The Obama administration and its predecessors have long been advocating the significance of quality education, which has the potential to usher more opportunities and success. Sadly, the cost of education in the United States continues to increase, leaving a lot of students crippled with debt and student loans.
In the new school year, almost 100,000 public schools offered learning opportunities to some 50 million students from kindergarten to high school. Even though high school graduation rates have sharply increased and dropout rates have declined, America's education progress is still not almost on pace with other nations, McClatchy DC revealed.
With that said, experts believed that a nation that is trailing others like Canada, Germany, France, Korea and Japan in education will lag in international competitiveness, thus contributing to economic challenges. Within the United States, the education sector is also plagued with challenging gaps such as for achievement, by race, wealth and many others.
In spite of the fact that the U.S. federal government could influence policies and practices, education remains the main responsibility of the states. Meanwhile, national education reformers are reportedly targeting local school boards as it becomes a political battleground.
Based on a recent research, Michigan State University (MSU) political science assistant professor and lead study author Sarah Reckhow found that local school boards can serve as significant battlefields in national politics. According to Phys.org, Reckhow also said that there are organizations and donors who see local school board elections as "critical contests" over opposing ideas of education.
The study also found that outside money can be a good thing if the fund came from donors who share the same values and interests of the local residents. But the findings also warned that the local education politics nationalization might lure local leaders into the much theoretically opposed and steadfast position-taking, underwriting the national-level gridlock.
In other education-related reports, a Supreme Court judge ordered the state of Connecticut on Wednesday to come up with a new funding solution for its public schools. Aside from extensive reforms, Hartford Courant reported Judge Thomas Moukawsher also mandated the state to develop clear standards for both elementary and high school levels, not to mention requiring a total reform of Connecticut's evaluation system of teachers, principals and superintendents.
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