America's+Assets

=//America's assets //= America's assets, ironically, are the very same characteristics of our education system which those entrenched in it, often find confusing or cumbersome. According to the 2009 PISA Report, America's greatest assets are:
 * 1) Public School Funding
 * A willingness by the American people to spend more money per pupil than almost any nation in the world
 * The ability to get better performance by reprograming what is being spent
 * 1) A History of Reform
 * Endless fundamental changes such as:
 * Racial Desegregation of public schools
 * The Accountability Movement which accompanied the [|NCLB Act]
 * Rigorous State and National Standards
 * 1) A Status as an Engine of Innovation
 * Inventive Education
 * The Largest Concentration of Education Researchers in the World

In reality, "the amount of money American citizens are willing to invest in public education...is...more than any other country save one." However, ask an American school board member how difficult it is to get a school budget passed, or a parent who was told that after school clubs and sports have to be cancelled due to budget cuts, and you might get a different opinion. It is important to remember how geographically diverse a nation America is. "According to [|Thomas Friedman], America needs a "focused domestic strategy aimed at upgrading the education of every American, so that he or she will be able to compete for the new jobs in a flat world".

 Another American asset is its "history of reform, in education and in general". Again, often a source of contention among teachers and school administrators, America's willingness to evolve with the times and address current political issues, such as an increase in immigration, an influx of students who speak languages other than English, and an ability to adjust to changing student population demographics, is actually quite remarkable. One such example of American reform, according to PISA, was racial desegregation in America, which was achieved, yet at one time been considered "practically impossible" before it actually happened.

Lessons have been taught to those who've paid attention, the most crucial may be that history is indifferent to procrastination. America can either make yet another series of adjustments to its education system, including welcoming the National Standards Movement, and ramping up our mathematics and science instruction, or realize 'what could have been' twenty years in the future as more and more engineering degrees are granted not to American citizens, but to foreign students from India and Pakistan who return to work in their own countries. It is important to note, according to Friedman 2007, that the quality of the American degree is much higher than those from many other countries, and therefore there is a great attraction for young students to come to America for a college education.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">According to PISA, the world is "indifferent to past reputations", and "unforgiving of frailty". And more imprtantly, "success will go to those individuals and countries that are swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change and continuous learning from the best in the world". Let us hope that America is one of these. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">In a briefing at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on December 4, 2007, Andreas Schleicher, head of the Indicators and Analysis Division of OECD, delivered a briefing titled "Losing Our Edge: Are American Students Unprepared for the Global Economy?" At this briefing, Schleicher was asked whether or not American educators should remain so committed to using "paper-and-pencil, multiple choice tests." He replied as follows: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">"Across countries, there are very different styles of assessment. I would put the United States at one end of the extreme, largely driven by efficient multiple-choice tests, versus other countries like Italy, Spain, and Sweden which have open-ended interviews. You do see these differences reflected in the results, United States students tend to be rather good in multiple-choice tasks, when four choices are clearly laid out. They have a much harder time when they're given open-ended tasks" (Wagner, 2008, p. 95). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Wagner analyzes Schleicher's respons when he writes "...our students often cannot apply what they have learned to a new problem or context they haven't seen before. That's what an 'open-ended' task requires...What are the hidden costs and consequences to our country of having adopted an accountability system that relies extensively on inexpensive, 'objective' multiple-choice tests versus more complex and expensive open-ended tests that demand real thinking and a deeper understanding of concepts..." (p. 95).

//**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%; line-height: 23px;">References **// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;">Wagner, T. (2008). //The global achievement gap//. New York: Basic Books.

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