The problem is well-known: The U.S. lags far behind other developed countries at the K-12 level in terms of measured performance in math and science courses. This problem is very big and very serious for future. In fact, our president thinks the same.
A expert says the following to go up American system.
The most important thing is to bring to K-12 education Private schools who excel in math and science. Those countries that are doing best are recruiting their K-12 teachers from the top third of their college graduates. America is recruiting our teachers generally from the bottom third, and when you go into our high-needs communities, we clearly undeserve them. We spend it irrationally. My favorite example is, I pay teachers, basically, based on length of service and a few courses that they take. And I can’t by contract pay math and science teachers more than I would pay other teachers in the system, even though at different price points I could attract very different people.
We’ve got to use the money we have much more wisely, attract talent, reward excellence. Second, we’ve got to use technology differently. In any field but ours, if you fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up today, you wouldn’t recognize what’s going on. In education, if you fell asleep 50 years ago, you still have the same discussions. The use of technology to transform the work, to bring in distance learning, to enable kids to do things online, all of this is stuff we’re doing here in the city. But it’s in the early, early innings. I think what’s needed now is some fundamental reworking of our institutions of government and the political culture around issues of education, both at the K-12 level and the higher-ed level. The system that we have has some faults. There needs to make more schools like Girl School and colleges for better education.
Once we do all these, I think that we can produce more scientists and Engineers than China and India, otherwise they will be number 1 and we have to do it.