The Growing Discontent With American Education

There is a growing discontent with American education. You can sense it swelling like a big wave, evidenced in a mix of troubling stats and trends from waning public perceptions of education to significant declines in enrollment and attendance. Students aren’t just talking about their discontent with education but walking it, too.

Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities peaked in 2010 and has been on a steady decline since and more than a quarter of students in K-12 schools are now chronically absent. Certainly, many factors are at play here ranging from mental health issues and a pandemic hangover to technological disruption and a series of education policy debacles. But the ultimate culprit of our discontent may be the hardest of all to acknowledge and address. The brutal reality is that education isn’t exciting, engaging or relevant for far too many students.

It sounds harsh to say and even more difficult to write, but ‘exciting,’ ‘engaging’ and ‘relevant’ are not words often used to describe education. When asking students, parents or employers, we are more likely to hear descriptors such as ‘boring,’ ‘outdated,’ and ‘disconnected from the real world.’ Indeed, only 26% of U.S. adults who have experienced higher education strongly agree their coursework is relevant to their work and day-to-day life. And a mere 13% of K-12 students give their school an “A” grade on “making them excited about learning.”

One of the many outcomes of students who find little excitement or relevance in what they are learning is not just declining attendance but also employers of all shapes and sizes who say they can’t find the talent they are looking for. With nearly 10 million open jobs in the U.S. and a mere 11% of business leaders strongly agreeing graduates are well-prepared for work, we cannot afford to have an education discontent crisis.

While we have spent the better part of the last three decades focused on improving students’ standardized test scores, we’ve made effectively zero progress against this goal. The most heralded solution in recent memory for improving schools was ‘Common Core’ - which took a decade to roll-out and then faced repeal and backlash leading to no measurable result. And as we put more emphasis on ‘academic standards,’ we let students’ real world work experience atrophy as the least-working generation in U.S. history. At the higher ed level, less than a third of our graduates complete a work-integrated learning experience (such as an internship or a semester-long project) as part of their degree.

How does school remain relevant when it provides such little exposure to the real world of work? How does school compete with the engaging and addictive content found in modern-day media, video games and bite-size-length mediums such as X, TikTok, and YouTube shorts? How does school remain up to date amidst the fastest-moving technological and social changes in history? Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes to the great discontent with education. But we can start by establishing a new, fundamental goal for education.

Our aim should be to make education more engaging and relevant. This sounds so simplistic. Yet this has never been a stated goal of any education policy reform in the past half century. If we were to make this our driving goal, we would need to put much more emphasis on the art and science of teaching and learning and on the integration of learning and work. And we would need new ‘north stars’ or metrics for which to aim.

We have national institutes for all sorts of important national priorities. But we don’t have one for teaching and learning. We have a U.S. Department of Education and a Department of Labor as wholly separate entities - yet nothing that aims to integrate learning and work. The average U.S. student takes 112 mandatory standardized tests across their K-12 education, yet we have no national measures of student engagement, exposure to experiential education or work-integrated learning.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And the will is developing in the rising swell of discontent with American education.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2024/02/21/the-growing-discontent-with-american-education/

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NYC music school seeks to change blacks-only $3M scholarship over fears it will be deemed unlawful

The Manhattan School of Music wants to change the parameters on a nearly $3 million scholarship fund earmarked only for black students — because they fear the race restriction will be deemed unlawful.

The money was bequeathed to the Morningside Heights school by trustee Cate Ryan, a longtime nurse and playwright who died in 2019 at age 78.

Ryan, who was white, left the dough to the school in recognition of her longtime friend and childhood caretaker, Masolinar “Mackie” Marks, who was black. Ryan, who also worked for The New Yorker, wrote her 2012 play, The Picture Box, in honor of Marks.

In her will, Ryan specified the money go to “financially deserving African-American students” in the school’s precollege programs — but in recently filed Manhattan Supreme Court papers, the institution worries the race-based restriction will be found unlawful after the US Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The school has yet to dole out the money and wants a judge to green light changing the scholarship’s parameters, making it available to “financially deserving students who have experienced social, educational, cultural and economic challenges similar to those experienced by” Marks.

The school did not respond to a message seeking comment.

https://nypost.com/2024/03/23/us-news/nyc-school-changes-scholarship-for-black-students-after-scotus-decision/

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Government Targeting ‘Ghost Colleges’ in International Student Visa Crackdown

Despite an uptick in net migration, the Australian government forecasts a significant drop due to measures introduced to clamp down on illegal visas in the international education sector.

According to data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on March 21, net overseas migration totalled 548,800 until September 2023, resulting in the total population growing by 2.5 percent.

The new population figure is 26.8 million, an annual increase of 659,800 people.

This latest data does not account for measures implemented by the Labor Party to curb migration, which is expected to halve by next year, primarily due to major restrictions in student visa approvals.

“Net overseas migration grew by 60 percent compared with the previous year, driven by an increase in overseas migration arrivals (up 34 percent), predominantly on a temporary visa for work or study,” said Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil.

Last year, as part of a greater move to drive down migration, the Albanese government implemented a migration review.

This was aimed at ending pandemic-era concessions afforded to education providers to prevent rogue operators from running so-called “ghost colleges” that often recruit international students who are not genuinely coming to Australia to study.

“Instead of pretending that some students are here to study when they are actually here to work, we need to look to create proper, capped, safe, tripartite pathways for workers in key sectors, such as care,” said Ms. O’Neil on March 21 at a press club event.

“More than half of the people who receive permanent skills visas under our current system arrived in Australia on a student visa.”

Over the next week, high-risk providers, referred to as “visa factories” by the government, will be sent warning notices that give a six-month compliance period to eliminate dodgy practices. If standards are not met, the provider runs the risk of being suspended from bringing in overseas students.

“Increased powers for the regulator and tougher penalties will deter dodgy providers who currently see fines as a risk worth taking or merely a ‘cost of doing business,’” Skills and Training Minister Brendan O'Connor said.

A new “genuine student” test will ask students to answer questions about their intentions for study, provide evidence of their current and potential financial situation, and sign a declaration that they understand what constitutes a genuine student.

Additionally, English language requirements for student and graduate visas will increase, with the minimum requirement from IELTS rising from 5.5 to 6.0 and for graduate visas from IELTS 6.0 to 6.5.

Results of the increased enforcement are already starting to show says Clare O'Neil.

“Since September, the government’s actions have led to substantial declines in migration levels, with recent international student visa grants down by 35 percent on the previous year,” she said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/government-targeting-ghost-colleges-in-international-student-visa-crackdown-5611708

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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