Questions to Be Answered: Why the American Education Declines?

Kean University has a print edition of Kean Current. Looking through that edition I've found that two NJ teachers had been selected as Teacher of the Year in this state. Additionally, an important note from Kristi, one of Kean University's students.

After reading What Students Know and Can Do: Student Performance in Mathematics, Reading, and Science a survey assessed by PISA, published in 2012, Kristi noted the United States is currently ranked 36th on a list that boasts the top 65 education systems worldwide. As a United States citizen with a bachelor’s degree, educated in the United States, she wrote, these statistics alarmed me and impelled me to delve further into research on other United States rankings, primarily its economic ranking in relation to the 35 countries ahead of us in the education race.

Pay attention to what she found it about:

The United States, ranked 36th in terms of education, is also ranked 12th in the most recent Index of Economic Freedom. Why is this important? Well, economic freedom is a fundamental component of liberty. "It empowers people to work, produce, consume, own, trade, and invest according to their personal choices". I guess my next question is, why does a country, that is considered somewhat of a "super-power" in terms of economy, have such a low educational ranking in comparison? Korea, which is ranked 5th on the educational scale, although now divided into South and North, are ranked 31st and 178th (respectively) on the economic scale. Again, I will repeat, they are ranked 5th in world in terms of education.

Are we doing something wrong as a society? Have Americans become too complacent? Too lazy? Too comfortable? Does it stand to reason that the more financially stable a society is, the less they worry about the future and, subsequently, the further they fall behind while other more oppressed countries fight for a global voice? I’m unsure of the answer, but our educational decline almost feels as if we are slowly giving our voices away. Who is responsible for assuring that we do not lose the voices our predecessors fought so hard to obtain? Where is our sense of pride? Our drive? Our motivation? Our curiosity? Our persistence? And how do we get it back?

Read: http://keanxchange.com/content/student-blog/educational-decline