Education always has and always will be the "silver bullet". If you figure out how to fix it, it will solve most of our problems. However, it's not just as easy as saying "give the parents more incentive to help their kids more".
I have a kid in grade school in Northern California, just north of Sacramento.
The first issue that comes to mind is the Hispanic population. Even here we have a rather large Hispanic population, where parents do not speak English. In grades 1-4, Hispanic kids are being held back a year to "catch up" because English isn't their native language. In these cases, the Hispanic parents are unable to help - Homework is in English, and if they don't speak English, well, that's not gonna work. (I have a lot of Hispanic friends with grade school kids, and they don't understand anything about American schools - Band, choir, PE, sports, etc - It's totally foreign to them.)
Another issue is currently in the California school system, they are using what's called "New Math". If you don't know what I'm talking about, I can't explain it to you. It's no longer "What is nine times nine" but instead "Why is nine times nine eighty-one?". I don't understand it at all, and frankly the teachers don't get either. My kid just wrapped up fifth grade, and is doing algebra already.
There was a report this week about fourth graders failing history tests.
And this link here says it all:
Quote:
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most fourth-graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure
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My kid is in fifth grade, and just started to study Abraham Lincoln in the past four months - Not in fourth grade. In fourth grade they study how America was discovered and the Native Americans, and in fifth grade they study how our nation was founded. It's not that kids are dumb, at the fourth grade level they just haven't studied it yet. This seems to be the same exactly program I went through thirty some odd years ago, because I remember making "dioramas" about Native Americans in 4th grade.
As for the CEOS.... They aren't stupid. Why pay an employee an American $70k a year plus benefits when you can pay someone outside of the US $7k?