Bless the U.S.A. and Florida’s Public Education

These days there is negative talk about education standards such as common core or the new Florida State Standards. Some proponents of the standards have made the argument that the United States must increase its rigor in our schools in order to better compete internationally. We’ll save the argument of whether these standards are good or bad for another time, but what I often take issue with is the rationale we often hear used to defend why we must “raise the standards bar and test more”.

First of all, in Florida our students are preforming far better than is often reported. In 2012 our 4th grade students were the first group of students to take international assessments linked to standards that align with national and international benchmarks using the PIRLS assessment. In reading, Florida scored second in the world just below first place Hong Kong, and far above the US in rankings of 7^th place using the TIMSS assessment. Likewise, in those STEM areas, Florida scored in the top 10 in the world, matching Finland in mathematics and exceeding Hong Kong in science.

There is more to success than just our scores in education; it is our country’s philosophy on public education. I believe the United States in public education has been far more successful in the past with our students, teaching them to be “out of the box” thinkers and entrepreneurs. It is those ideas and teaching that I feel have greatly contributed to our country flourishing internationally. The United States, since we’ve been tracking international educational testing scores have always been lower down the line than other developed nations. There are several contributing factors as to why, but one of the biggest reasons it that in the United States, we educate and test all our students, many of those countries do not educate all students and we teach more than just writing, math and science. We are interested in “the Whole Child”. We are not like the communist regime’s belief that an individual is only as good as they can contribute to the mother country. In the United States you have a “right” to fail, but you also have the ability to greatly succeed. Each person in the United States gets to determine what “success” means to them. In the time that many other developing countries have beaten our scores in math and science– we have put men on the moon, built the most successful economic nation and beat communism. Not bad I believe.

Now in the United States, rather than simply mandating high-stakes testing for our students, we need to focus on the concepts that made our students into entrepreneurs and our nation successful. It is time for not just the federal government, but the state government to let local school boards, parents and teachers teach and assess as they see best for students, and not what the government wants. Doing this will continue our great State’s and Nation’s success.

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