Hot Under the Collar- Problems with Education in the US

Stop me if I'm wrong here, but all this talk about our education problems really gets me hot under the collar. OK, so what does it come down to here? Did you know that in the 2006 PISA survey the United States ranked 21^st in science literacy and 25^th in math literacy. We need to be worried here people, if we want our children to enjoy the same wealth and power of the United States that we did growing up things need to change or we are going to get left in the dust as the rest of the world excels in math, science, and every other subject. I really think that we have become lazy. We are used to being the only superpower; we are used to being wealthy and powerful. Even right now we are getting throttled on the international scene. Do we really think we can get out performed this way in education and even have a remote chance of competing in the future?

And it's not just about spending more money on education. According to the Organization for Economic Development 2004 numbers only Luxembourg spent more money per student than the United States. The US spends an average of $8,287 per student, how the heck do we rate so low in performance and spend so much fricken money? Where is this money going? I know this is stating the obvious but we need to be better at managing our money. I am talking about education here but spending on the federal level is another issue that gets me hot under the collar.

So where does education start, obviously it starts in the home. First, we need parents that encourage their kids to read, not watch TV and play video games all day. Spend time reading to your kids, helping them with their homework, encouraging them to excel. Second, we need good teachers, we have a vicious circle here, poor education leads to poor educators. But we need people to want to become educators so that means we need to pay them more. According to the NEA, an average teacher's salary is $32,000, as compared with Researchers $41,600, Management Trainees $41,800, RNs $41,000, Accountants $46,000, and Engineers $52,000. So the guy who does your taxes makes a heck of a lot more than the person we are entrusting our children's futures to. Does that make any fricken sense? Really?

Now don't start going off how teachers only work like six hours a day, and have summers off, and all that crap. You try dealing with thirty plus kids everyday while making next to nothing. You think your kids drive you crazy? Think about our teachers. Yes, they deserve to work six hours a day, they deserve to have summers off, and they deserve to make more than $32,000 a year. Now I know there are teachers out there that make a lot more than $32,000 but they are not the norm, many teachers make less than $32,000 a year, that's how we get averages folks.

So we need to take that $8,287 to hire more teachers to bring down class sizes and pay these teachers more. Finally, we need to make sure our students have all the advantages in regards to technology and decent facilities in which to learn. You may say, we can't do all of that, it's too expensive. You know what, if twenty some other nations can out perform us in math and science and spend less doing it we can darn well do the same. Let's get some accountability here people, how much money is there, what is it being spent on, manage the money people. Let's get educated out there, care about our kids, and know what's going on in your school districts and where money is going. The very future of our nation and way of life is at stake, let's do something.