ARE american school failing our students - Essay Example

America schools are failing students Introduction American schools are failing our students. This trend has been going on for quite some time. The discrepancy in academic performance among students from different ethnic backgrounds has been increasing. Accordingly, the school dropout rates, the scores in standardized tests and school completion rates points out a high achievement gap in school performance between groups in the education system (Klein, 2012). For instance, the African-American students and Hispanic students have scored poorly in all academic assessments compared with their non-Hispanic white counterparts.

In addition, students from poor backgrounds experience high dropout rates and poor performance compared with those from either middle class families or wealthy backgrounds (Rubenstein, 2013). This trend presents great threat to US economic growth, national security, global awareness and unity and cohesion in the society (Klein, 2012). Many young people lack employability skills and have prior criminal record which denies them the opportunity to enlist in the military. The National Center for Education Statistics has identified more than 43 million Americans adults who cannot read magazines, newspapers or interpret the voting instructions due to illiteracy (Klein, 2012).

Parents are concerned with the inability of their children to make simple speeches or write without any glaring grammatical errors (Klein, 2012). Accordingly, the current public schools have failed in disseminating moral and ethical values especially values of patriotism, self-reliance and respect for the teachers. A majority of the public school teachers are educated through the same void elementary and college education that encourages cooperative learning rather than outcome-based learning (Klein, 2012).

Initially, education policy makers focused their efforts in addressing disparities in academic performance based on English language proficiency, disability and sex. For instance, the No child left behind Act of 2001 required the districts and schools to disaggregate assessment scores to enable better comparison of academic attainment across groups thus leading to awareness of racial disparities in the education system. National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) statistical analysis is shocking since black students have trailed their white counterparts in mathematics (U.

S Department of Education, 2000). Accordingly, National Center of Education Statistics highlighted that 2009 and 2011 statistics Hispanic and Black students scores on mathematics were below their white counterparts score by an average of not less than 20-test score points. Data from the U.S Department of Education shows increased credit hours for almost all student groups since Hispanic students increased average credits from 24 to 26.5 from 1990 to 1999 (U.S Department of Education, 2000). Accordingly, white students increased their credit hours from 23.7 to 27.3 during the same period while Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had an increase of 24.

2 to 27 credit hours during the same period (U.S Department of Education, 2000). The data revealed that Asian Americans and White students preferred the rigorous students than Black and Hispanic students since less than 10 percent of Blacks and Hispanics took the subjects considered rigorous (Education Trust West, 2010). Surprisingly, the education research center