The Teacher’s Pet

National School Week, February 6-10, sponsored by the National Educational Association, incorporates a theme this year of: 

“School Counselors:  Helping Students be Brilliant,”

and in a nationwide contest selected Matt Damon as its Substitute Teacher for a Day, who was being considered along with Betty White, Lebron James, Penelope Cruz, and Ann Curry.

However, our teacher’s pets are far from being brilliant. ***PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) released in 2011 that our students, in a worldwide assessment ranked 14^th

with the following topic scores:

• Math  -  17^th in the world
• Science -  23^rd in the world
• Reading -  17^th in the world

Many of these students are finding their way into our Universities and Colleges and are being awarded a variety of degrees where transcripts reflect a cumulative GPA of 3.0 – 4.0 which is just as extraordinary as the PISA results. 

What have we done?

Some argue that our teachers are poorly paid and that if we pay them more that their performance in the classroom will improve.  Of course, if we got better teachers we would also have to get better students. 

Some argue that it is the parents at home but with a sustained 50% divorce rate in the US, many of our teens are living in single parent homes and the children are being bounced back and forth between the two parents who seem to care more about their careers than they do about their children. 

Of course, this is just idle speculation as no one knows for sure what is really causing the problem.

Have we come to a crossroads in the US where we can no longer solve the problems that are eroding our infrastructure? 

What will this new generation of knowledge holders bring to the table that will propel us further into the future, taking us to new levels in science, technology, and medicine?

***OECD is  the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Develop and has as its mission to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.  For 50 years, the OECD has been one of the world's largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics, and economic and social data.  In the late 1990’s, OECD created PISA that developed assessment surveys to ascertain the level of knowledge among its member countries 15 year olds. 

These assessments were carefully designed to answer the following global questions:

1. Are students well prepared for future challenges?
2. Can they analyze, reason and communicate effectively?
3. Do they have the capacity to continue learning throughout life?

OECD Member Countries: