The U.S. education system is broken. Underfunded schools, overworked teachers, and massive disparities in quality depending on where you live. Meanwhile, countries like Finland, Sweden, and Denmark consistently rank among the best in the world.
Some U.S. states, like Massachusetts and New Jersey, have taken a more Nordic style approach, prioritizing well funded public schools, high teacher standards, and universal access. The results speak for themselves. Students in these states outperform much of the country. So why are we not following their lead on a national scale?
Should the Department of Education take a stronger role in setting national standards, equalizing funding, and ensuring every student, no matter their zip code, gets a high quality education? Or should education remain a state by state issue, even if it means vast inequality between states.
Some push school choice as a solution, diverting funds from public schools to private and charter schools. But does this actually improve education, or does it just drain resources from the schools that need them most?
The U.S. is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There should be no excuse for having a failing education system. If we want to remain competitive, we need to stop making education a political football and start treating it like the national priority it should be.
Genuinely curious what people think. All points welcome. How does this best get addressed?
What Department of Education? It’s gonna get deleted.
That was the thought for USAID, as well, and that seems to be turning back around.
Edit: here’s a recent article I just came across…
https://apnews.com/article/trump-education-department-shutdown-b1d25a2e1bdcd24cfde8ad8b655b9843
You are assuming Musk and Trump actually follow a court order.
Sure, that would be the assumption. What are your thoughts on the ebst way to handle education in the United states?
- Change scotus.
- re-litigate that citizens united bullshit.
Agree with that. People make that seem impossible though, to revert citizens united. What about laws limiting its impact?
Run somebody like Tim Walz on a platform of reinvestment in education, embrace the socialism of it. Stop running away from beliefs and visions the minute they are questioned like cowardly centrist democrats.
When conservatives talk about caring for kids, immediately start talking over them, agree you care about kids and start laying out why one of the best things we can do for kids is make sure public schools have the funding and resources to effectively feed kids in communities. Speak to how evil it is to hurt kids because they are innocent, and thus letting kids starve because their parents can’t feed them is also evil.
Schools are already efficiently set up to feed kids, to allow large amounts of families to bring their kids to the facility and most of the kids in the area go to the school anyways and will already be there.
It is simply an efficient use of resources to direct food assistance to kids who don’t have enough food through systems that already exist in every community in the U.S.
Yeah I know conservatives don’t give a shit, but the effective way to resist is to direct back towards your own visions and values and actually stand for them, not run away from anything conservatives point at and say is evil without ever putting your foot down and disputing the narrative framing at a fundamental level.
Exactly. Democrats need to stop acting like scared centrists and actually fight for what they claim to believe in. Education and feeding kids should be non-negotiable, and if conservatives want to argue against that, let them expose themselves as the ones who are fine with starving children.
Instead of constantly playing defense, push the vision. Schools are already set up to distribute food efficiently. Letting kids go hungry because their parents are struggling is not just wrong, it is deliberate cruelty. Call it what it is. Stop accepting conservative framing and start forcing them to defend their own rotten priorities.
Well, I hear that the DOE will be shut down. So, there is your answer: things will only get worse.
From the top.
Yes we need the DoE to SET the standards. Leave it the states to enforce (and fail or succeed)
Fix the money. For the most part schools are VERY locally funded; my choice would be to equalize funding across the country, that will never happen; so pushing for more level funding across each state
Lastly; which will never happen, teachers need to be treated like the professionals that they are. They need to be paid like MBAs are
Agreed on all points.
I’m gonna be real, it ain’t getting fixed any time soon.
Education has become politicized, a weapon in culture wars. Until that either stops being the case, or the people doing it are removed from any dokey ability to exert influence or power, that’s the way it’ll stay.
So, the real fix is in tearing down and rebuilding the governmental systems that allow things to get that way in the first place
I could’ve sworn some countries banned private education. If a rich kid goes to public school the parents are more inclined to participate and ensure their kid is well-educated. By extension that helps the poor kids too.
Maybe don’t allow people without a degree in education to run a school board?
I don’t think banning private education would be desirable. Agreed on the education requirements.
I’m not in the US, so this is just armchairing, but it seems like you guys already know what you need to do but there’s political reasons not to do it. The failure in education is intentional. That needs addressing and then mass campaigning to do better as a nation on many fronts. Patriotism needs to be used as a tool to drive national improvement, not as a shield against any criticism of it.
One of my own nations isn’t doing well on the education front either, but I suspect there it’s more of a long term “starve the beast” strategy rather than a “critical thinking skills reduce the efficacy of propaganda” situation. Still bad, but more callous than actively evil.
Surely it must be intentional. We have the largest GDP, have metrics showing where we are failing, and have examples of countries that are excelling which we could emulate.
If you want to improve education, I don’t see how there’s any other possibility than expanding department of education, it’s authority, and its budget. Currently it’s well under 20% of school funding and I don’t think they’re allowed to mandate anything. They can only attach strings to funding
You need to correct for both funding and attitude, and you just can’t do that at the local level that currently controls schools
- Massachusetts is a much wealthier state than Mississippi- the latter will never be able to find schools comparably
- Massachusetts wants to fund good schools: we have a lot of outstanding colleges, well educated people and white collar jobs that all appreciate good education, and as good liberal it’s a core value. Mississippi has none of that: you’ll never get the locals to want to fund schools comparably
I feel the same as someone that’s from Massachusetts and has lived in Mississippi.
