sucks for every kid involved. I have never spoken to a single person who has fond memories of middle school.

    – Zero Tolerance policies of any kind very often send the wrong messages to kids. Especially as it pertains to violence. I have seen kids suspended for being the victim of assault just because they were “Involved” in the “Fight” Even though they never threw a single punch.

    – There is far too little focus on mistakes our country has made on the domestic and international scale. Most of the atrocities the U.S. has committed over the years, both within it’s own borders and without, are either glossed over, glorified, or completely omitted from any form of discussion.

    There are many many more issues, but those are some of the bigger ones I’ve found.

    —

  22. There is no “American” school system. We don’t have national control of schools. Or even state control. It’s controlled by local towns for public schools and then private schools can do their own thing to.

    So basically any area of the US could have great schools or horrible schools. Or both.

    Like anything in the internet age, you only hear about the bad things and it gets repeated and repeated.

  23. Since schools are mostly funded through property taxes, places that are wealthy will have great schools, while poorer areas will have worse schools. Plus each state and district have different curriculum. Politics can bleed into the curriculum at schools, that’s why some states will each evolution, the civil war, or civil rights differently.

  26. I went to an American school and I am the smartest person I know, so I’d say they are great.

  28. The public school system is mostly crappy. Charter schools are great. Private schools are usually much better, but not always.

    The requirement for becoming an elemetary school teacher are extremely low. Some degres don’t require ANY math in college except for kiddie math. Which leads to elemetary teachers rarely understanding math. There are some very smart teachers, but unfortunately that is uncommon. Also, a lot of the curriculum is created by government which is aimed at average or below average students. Public schools are not designed for smart students. Smarter chuldren have to go to private or charter schools if they want a decent education.

    Most of the best public schools are in suburbs because they pay their teachers more and have much less displine problems. Urban schools can rarely get good teachers even if they pay well because the teachers that have other options don’t want to risk being attacked/robbed which happens too frequently.

  29. It varies drastically by state. Around me Connecticut and Massachusetts have PISA test scores higher than all other countries besides in math were we were second to to Singapore. Other states performed alot worse leading the country as a whole to be middle of the road among western nations

  30. It’s so bad we continue to dominate the world economy and culture decade after decade.

  31. It is incredibly inconsistent. Even among public schools, the tax base makes a huge difference in funding, so public schools in wealthy areas rival the best private schools. Meanwhile, inner city public schools are overwhelmed with need but have lower funding per student. The kids who need the most get the least, because they are receiving an education funded by their economic peers and their economic status fucking sucks.

    So the US education system *is* that shitty, but it’s *also* amazing. It depends on the exact school your kid is in, and that comes down to having the funds and credit score to buy a home in a really good school district. The United States is pay to play in the vast majority of situations.

  32. I would say it’s uneven. There are some bad school districts and then there are some amazing ones.

  33. I think it’s hit-or-miss, but maybe not always for the reasons you think.

    I received all of my education in West Virginia. West Virginia is notoriously bad when it comes to state-by-state education rankings. That being said, the education I received here in a public school district was wonderful. It prepared me for almost anything I have ever wanted to do. But the “quality of outcome” statistics here rank quite low, and at the time it mostly seemed to me that those bad outcomes were highly correlated with socioeconomic factors affecting the students, not the quality of education offered. We’re a poor state (and school district), and I don’t care how great of an education is offered—many students have vastly bigger problems in their lives than worrying about calculus and Calvin Coolidge.

    I’m not saying we couldn’t do better in many factors directly affecting education, but to really fix the “bad education” statistics, we need to fix bigger problems affecting both students and teachers in their lives as a whole.

  34. It varies wildly, there is no national system.

    Entering the university system requires significant achievement, money or both which means there’s a huge quality and resource filter between it and the general populace seen in k-12 education.

  35. Over all good not great. Select cases best in the world. Select cases surprisingly bad for a rich ass country.

  36. School systems are local. Federal government does have department of education which is technically operating illegally since the constitution leaves education to the states to regulate.

    Despite there being some federal oversight, systems will differ.

    As far as if they are good or bad. I went to public school in Europe. And I think it was better just because there was less homework than in American schools.

    Both systems qualify you for “would you like fries with that?” after 12 years of “education”. The one that wastes less of your time to do so is better.

  37. >Many times I’ve heard that, especially public schools in United States are not good.

    “Many”.

    2 times? 456 times? 1b times?

    >This confuses me because at the same time you guys have many of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the world.

    Seriously, take some time and really look at these two statements you have made. You seem so close to answering your own question.

    >As far as I know, you also have “evolution” topic/subject in your curriculum as well.

    Explain please.

  38. Theres very little that applies to every single school and district. There are PLENTY of “bad” districts (and even bad schools in OK districts or vice versa) and a lot of curriculum is state based. So, you can absolutely have a bad education and blame the system, but not everyone has that experience. Couple this with how piss poorly teachers are paid in many areas and the resulting teacher shortage right now, an overhaul is needed.

  39. It’s common to rag on public schools here, but PISA scores show the US is doing just fine, on par with most other developed & western countries. Some schools suck, some are excellent, and most are somewhere in the middle. It’s easy to dog on schools here when you’ve never experienced schools elsewhere. Kind of like how people will go “ugh the US basically a third world country with a Gucci belt” – I promise you most of those people have never actually been to a third world country.

    When you look at our economy though, it’s pretty obvious they can’t be doing that bad of a job. Science, medical and tech research in the US are pretty much second to none. Our schools could be better, but quite frankly the issue we’re having now is that *too many* people have college degrees, not that we can’t find anyone educated.

  40. It varies. For instance, I was looking at an ad for a private school that listed various awards their graduating class had received. I realized that I had more academic awards individually than they had total awards combined and I had gone to a little public school. That little public school also got me into one of Europe’s top universities.

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