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Originally Posted by Infinite_Loser
It's always nice to know what standards people use to judge the US education system. American education-- Whether or not you want to believe it-- Is leaps and bounds ahead of most of the rest of the world. If I'm not mistaken, the US government already spends more money per student than any other country in the world (Correct me if I'm wrong here). Sure, you could probably find some countries with a better education system than the one the US uses, but you won't find many.
The problem with these threads is that:
1.) People tend to look at the education system in their area and somehow conclude that the majority of the US must be same and
2.) People will ignore the good and, many times, exagerrate the bad.
*Shrugs*
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Okay, I'll give you those two points. You're right about those. My experience comes from: I grew up in California so attended the public school system there in the 70s and 80s.
I'm a certified teacher and I've taught in Columbus, Chicago, and now I'm in the Phoenix suburbs.
I'll say that the public schools in the suburbs for the most part exceeds the public education system in the urban areas. Granted, this doesn't mean that every school in the suburbs is better than every school in the city, but you get my point.
I'm most likely to believe that the performance of a school has a lot to do with the socioeconomic makeup of the neighborhood.
Also, our public education system is geared towards the middle class, whose value system is much much different than the value system in the wealthy class and the lower class. What happens is that those with the means send their students to private schools, who cater to their own values, and the rest (for the most part) go to public schools. Now, in the suburbs, the educational system values mesh perfectly with the middle class values, so education works quite well there. In the lower class, however, the education system is still pushing middle class values and that creates a lot of conflict.
There are over 800 schools in the Chicago Public Schools system. If you want an idea and are willing to do the work, here's a link for you to follow:
http://research.cps.k12.il.us/resweb/schoolqry
type in any name of a Chicago Public School and it will give you the school report card.
I'll start you off with some schools to type in:
Bethune
Christopher Columbus
Eddison
Lasalle Language Academy
Chalmers
This is the reality facing most of our students, teachers and parents.