Without reform America will fall behind other world powers. We will fade out of the world political stage. We will be at the mercy of other more powerful nations. Of course, this is an exaggeration and would take decades to come to be. Our system simply isn’t working. American education at all levels is an amorphous blob of ineffective practices. When we live in the wealthiest country on earth, but are very middling in education, it’s an obvious indication that there’s a problem. Politicians tend to promise reform, but for years there’s been no real effective change.  There’s one concept that, if applied correctly could revolutionize our education system: quality over quantity. When that idea is inverted then there’s a lot less efficiency in the machine that is our education system. In order to have insight on this topic we have to start at the basics and build to a solution. We have to talk about the problems with the current system, goals for a new one, compare those ideals to what’s being practiced by other countries, then we can come up with some potential solutions. Now let’s dig deep into the nitty gritty issues of American education.

There are scores of problems with our current education system. It’s hard to figure out where to begin. American schools are making a plethora of mistakes that could be easily amended. It’s been like this for decades. We spend too much time in classrooms and at brick and mortar schools. It’s a common charge for schools and policy-makers to think that if students are in class more, they’ll learn more and perform better. The data simply doesn’t support this. According to the Center for Public Education’s data from a 2011 study, students in the United States spend more time in school than nearly all comparable nations, and significantly more than some of the top global performers. A study by Drew Desilver of the Pew Research Center, “How Does the US. Compare to Other Countries?”  shows that our performance is worse than other comparable countries and pulling even with very lackluster systems. Quality time is better than quantity of time in school. To boot the U.S has more funding than almost all these schools. America puts more money into our education than almost all other countries. According to a 2013 OECD survey the U.S. spends more than 12,000 dollars per student. And while spending is important to success in education, it has to be quality spending. In an expansion of an analysis of a statement made by Jeb Bush in 2015, Politifacts tells that countries that spend less and more than the U.S. still outperform us. It ties back to the idea of quality over quantity, quantity of spending doesn’t necessarily equate to quality performance. Quality spending is much more effective. The other countries are spending more on teacher training and student resources. The U.S. is putting more money into things like security and overhead. Another problem with the U.S. system is the amount students are made to learn. With yearly syllabi compared to other countries it’s evident that American children are made to learn more, yet even with more time than other countries they can’t learn it. Most of what is learned is forgotten within a week of learning it. Japan has taken great strides to create practical, logical course plans. Once again, it’s a matter of quality course standards versus a quantity of standards. And it works, Japan is consistently one of the highest ranking countries internationally. The next issue is ones more talked about. In American education, standardized testing. The facts are that in our current system it’s ineffective. Other countries report varying degrees of success with and without them. The 2015 results from the global PISA tests from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development show that Finland places very high with only one standardized test throughout students high school journey, whereas Singapore has many standardized tests and tops the global charts in all subjects. With these problems and many more, what actually makes a good school system?

In an ideal world high-schools would be very different  than what we have in America. There are many ideals that people think need to be juggled in order to have a realistic system, but the reality is most of them are feasible and work somewhere in the world. One of the first ideals is that the students spend as little time as possible in school and learn enough information. Generally this means fewer days and shorter days. This gives students more freedom to pursue other interests and potentially find a new hobby they may want to explore. If they are in school for most of the day that leaves little time for much else. With longer and more breaks they are coming to school refreshed and more prepared. Students in America get into a deadly cycle of staying up late and being tired for school, which makes it harder for them to learn and that makes them sleep even less. This can partially be solved by drastically reducing the amounts of homework. High achieving students in the U.S. can have nearly 3 hours of homework most nights. Meaning that if they don’t put it off, they will be working on school until six o'clock at night. That leaves little time for personal activities, hygiene, household care, and family. One may say homework is important to student development, but things like family-time and sleep are far more important. But the goal isn’t no homework, studies such as the one the 2016 one by Leslie Crawford of Great Schools show that among high-school and middle-school students, some homework is helpful. And with the less homework there also comes the thought of better homework. If homework showed how abstract ideas can be applied practically, students would learn to think more critically. We as a society want skilled intelligent people to be entering into the workforce, they advance technology and boost the economy. So the concerns of those concerned about schools, should be everyone’s concerns. Ultimately we want students to be prepared for all types of situations the world hands them. So ideally a system that taught students to solve problems and use their knowledge practically would be the best for everyone. Students wouldn’t feel the despair of being taught something they will never use. We don’t have this right now.  but there’s a bright light ahead, we have some goals but these seem a little far-fetched. No one is actually applying these concepts, right? Wrong.
Many countries around the world have more intelligently designed curriculum and more reasonable and effective classes and workloads. We can learn from these countries and apply many of the same practices to our schools. The most notable of these is Finland. Finland applies many of our ideals in a practical and effective way. They have a system that reduces most stress, yet their students still perform exceptionally well globally. They tend to rank in the top 5 of countries. They have much less homework, shorter days, only one standardized test, and longer breaks. Those practices pale in comparison to the great Finnish secret: teachers. Teachers in Finland are as valued as doctors and lawyers, and are trained extensively. Finland utilizes a system called “Peruskoulu” for its students aged 7-16. It’s low stakes and relaxed, focusing on breaking all barriers to a student’s success. There are no honors classes and the advanced students help the slower ones along. After completing this stage of education Finnish students split into two groups. One that is focused on STEM education and one on specific trades. They each go to different “colleges” then move on again to tertiary education. On a very different side of the coin is Singapore. They don’t have as many of the ideals that we want to strive for, but they consistently score incredibly well internationally. Singaporean students scored number one in all categories on the PISA tests in the most recent cycle. They as a culture value education very highly. A 2013 study by Julia Zhy of Aporia Atheneum shows that there are more external study resources in Singapore than any other country per capita. Effective lesson planning and yearly course loads combined with qualified educators are a knockout combination. Singapore however has some extremely stressful standardized tests. A single test can decide one’s whole future in Singapore, however this is usually more of an incentive to study and succeed than anything else. Japan is another system commonly cited, it also utilizes a lot of testing, but Japan’s success is much the same as Singapore’s. The study done in 2012 done by Daniel M. Stamm of the Nonpartisan Education Review shows that Japanese teachers are apprenticed to older teachers even while they teach their own classes. This keeps them growing and using the experience and teaching methods of master educators. The Japanese government has taken great care to concoct the most effective and reasonable syllabi for all their schools, and they work. Many of these concepts and practices are common in Asian countries, but are more lacking in the West. These schools can be examples and practical visions of what can be achieved in education. America can learn how to put some of what we need into practice. The solutions are pretty simple, but not many can see any alternatives to what we have.

America has the resources to be the most educated country in the world, we just don’t know how to apply them. The biggest and first step to a more educated country, is a more educated teaching force. It’s not to say our current teachers are unqualified or bad, they just don’t have all the training they should have. Another factor is restricting standards that lock teachers into bad teaching plans. Even the talented teachers have trouble teaching with these restrictive and hastily made standards. Reform on these standards is rarely done and when it is, it is usually just adding more. Teacher to student ratio is brought up quite a bit, and the solution tied to that is more teachers, however that’s not necessarily the answer. Teachers that are better equipped to teach can teach 30 students. The enlightening essay from Education Next author Darius Lakdawalla “Quantity over Quality” shows the effects of teacher pay and class size. It may seem counterintuitive to our point, but we’re talking about the decline in quality of teachers, being remedied by increasing the amount of teachers. This decreases the value of teachers, which makes it a less valued position. Following the laws of supply and demand, less qualified teachers are going to be taken. So if we disregard teacher student ratio, and focus on teacher training, we can handle larger class sizes. The best outlets to break the molds of class size and standards are charter schools, not to be confused with the more controversial voucher system. The charter school referenced in the book “Unschooling Rules” by Clark Aldrich boasted incredible success with a very radically altered school system. Students outperformed public school students by leaps and bounds with ? of the school days, with 2 hour days. It focused on teaching one subject a day with real world application tied in-divorcibly to the curriculum. This solution is a seemingly simple one, as it hits three goals in one. It’s teaching better, in less time, with practical coursework. More American schools should experiment with this answer.With practical course structure and trained teachers like that of Japan, Finland, and various charter schools, less time in class can mean more learning.

We’ve covered the issues, ideals, applications, and some solutions in education reform. Through this analysis it’s become clear that quality is much more important than quantity. If we form our amorphous blob into a form with quality. Quality time is better than more time, quality teachers are better than more teachers, quality spending is better than more spending, quality classes and work are better than more classes, and lastly better homework is better than more homework. Education is vital to an advanced and intelligent society. A country can’t be a true power if it’s people are under educated. So when we reform our education, we don’t have to worry about falling behind on the world stage.