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What are the outcomes of the education system? How much did COVID-19 disrupt learning?​

Eighth-grade math and reading proficiency fell between 2019 and 2022 to the lowest rates in at least 15 years..

The share of eighth graders at or above a proficient reading level dropped from 34% to 31%. For math, it dropped from 34% to 26%.

The public-school student-teacher ratio dropped from 15.9 in fall 2019 to 15.4 in fall 2020 and remained unchanged in 2021.

This is partly due to declining school enrollment during the pandemic . Several factors affect the student-teacher ratio, including class sizes, the number of classes educators teach, and the number of special education teachers.

Public schools spent an average of $16,280 per student in the 2020–2021 school year, more than any previous year after adjusting for inflation.

This was up 3.5% from the previous school year, the largest single-year increase since 1988-1989. Expenditures in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 included funds allocated through pandemic relief legislation such as the CARES Act . Many factors influence per-pupil spending, including salaries, benefits, and supplies across functions such as instruction, administration, and operations and maintenance.

Of the students who started high school in 2011, 24% completed a four-year college degree by 2021. Another 13% had enrolled in a four-year college within one year of high school graduation but had not completed their degree.

Among Black and Hispanic students who entered high school in 2011, the percentage who earned a four-year degree by 2021 was lower than the overall student rate — less than 15% for either group.

The median student loan balance per household decreased between 2019 and 2022, but it dropped most for Black-led households, falling 25% to $27,070 in 2022.

However, prior to 2022, it had been increasing faster for Black-led households than households overall. Black-led household student loan balances rose 66% between 2010 and 2019, compared to 41% for all families.

Forty-eight percent of the population ages 25 and older has a college degree.

Asian Americans have the nation’s highest levels of education; as of 2022, two-thirds had at least an associate degree.

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On average, people whose highest level of education is a bachelor’s degree earned $1,493 per week in 2023, roughly 66% more than workers with a high school diploma.

Earnings for workers with some college or an associate degree have fallen since 2000, while increasing for all other educational attainment categories. Earnings for people without a high school diploma are up most, $708 per week (up 11%), but remain $462 per week (39%), lower than overall median earnings.

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What is the state of the military, and how are us veterans faring.

Infrastructure

What does America spend on transportation and infrastructure? Is infrastructure improving?​

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The Education System of the United States of America: Overview and Foundations

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• First Online: 01 January 2022
• pp 1015–1042
• Cite this reference work entry

• Paul R. Fossum 3  

Part of the book series: Global Education Systems ((GES))

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Prevailing discourse in the USA about the country’s teachers, educational institutions, and instructional approaches is a conversation that is national in character. Yet the structures and the administrative and governance apparatuses themselves are strikingly local in character across the USA. Public understanding and debate about education can be distorted in light of divergence between the country’s educational aspirations and the vehicles in place for pursuing those aims. In addressing its purpose as a survey of US education, the following chapter interrogates this apparent contradiction, first discussing historical and social factors that help account for a social construction of the USA as singular and national system. Discussion then moves to a descriptive analysis of education in the USA as institutionalized at the numerous levels – aspects that often reflect local prerogative and difference more so than a uniform national character. The chapter concludes with summary points regarding US federalism as embodied in the country’s oversight and conduct of formal education.

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The Education System of the United States of America

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Fossum, P.R. (2021). The Education System of the United States of America: Overview and Foundations. In: Jornitz, S., Parreira do Amaral, M. (eds) The Education Systems of the Americas. Global Education Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41651-5_14

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Understanding the American Education System

The American education system offers a rich field of choices for international students. There is such an array of schools, programs and locations that the choices may overwhelm students, even those from the U.S. As you begin your school search, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the American education system. Understanding the system will help you narrow your choices and develop your education plan.

The Educational Structure

Primary and secondary school.

Prior to higher education, American students attend primary and secondary school for a combined total of 12 years. These years are referred to as the first through twelfth grades.

Around age six, U.S. children begin primary school, which is most commonly called “elementary school.” They attend five or six years and then go onto secondary school.

Secondary school consists of two programs: the first is “middle school” or “junior high school” and the second program is “high school.” A diploma or certificate is awarded upon graduation from high school. After graduating high school (12th grade), U.S. students may go on to college or university. College or university study is known as “higher education.”

Grading System

Just like American students, you will have to submit your academic transcripts as part of your application for admission to university or college. Academic transcripts are official copies of your academic work. In the U.S. this includes your “grades” and “grade point average” (GPA), which are measurements of your academic achievement. Courses are commonly graded using percentages, which are converted into letter grades.

The grading system and GPA in the U.S. can be confusing, especially for international students. The interpretation of grades has a lot of variation. For example, two students who attended different schools both submit their transcripts to the same university. They both have 3.5 GPAs, but one student attended an average high school, while the other attended a prestigious school that was academically challenging. The university might interpret their GPAs differently because the two schools have dramatically different standards.

Therefore, there are some crucial things to keep in mind:

• You should find out the U.S. equivalent of the last level of education you completed in your home country.
• Pay close attention to the admission requirements of each university and college, as well as individual degree programs, which may have different requirements than the university.
• Regularly meet with an educational advisor or guidance counselor to make sure you are meeting the requirements.

Your educational advisor or guidance counselor will be able to advise you on whether or not you must spend an extra year or two preparing for U.S. university admission. If an international student entered a U.S. university or college prior to being eligible to attend university in their own country, some countries’ governments and employers may not recognize the students’ U.S. education.

Academic Year

The school calendar usually begins in August or September and continues through May or June. The majority of new students begin in autumn, so it is a good idea for international students to also begin their U.S. university studies at this time. There is a lot of excitement at the beginning of the school year and students form many great friendships during this time, as they are all adjusting to a new phase of academic life. Additionally, many courses are designed for students to take them in sequence, starting in autumn and continuing through the year.

The academic year at many schools is composed of two terms called “semesters.” (Some schools use a three-term calendar known as the “trimester” system.) Still, others further divide the year into the quarter system of four terms, including an optional summer session. Basically, if you exclude the summer session, the academic year is either comprised of two semesters or three quarter terms.

The U.S. Higher Education System: Levels of Study

• First Level: Undergraduate

"The American system is much more open. In Hong Kong you just learn what the teacher writes on the board. In America, you discuss the issues and focus more on ideas."

Paolo Kwan from Hong Kong: Studying English and Business Administration at Sierra College in California

A student who is attending a college or university and has not earned a bachelor’s degree, is studying at the undergraduate level. It typically takes about four years to earn a bachelor’s degree. You can either begin your studies in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree at a community college or a four-year university or college.

Your first two years of study you will generally be required to take a wide variety of classes in different subjects, commonly known as prerequisite courses: literature, science, the social sciences, the arts, history, and so forth. This is so you achieve a general knowledge, a foundation, of a variety of subjects prior to focusing on a specific field of study.

Many students choose to study at a community college in order to complete the first two years of prerequisite courses. They will earn an Associate of Arts (AA) transfer degree and then transfer to a four-year university or college.

A “major” is the specific field of study in which your degree is focused. For example, if someone’s major is journalism, they will earn a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. You will be required to take a certain number of courses in this field in order to meet the degree requirements of your major. You must choose your major at the beginning of your third year of school.

A very unique characteristic of the American higher education system is that you can change your major multiple times if you choose. It is extremely common for American students to switch majors at some point in their undergraduate studies. Often, students discover a different field that they excel in or enjoy. The American education system is very flexible. Keep in mind though that switching majors may result in more courses, which means more time and money.

• Second Level: Graduate in Pursuit of a Master’s Degree

Presently, a college or university graduate with a bachelor’s degree may want to seriously think about graduate study in order to enter certain professions or advance their career. This degree is usually mandatory for higher-level positions in library science, engineering, behavioral health and education.

Furthermore, international students from some countries are only permitted to study abroad at a graduate level. You should inquire about the credentials needed to get a job in your country before you apply to a postgraduate university in the USA.

A graduate program is usually a division of a university or college. To gain admission, you will need to take the GRE (graduate record examination). Certain master’s programs require specific tests, such as the LSAT for law school, the GRE or GMAT for business school, and the MCAT for medical school.

Graduate programs in pursuit of a master’s degree typically take one to two years to complete. For example, the MBA (master of business administration) is an extremely popular degree program that takes about two years. Other master’s programs, such as journalism, only take one year.

The majority of a master’s program is spent in classroom study and a graduate student must prepare a long research paper called a “master’s thesis” or complete a “master’s project.”

• Third Level: Graduate in Pursuit of a Doctorate Degree

Many graduate schools consider the attainment of a master’s degree the first step towards earning a PhD (doctorate). But at other schools, students may prepare directly for a doctorate without also earning a master’s degree. It may take three years or more to earn a PhD degree. For international students, it may take as long as five or six years.

For the first two years of the program most doctoral candidates enroll in classes and seminars. At least another year is spent conducting firsthand research and writing a thesis or dissertation. This paper must contain views, designs, or research that have not been previously published.

A doctoral dissertation is a discussion and summary of the current scholarship on a given topic. Most U.S. universities awarding doctorates also require their candidates to have a reading knowledge of two foreign languages, to spend a required length of time “in residence,” to pass a qualifying examination that officially admits candidates to the PhD program, and to pass an oral examination on the same topic as the dissertation.

Characteristics of the U.S. Higher Education System

Classroom Environment

Classes range from large lectures with several hundred students to smaller classes and seminars (discussion classes) with only a few students. The American university classroom atmosphere is very dynamic. You will be expected to share your opinion, argue your point, participate in class discussions and give presentations. International students find this one of the most surprising aspects of the American education system.

Each week professors usually assign textbook and other readings. You will be expected to keep up-to-date with the required readings and homework so you can participate in class discussions and understand the lectures. Certain degree programs also require students to spend time in the laboratory.

Professors issue grades for each student enrolled in the course. Grades are usually based upon:

• Each professor will have a unique set of class participation requirements, but students are expected to participate in class discussions, especially in seminar classes. This is often a very important factor in determining a student’s grade.
• A midterm examination is usually given during class time.
• One or more research or term papers , or laboratory reports must be submitted for evaluation.
• Possible short exams or quizzes are given. Sometimes professors will give an unannounced “pop quiz.” This doesn’t count heavily toward the grade, but is intended to inspire students to keep up with their assignments and attendance.
• A final examination will be held after the final class meeting.

Each course is worth a certain number of credits or credit hours. This number is roughly the same as the number of hours a student spends in class for that course each week. A course is typically worth three to five credits.

A full-time program at most schools is 12 or 15 credit hours (four or five courses per term) and a certain number of credits must be fulfilled in order to graduate. International students are expected to enroll in a full-time program during each term.

If a student enrolls at a new university before finishing a degree, generally most credits earned at the first school can be used to complete a degree at the new university. This means a student can transfer to another university and still graduate within a reasonable time.

Types of U.S. higher education

Xujie Zhao from China: Studying Computer Networking at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston

1. State College or University

A state school is supported and run by a state or local government. Each of the 50 U.S. states operates at least one state university and possibly several state colleges. Many of these public universities schools have the name of the state, or the actual word “State” in their names: for example, Washington State University and the University of Michigan.

2. Private College or University

These schools are privately run as opposed to being run by a branch of the government. Tuition will usually be higher than state schools. Often, private U.S. universities and colleges are smaller in size than state schools.

Religiously affiliated universities and colleges are private schools. Nearly all these schools welcome students of all religions and beliefs. Yet, there are a percentage of schools that prefer to admit students who hold similar religious beliefs as those in which the school was founded.

3. Community College

Community colleges are two-year colleges that award an associate’s degrees (transferable), as well as certifications. There are many types of associate degrees, but the most important distinguishing factor is whether or not the degree is transferable. Usually, there will be two primary degree tracks: one for academic transfer and the other prepares students to enter the workforce straightaway. University transfer degrees are generally associate of arts or associate of science. Not likely to be transferrable are the associate of applied science degrees and certificates of completion.

Community college graduates most commonly transfer to four-year colleges or universities to complete their degree. Because they can transfer the credits they earned while attending community college, they can complete their bachelor’s degree program in two or more additional years. Many also offer ESL or intensive English language programs, which will prepare students for university-level courses.

If you do not plan to earn a higher degree than the associate’s, you should find out if an associate’s degree will qualify you for a job in your home country.

4. Institute of Technology

An institute of technology is a school that provides at least four years of study in science and technology. Some have graduate programs, while others offer short-term courses.

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11.1 An Overview of Education in the United States

Learning objectives.

• Explain why compulsory education arose during the nineteenth century.
• Summarize social class, gender, and racial and ethnic differences in educational attainment.
• Describe the impact that education has on income.
• Explain how the US education system ranks internationally.

Education is the social institution through which a society teaches its members the skills, knowledge, norms, and values they need to learn to become good, productive members of their society. As this definition makes clear, education is an important part of socialization. Education is both formal and informal . Formal education is often referred to as schooling , and as this term implies, it occurs in schools under teachers, principals, and other specially trained professionals. Informal education may occur almost anywhere, but for young children it has traditionally occurred primarily in the home, with their parents as their instructors. Day care has become an increasingly popular venue in industrial societies for young children’s instruction, and education from the early years of life is thus more formal than it used to be.

Education in early America was only rarely formal. During the colonial period, the Puritans in what is now Massachusetts required parents to teach their children to read and also required larger towns to have an elementary school, where children learned reading, writing, and religion. In general, though, schooling was not required in the colonies, and only about 10 percent of colonial children, usually just the wealthiest, went to school, although others became apprentices (Urban & Wagoner, 2008).

To help unify the nation after the Revolutionary War, textbooks were written to standardize spelling and pronunciation and to instill patriotism and religious beliefs in students. At the same time, these textbooks included negative stereotypes of Native Americans and certain immigrant groups. The children going to school continued primarily to be those from wealthy families. By the mid-1800s, a call for free, compulsory education had begun, and compulsory education became widespread by the end of the century. This was an important development, as children from all social classes could now receive a free, formal education. Compulsory education was intended to further national unity and to teach immigrants “American” values. It also arose because of industrialization, as an industrial economy demanded reading, writing, and math skills much more than an agricultural economy had.

Free, compulsory education, of course, applied only to primary and secondary schools. Until the mid-1900s, very few people went to college, and those who did typically came from fairly wealthy families. After World War II, however, college enrollments soared, and today more people are attending college than ever before, even though college attendance is still related to social class, as we shall discuss shortly.

An important theme emerges from this brief history: Until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males. This means that boys who were not white and rich were excluded from formal schooling, as were virtually all girls, whose education was supposed to take place informally at home. Today, as we will see, race, ethnicity, social class, and, to some extent, gender continue to affect both educational achievement and the amount of learning occurring in schools.

In colonial America, only about 10 percent of children went to school, and these children tended to come from wealthy families. After the Revolutionary War, new textbooks helped standardize spelling and pronunciation and promote patriotism and religious beliefs, but these textbooks also included negative stereotypes of Native Americans.

Wikimedia Commons – public domian.

Education in the United States Today

Education in the United States is a massive social institution involving millions of people and billions of dollars. More than 75 million people, almost one-fourth of the US population, attend school at all levels. This number includes 40 million in grades pre-K through eighth grade, 16 million in high school, and 20 million in college (including graduate and professional school). They attend some 132,000 elementary and secondary schools and about 4,200 two-year and four-year colleges and universities and are taught by about 4.8 million teachers and professors (US Census Bureau, 2012).

Correlates of Educational Attainment

About 65 percent of US high school graduates enroll in college the following fall. This is a very high figure by international standards, as college in many other industrial nations is reserved for the very small percentage of the population who pass rigorous entrance exams. They are the best of the brightest in their nations, whereas higher education in the United States is open to all who graduate high school. Even though that is true, our chances of achieving a college degree are greatly determined at birth, as social class and race and ethnicity substantially affect who goes to college. They affect whether students drop out of high school, in which case they do not go on to college; they affect the chances of getting good grades in school and good scores on college entrance exams; they affect whether a family can afford to send its children to college; and they affect the chances of staying in college and obtaining a degree versus dropping out. For all these reasons, educational attainment —how far one gets in school—depends heavily on family income and race/ethnicity (Tavernise, 2012). Family income, in fact, makes a much larger difference in educational attainment than it did during the 1960s.

Family Income and Race/Ethnicity

Government data readily show the effects of family income and race/ethnicity on educational attainment. Let’s first look at how race and ethnicity affect the likelihood of dropping out of high school. Figure 11.1 “Race, Ethnicity, and High School Dropout Rate, Persons Ages 16–24, 2009 (Percentage Not Enrolled in School and without a High School Degree)” shows the percentage of people ages 16–24 who are not enrolled in school and who have not received a high school degree. The dropout rate is highest for Latinos and Native Americans and lowest for Asians and whites.

Figure 11.1 Race, Ethnicity, and High School Dropout Rate, Persons Ages 16–24, 2009 (Percentage Not Enrolled in School and without a High School Degree)

Source: Aud, S., Hussar, W., Kena, G., Bianco, K., Frohlich, L., Kemp, J., et al. (2011). The condition of education 2011 . Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Now let’s look at how family income affects the likelihood of attending college, a second benchmark of educational attainment. Figure 11.2 “Family Income and Percentage of High School Graduates Who Attend College Immediately after Graduation, 2009” shows the relationship between family income and the percentage of high school graduates who enroll in college immediately following graduation: Students from families in the highest income bracket are more likely than those in the lowest bracket to attend college. This “income gap” in college entry has become larger in recent decades (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011).

Figure 11.2 Family Income and Percentage of High School Graduates Who Attend College Immediately after Graduation, 2009

Finally, let’s examine how race and ethnicity affect the likelihood of obtaining a college degree, a third benchmark of educational attainment. Figure 11.3 “Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Persons Ages 25 or Older with a Four-Year College Degree, 2010” shows the relationship between race/ethnicity and the percentage of persons 25 or older who have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. This relationship is quite strong, with African Americans and Latinos least likely to have a degree, and whites and especially Asians/Pacific Islanders most likely to have a degree.

Figure 11.3 Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Persons Ages 25 or Older with a Four-Year College Degree, 2010

Explaining the Racial/Ethnic Gap in Educational Attainment

Why do African Americans and Latinos have lower educational attainment? Four factors are commonly cited: (a) the underfunded and otherwise inadequate schools that children in both groups often attend; (b) the higher poverty of their families and lower education of their parents that often leave children ill prepared for school even before they enter kindergarten; (c) racial discrimination; and (d) the fact that African American and Latino families are especially likely to live in very poor neighborhoods (Ballantine & Hammack, 2012; Yeung & Pfeiffer, 2009).

The last two factors, racial discrimination and residence in high-poverty neighborhoods, need additional explanation. At least three forms of racial discrimination impair educational attainment (Mickelson, 2003). The first form involves tracking. As we discuss later, students tracked into vocational or general curricula tend to learn less and have lower educational attainment than those tracked into a faster-learning, academic curriculum. Because students of color are more likely to be tracked “down” rather than “up,” their school performance and educational attainment suffer.

The second form of racial discrimination involves school discipline. As we also discuss later, students of color are more likely than white students to be suspended, expelled, or otherwise disciplined for similar types of misbehavior. Because such discipline again reduces school performance and educational attainment, this form of discrimination helps explain the lower attainment of African American and Latino students.

The third form involves teachers’ expectations of students. As our later discussion of the symbolic interactionist perspective on education examines further, teachers’ expectations of students affect how much students learn. Research finds that teachers have lower expectations for their African American and Latino students, and that these expectations help to lower how much these students learn.

Turning to residence in high-poverty neighborhoods, it may be apparent that poor neighborhoods have lower educational attainment because they have inadequate schools, but poor neighborhoods matter for reasons beyond their schools’ quality (Kirk & Sampson, 2011; Wodtke, Harding, & Elwert, 2011). First, because many adults in these neighborhoods are high school dropouts and/or unemployed, children in these neighborhoods lack adult role models for educational attainment. Second, poor neighborhoods tend to be racially and ethnically segregated. Latino children in these neighborhoods are less likely to speak English well because they lack native English-speaking friends, and African American children are more likely to speak “black English” than conventional English; both language problems impede school success.

Third, poor neighborhoods have higher rates of violence and other deviant behaviors than wealthier neighborhoods. Children in these neighborhoods thus are more likely to experience high levels of stress, to engage in these behaviors themselves (which reduces their attention and commitment to their schooling), and to be victims of violence (which increases their stress and can impair their neurological development). Crime in these neighborhoods also tends to reduce teacher commitment and parental involvement in their children’s schooling. Finally, poor neighborhoods are more likely to have environmental problems such as air pollution and toxic levels of lead paint; these problems lead to asthma and other health problems among children (as well as adults), which impairs the children’s ability to learn and do well in school.

For all these reasons, then, children in poor neighborhoods are at much greater risk for lower educational attainment. As a recent study of this risk concluded, “Sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods…throughout the entire childhood life course has a devastating impact on the chances of graduating from high school” (Wodtke et al., 2011, p. 731). If these neighborhoods are not improved, the study continued, “concentrated neighborhood poverty will likely continue to hamper the development of future generations of children” (Wodtke et al., 2011, p. 733).

Gender also affects educational attainment. If we do not take age into account, slightly more men than women have a college degree: 30.3 percent of men and 29.6 percent of women. This difference reflects the fact that women were less likely than men in earlier generations to go to college. But today there is a gender difference in the other direction: Women now earn more than 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, up from just 35 percent in 1960 (see Figure 11.4 “Percentage of All Bachelor’s Degrees Received by Women, 1960–2009” ). This difference reflects the fact that females are more likely than males to graduate high school, to attend college after high school graduation, and to obtain a degree after starting college (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011).

Figure 11.4 Percentage of All Bachelor’s Degrees Received by Women, 1960–2009

Source: Data from US Census Bureau. (2012). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2012 . Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab .

Impact of Education on Income

On the average, college graduates have much higher annual earnings than high school graduates. How much does this consequence affect why you decided to go to college?

Merrimack College – Commencement 2012 – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Have you ever applied for a job that required a high school degree? Are you going to college in part because you realize you will need a college degree for a higher-paying job? As these questions imply, the United States is a credential society (Collins, 1979). This means at least two things. First, a high school or college degree (or beyond) indicates that a person has acquired the needed knowledge and skills for various jobs. Second, a degree at some level is a requirement for most jobs. As you know full well, a college degree today is a virtual requirement for a decent-paying job. The ante has been upped considerably over the years: In earlier generations, a high school degree, if even that, was all that was needed, if only because so few people graduated from high school to begin with. With so many people graduating from high school today, a high school degree is not worth as much. Then too, today’s society increasingly requires skills and knowledge that only a college education brings.

A credential society also means that people with more formal education achieve higher incomes. Annual earnings are indeed much higher for people with more education (see Figure 11.5 “Educational Attainment and Median Annual Earnings, Ages 25–34, 2009” ). As earlier chapters indicated, gender and race/ethnicity affect the payoff we get from our education, but education itself still makes a huge difference for our incomes.

Figure 11.5 Educational Attainment and Median Annual Earnings, Ages 25–34, 2009

Impact of Education on Mortality

Beyond income, education also affects at what age people tend to die. Simply put, people with higher levels of education tend to die later in life, and those with lower levels tend to die earlier (Miech, Pampel, Kim, & Rogers, 2011). The reasons for this disparity are complex, but two reasons stand out. First, more highly educated people are less likely to smoke and engage in other unhealthy activities, and they are more likely to exercise and to engage in other healthy activities and also to eat healthy diets. Second, they have better access to high-quality health care.

How the US Education System Compares Internationally

The United States has many of the top colleges and universities and secondary schools in the world, and many of the top professors and teachers. In these respects, the US education system is “the best of systems.” But in other respects, it is “the worst of systems.” When we compare educational attainment in the United States to that in the world’s other democracies, the United States lags behind its international peers.

Differences in the educational systems of the world’s democracies make exact comparisons difficult, but one basic measure of educational attainment is the percentage of a nation’s population that has graduated high school. A widely cited comparison involves the industrial nations that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Of the twenty-eight nations for which OECD has high school graduation data, the United States ranks only twenty-first, with a graduation rate of 76 percent (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). In contrast, several nations, including Finland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom have graduation rates of at least 90 percent. If we limit the comparison to the OECD nations that compose the world’s wealthy democracies (see Chapter 2 “Poverty” ) to which the United States is most appropriately compared, the United States ranks only thirteenth out of sixteen such nations.

OECD also collects and publishes data on proficiency in mathematics, reading, and science among 15-year-olds in its member nations (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010). In reading and science, the United States ranks only at the average for all OECD nations, while the US score for mathematics ranks below the OECD average. Compared to their counterparts in other industrial nations, then, American 15-year-olds are only average or below average for these three important areas of study. Taking into account high school graduation rates and these proficiency rankings, the United States is far from the world leader in the quality of education. The Note 11.8 “Lessons from Other Societies” box examines what the United States might learn from the sterling example of Finland’s education system.

Lessons from Other Societies

Successful Schooling in Finland

Finland is widely regarded as having perhaps the top elementary and secondary education system in the world. Its model of education offers several important lessons for US education. As a recent analysis of Finland’s schools put it, “The country’s achievements in education have other nations doing their homework.”

To understand the lessons to be learned from Finland, we should go back several decades to the 1970s, when Finland’s education system was below par, with its students scoring below the international average in mathematics and science. Moreover, urban schools in Finland outranked rural schools, and wealthy students performed much better than low-income students. Today, Finnish students rank at the top in international testing, and low-income students do almost as well as wealthy students.

Finland’s education system ranks so highly today because it took several measures to improve its education system. First, and perhaps most important, Finland raised teachers’ salaries, required all teachers to have a three-year master’s degree, and paid all costs, including a living stipend, for the graduate education needed to achieve this degree. These changes helped to greatly increase the number of teachers, especially the number of highly qualified teachers, and Finland now has more teachers for every 1,000 residents than does the United States. Unlike the United States, teaching is considered a highly prestigious profession in Finland, and the application process to become a teacher is very competitive. The college graduates who apply for one of Finland’s eight graduate programs in teaching typically rank in the top 10 percent of their class, and only 5–15 percent of their applications are accepted. A leading Finnish educator observed, “It’s more difficult getting into teacher education than law or medicine.” In contrast, US students who become teachers tend to have lower SAT scores than those who enter other professions, they only need a four-year degree, and their average salaries are lower than other professionals with a similar level of education.

Second, Finland revamped its curriculum to emphasize critical thinking skills, reduced the importance of scores on standardized tests and then eliminated standardized testing altogether, and eliminated academic tracking before tenth grade. Unlike the United States, Finland no longer ranks students, teachers, or schools according to scores on standardized tests because these tests are no longer given.

Third, Finland built many more schools to enable the average school to have fewer students. Today the typical school has fewer than three hundred students, and class sizes are smaller than those found in the United States.

Fourth, Finland increased funding of its schools so that its schools are now well maintained and well equipped. Whereas many US schools are decrepit, Finnish schools are decidedly in good repair.

Finally, Finland provided free medical and dental care for children and their families and expanded other types of social services, including three years of paid maternity leave and subsidized day care, as the country realized that children’s health and home environment play critical roles in their educational achievement.

These and other changes helped propel Finland’s education system to a leading position among the world’s industrial nations. As the United States ponders how best to improve its own education system, it may have much to learn from Finland’s approach to how children should learn.

Sources: Abrams, 2011; Anderson, 2011; Eggers & Calegari, 2011; Hancock, 2011; Ravitch, 2012; Sahlberg, 2011

Key Takeaways

• Until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males.
• Students from low-income backgrounds tend to have lower educational attainment than students from wealthier backgrounds.
• African Americans and Latinos tend to have lower educational attainment than non-Latino whites and Asians.
• Gender influences educational attainment in a complex fashion; older women have lower educational attainment than older men, but younger women have greater educational attainment than younger men.
• The United States ranks behind many other industrial nations in the quality of the education its citizens receive.

For Your Review

• Do you think the government should take steps to try to reduce racial and ethnic differences in education, or do you think it should take a hands-off approach? Explain your answer.
• Should the government require that children receive a formal education, as it now does, or should it be up to parents to decide whether their children should receive a formal education? Explain your answer.

Abrams, S. E. (2011, January 28). The children must play: What the United States could learn from Finland about education reform. The New Republic. Retrieved from http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-Finland-US .

Anderson, J. (2011, December 13). From Finland, an intriguing school-reform model. New York Times , p. A33.

Bailey, M. J., & Dynarski, S. (2011). Gains and gaps: Changing inequality in US college entry and completion . Ann Arbor, MI: Population Studies Center.

Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2012). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: An historical sociology of education and stratification . New York, NY: Academic Press.

Eggers, D., & Calegari, N. C. (2011, May 1). The high cost of low teacher salaries. New York Times , p. WK12.

Hancock, L. (2011, September). Why are Finland’s schools successful? Smithsonian . Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html?c=y&story=fullstory .

Kirk, D. S., & Sampson, R. J. (2011). Crime and the production of safe schools. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity?: Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 397–418). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Mickelson, R. A. (2003). When are racial disparities in education the result of racial discrimination? A social science perspective. Teachers College Record, 105, pp. 1052–1086.

Miech, R., Pampel, F., Kim, J., & Rogers, R. G. (2011). Education and mortality: The role of widening and narrowing disparities. American Sociological Review, 76 , 913–934.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2011). How many students finish secondary education? Retrieved November 10, 2011, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/3/48630687.pdf .

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2010). PISA 2009 results: What students know and can do—Student performance in reading, mathematics and science (Vol. 1). Paris, France: Author.

Ravitch, D. (2012, March 8). Schools we can envy. The New York Review of Books . Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/schools-we-can-envy/ .

Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Tavernise, S. (2012, February 10). Education gap grows between rich and poor, studies say. New York Times , p. A1.

Urban, W. J., & Wagoner, J. L., Jr. (2008). American education: A history (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

US Census Bureau. (2012). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2012 . Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab .

Wodtke, G. T., Harding, D. J., & Elwert, F. (2011). Neighborhood effects in temporal perspective: The impact of long-term exposure to concentrated disadvantage on high school graduation. American Sociological Review, 76 (5), 713–736.

Yeung, W.-J. J., & Pfeiffer, K. M. (2009). The black-white test score gap and early home environment. Social Science Research, 38 (2), 412–437.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Transforming education systems: Why, what, and how

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Rebecca winthrop and rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop the hon. minister david sengeh the hon. minister david sengeh minister of education and chief innovation officer - government of sierra leone, chief innovation officer - directorate of science, technology and innovation in sierra leone @dsengeh.

June 23, 2022

Today, the topic of education system transformation is front of mind for many leaders. Ministers of education around the world are seeking to build back better as they emerge from COVID-19-school closures to a new normal of living with a pandemic. The U.N. secretary general is convening the Transforming Education Summit (TES) at this year’s general assembly meeting (United Nations, n.d.). Students around the world continue to demand transformation on climate and not finding voice to do this through their schools are regularly leaving class to test out their civic action skills.      

It is with this moment in mind that we have developed this shared vision of education system transformation. Collectively we offer insights on transformation from the perspective of a global think tank and a national government: the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings brings years of global research on education change and transformation, and the Ministry of Education of Sierra Leone brings on-the-ground lessons from designing and implementing system-wide educational rebuilding.   

This brief is for any education leader or stakeholder who is interested in charting a transformation journey in their country or education jurisdiction such as a state or district. It is also for civil society organizations, funders, researchers, and anyone interested in the topic of national development through education. In it, we answer the following three questions and argue for a participatory approach to transformation:  

• Why is education system transformation urgent now? We argue that the world is at an inflection point. Climate change, the changing nature of work, increasing conflict and authoritarianism together with the urgency of COVID recovery has made the transformation agenda more critical than ever. 
• What is education system transformation? We argue that education system transformation must entail a fresh review of the goals of your system – are they meeting the moment that we are in, are they tackling inequality and building resilience for a changing world, are they fully context aware, are they owned broadly across society – and then fundamentally positioning all components of your education system to coherently contribute to this shared purpose.  
• How can education system transformation advance in your country or jurisdiction? We argue that three steps are crucial: Purpose (developing a broadly shared vision and purpose), Pedagogy (redesigning the pedagogical core), and Position (positioning and aligning all components of the system to support the pedagogical core and purpose). Deep engagement of educators, families, communities, students, ministry staff, and partners is essential across each of these “3 P” steps.    

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Our aim is not to provide “the answer” — we are also on a journey and continually learning about what it takes to transform systems — but to help others interested in pursuing system transformation benefit from our collective reflections to date. The goal is to complement and put in perspective — not replace — detailed guidance from other actors on education sector on system strengthening, reform, and redesign. In essence, we want to broaden the conversation and debate.

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What Students Are Saying About How to Improve American Education

An international exam shows that American 15-year-olds are stagnant in reading and math. Teenagers told us what’s working and what’s not in the American education system.

By The Learning Network

Earlier this month, the Program for International Student Assessment announced that the performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000 . Other recent studies revealed that two-thirds of American children were not proficient readers , and that the achievement gap in reading between high and low performers is widening.

We asked students to weigh in on these findings and to tell us their suggestions for how they would improve the American education system.

Our prompt received nearly 300 comments. This was clearly a subject that many teenagers were passionate about. They offered a variety of suggestions on how they felt schools could be improved to better teach and prepare students for life after graduation.

While we usually highlight three of our most popular writing prompts in our Current Events Conversation , this week we are only rounding up comments for this one prompt so we can honor the many students who wrote in.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

Put less pressure on students.

One of the biggest flaws in the American education system is the amount of pressure that students have on them to do well in school, so they can get into a good college. Because students have this kind of pressure on them they purely focus on doing well rather than actually learning and taking something valuable away from what they are being taught.

— Jordan Brodsky, Danvers, MA

As a Freshman and someone who has a tough home life, I can agree that this is one of the main causes as to why I do poorly on some things in school. I have been frustrated about a lot that I am expected to learn in school because they expect us to learn so much information in such little time that we end up forgetting about half of it anyway. The expectations that I wish that my teachers and school have of me is that I am only human and that I make mistakes. Don’t make me feel even worse than I already am with telling me my low test scores and how poorly I’m doing in classes.

— Stephanie Cueva, King Of Prussia, PA

I stay up well after midnight every night working on homework because it is insanely difficult to balance school life, social life, and extracurriculars while making time for family traditions. While I don’t feel like making school easier is the one true solution to the stress students are placed under, I do feel like a transition to a year-round schedule would be a step in the right direction. That way, teachers won’t be pressured into stuffing a large amount of content into a small amount of time, and students won’t feel pressured to keep up with ungodly pacing.

— Jacob Jarrett, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

In my school, we don’t have the best things, there are holes in the walls, mice, and cockroaches everywhere. We also have a lot of stress so there is rarely time for us to study and prepare for our tests because we constantly have work to do and there isn’t time for us to relax and do the things that we enjoy. We sleep late and can’t ever focus, but yet that’s our fault and that we are doing something wrong. School has become a place where we just do work, stress, and repeat but there has been nothing changed. We can’t learn what we need to learn because we are constantly occupied with unnecessary work that just pulls us back.

— Theodore Loshi, Masterman School

As a student of an American educational center let me tell you, it is horrible. The books are out dated, the bathrooms are hideous, stress is ever prevalent, homework seems never ending, and worst of all, the seemingly impossible feat of balancing school life, social life, and family life is abominable. The only way you could fix it would be to lessen the load dumped on students and give us a break.

— Henry Alley, Hoggard High School, Wilmington NC

Use less technology in the classroom (…or more).

People my age have smaller vocabularies, and if they don’t know a word, they just quickly look it up online instead of learning and internalizing it. The same goes for facts and figures in other subjects; don’t know who someone was in history class? Just look ‘em up and read their bio. Don’t know how to balance a chemical equation? The internet knows. Can’t solve a math problem by hand? Just sneak out the phone calculator.

My largest grievance with technology and learning has more to do with the social and psychological aspects, though. We’ve decreased ability to meaningfully communicate, and we want everything — things, experiences, gratification — delivered to us at Amazon Prime speed. Interactions and experiences have become cheap and 2D because we see life through a screen.

— Grace Robertson, Hoggard High School Wilmington, NC

Kids now a days are always on technology because they are heavily dependent on it- for the purpose of entertainment and education. Instead of pondering or thinking for ourselves, our first instinct is to google and search for the answers without giving it any thought. This is a major factor in why I think American students tests scores haven’t been improving because no one wants to take time and think about questions, instead they want to find answers as fast as they can just so they can get the assignment/ project over with.

— Ema Thorakkal, Glenbard West HS IL

There needs to be a healthier balance between pen and paper work and internet work and that balance may not even be 50:50. I personally find myself growing as a student more when I am writing down my assignments and planning out my day on paper instead of relying on my phone for it. Students now are being taught from preschool about technology and that is damaging their growth and reading ability. In my opinion as well as many of my peers, a computer can never beat a book in terms of comprehension.

— Ethan, Pinkey, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Learning needs to be more interesting. Not many people like to study from their textbooks because there’s not much to interact with. I think that instead of studying from textbooks, more interactive activities should be used instead. Videos, websites, games, whatever might interest students more. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use textbooks, I’m just saying that we should have a combination of both textbooks and technology to make learning more interesting in order for students to learn more.

— Vivina Dong, J. R. Masterman

Prepare students for real life.

At this point, it’s not even the grades I’m worried about. It feels like once we’ve graduated high school, we’ll be sent out into the world clueless and unprepared. I know many college students who have no idea what they’re doing, as though they left home to become an adult but don’t actually know how to be one.

The most I’ve gotten out of school so far was my Civics & Economics class, which hardly even touched what I’d actually need to know for the real world. I barely understand credit and they expect me to be perfectly fine living alone a year from now. We need to learn about real life, things that can actually benefit us. An art student isn’t going to use Biology and Trigonometry in life. Exams just seem so pointless in the long run. Why do we have to dedicate our high school lives studying equations we’ll never use? Why do exams focusing on pointless topics end up determining our entire future?

— Eliana D, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

I think that the American education system can be improved my allowing students to choose the classes that they wish to take or classes that are beneficial for their future. Students aren’t really learning things that can help them in the future such as basic reading and math.

— Skye Williams, Sarasota, Florida

I am frustrated about what I’m supposed to learn in school. Most of the time, I feel like what I’m learning will not help me in life. I am also frustrated about how my teachers teach me and what they expect from me. Often, teachers will give me information and expect me to memorize it for a test without teaching me any real application.

— Bella Perrotta, Kent Roosevelt High School

We divide school time as though the class itself is the appetizer and the homework is the main course. Students get into the habit of preparing exclusively for the homework, further separating the main ideas of school from the real world. At this point, homework is given out to prepare the students for … more homework, rather than helping students apply their knowledge to the real world.

— Daniel Capobianco, Danvers High School

Eliminate standardized tests.

Standardized testing should honestly be another word for stress. I know that I stress over every standardized test I have taken and so have most of my peers. I mean they are scary, it’s like when you take these tests you bring your No. 2 pencil and an impending fail.

— Brennan Stabler, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Personally, for me I think standardized tests have a negative impact on my education, taking test does not actually test my knowledge — instead it forces me to memorize facts that I will soon forget.

— Aleena Khan, Glenbard West HS Glen Ellyn, IL

Teachers will revolve their whole days on teaching a student how to do well on a standardized test, one that could potentially impact the final score a student receives. That is not learning. That is learning how to memorize and become a robot that regurgitates answers instead of explaining “Why?” or “How?” that answer was found. If we spent more time in school learning the answers to those types of questions, we would become a nation where students are humans instead of a number.

— Carter Osborn, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

In private school, students have smaller class sizes and more resources for field trips, computers, books, and lab equipment. They also get more “hand holding” to guarantee success, because parents who pay tuition expect results. In public school, the learning is up to you. You have to figure stuff out yourself, solve problems, and advocate for yourself. If you fail, nobody cares. It takes grit to do well. None of this is reflected in a standardized test score.

— William Hudson, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Give teachers more money and support.

I have always been told “Don’t be a teacher, they don’t get paid hardly anything.” or “How do you expect to live off of a teachers salary, don’t go into that profession.” As a young teen I am being told these things, the future generation of potential teachers are being constantly discouraged because of the money they would be getting paid. Education in Americans problems are very complicated, and there is not one big solution that can fix all of them at once, but little by little we can create a change.

— Lilly Smiley, Hoggard High School

We cannot expect our grades to improve when we give teachers a handicap with poor wages and low supplies. It doesn’t allow teachers to unleash their full potential for educating students. Alas, our government makes teachers work with their hands tied. No wonder so many teachers are quitting their jobs for better careers. Teachers will shape the rest of their students’ lives. But as of now, they can only do the bare minimum.

— Jeffery Austin, Hoggard High School

The answer to solving the American education crisis is simple. We need to put education back in the hands of the teachers. The politicians and the government needs to step back and let the people who actually know what they are doing and have spent a lifetime doing it decide how to teach. We wouldn’t let a lawyer perform heart surgery or construction workers do our taxes, so why let the people who win popularity contests run our education systems?

— Anders Olsen, Hoggard High School, Wilmington NC

Make lessons more engaging.

I’m someone who struggles when all the teacher does is say, “Go to page X” and asks you to read it. Simply reading something isn’t as effective for me as a teacher making it interactive, maybe giving a project out or something similar. A textbook doesn’t answer all my questions, but a qualified teacher that takes their time does. When I’m challenged by something, I can always ask a good teacher and I can expect an answer that makes sense to me. But having a teacher that just brushes off questions doesn’t help me. I’ve heard of teachers where all they do is show the class movies. At first, that sounds amazing, but you don’t learn anything that can benefit you on a test.

— Michael Huang, JR Masterman

I’ve struggled in many classes, as of right now it’s government. What is making this class difficult is that my teacher doesn’t really teach us anything, all he does is shows us videos and give us papers that we have to look through a textbook to find. The problem with this is that not everyone has this sort of learning style. Then it doesn’t help that the papers we do, we never go over so we don’t even know if the answers are right.

— S Weatherford, Kent Roosevelt, OH

The classes in which I succeed in most are the ones where the teachers are very funny. I find that I struggle more in classes where the teachers are very strict. I think this is because I love laughing. Two of my favorite teachers are very lenient and willing to follow the classes train of thought.

— Jonah Smith Posner, J.R. Masterman

Create better learning environments.

Whenever they are introduced to school at a young age, they are convinced by others that school is the last place they should want to be. Making school a more welcoming place for students could better help them be attentive and also be more open minded when walking down the halls of their own school, and eventually improve their test scores as well as their attitude while at school.

— Hart P., Bryant High School

Students today feel voiceless because they are punished when they criticize the school system and this is a problem because this allows the school to block out criticism that can be positive leaving it no room to grow. I hope that in the near future students can voice their opinion and one day change the school system for the better.

— Nico Spadavecchia, Glenbard West Highschool Glen Ellyn IL

The big thing that I have struggled with is the class sizes due to overcrowding. It has made it harder to be able to get individual help and be taught so I completely understand what was going on. Especially in math it builds on itself so if you don’t understand the first thing you learn your going to be very lost down the road. I would go to my math teacher in the morning and there would be 12 other kids there.

— Skyla Madison, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

The biggest issue facing our education system is our children’s lack of motivation. People don’t want to learn. Children hate school. We despise homework. We dislike studying. One of the largest indicators of a child’s success academically is whether or not they meet a third grade reading level by the third grade, but children are never encouraged to want to learn. There are a lot of potential remedies for the education system. Paying teachers more, giving schools more funding, removing distractions from the classroom. All of those things are good, but, at the end of the day, the solution is to fundamentally change the way in which we operate.

Support students’ families.

I say one of the biggest problems is the support of families and teachers. I have heard many success stories, and a common element of this story is the unwavering support from their family, teachers, supervisors, etc. Many people need support to be pushed to their full potential, because some people do not have the will power to do it on their own. So, if students lived in an environment where education was supported and encouraged; than their children would be more interested in improving and gaining more success in school, than enacting in other time wasting hobbies that will not help their future education.

— Melanie, Danvers

De-emphasize grades.

I wish that tests were graded based on how much effort you put it and not the grade itself. This would help students with stress and anxiety about tests and it would cause students to put more effort into their work. Anxiety around school has become such a dilemma that students are taking their own life from the stress around schoolwork. You are told that if you don’t make straight A’s your life is over and you won’t have a successful future.

— Lilah Pate, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

I personally think that there are many things wrong with the American education system. Everyone is so worried about grades and test scores. People believe that those are the only thing that represents a student. If you get a bad grade on something you start believing that you’re a bad student. GPA doesn’t measure a students’ intelligence or ability to learn. At young ages students stop wanting to come to school and learn. Standardized testing starts and students start to lose their creativity.

— Andrew Gonthier, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Praise for great teachers

Currently, I’m in a math class that changed my opinion of math. Math class just used to be a “meh” for me. But now, my teacher teachers in a way that is so educational and at the same time very amusing and phenomenal. I am proud to be in such a class and with such a teacher. She has changed the way I think about math it has definitely improve my math skills. Now, whenever I have math, I am so excited to learn new things!

— Paulie Sobol, J.R Masterman

At the moment, the one class that I really feel supported in is math. My math teachers Mrs. Siu and Ms. Kamiya are very encouraging of mistakes and always are willing to help me when I am struggling. We do lots of classwork and discussions and we have access to amazing online programs and technology. My teacher uses Software called OneNote and she does all the class notes on OneNote so that we can review the class material at home. Ms. Kamiya is very patient and is great at explaining things. Because they are so accepting of mistakes and confusion it makes me feel very comfortable and I am doing very well in math.

— Jayden Vance, J.R. Masterman

One of the classes that made learning easier for me was sixth-grade math. My teacher allowed us to talk to each other while we worked on math problems. Talking to the other students in my class helped me learn a lot quicker. We also didn’t work out of a textbook. I feel like it is harder for me to understand something if I just read it out of a textbook. Seventh-grade math also makes learning a lot easier for me. Just like in sixth-grade math, we get to talk to others while solving a problem. I like that when we don’t understand a question, our teacher walks us through it and helps us solve it.

— Grace Moan, J R Masterman

My 2nd grade class made learning easy because of the way my teacher would teach us. My teacher would give us a song we had to remember to learn nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. which helped me remember their definitions until I could remember it without the song. She had little key things that helped us learn math because we all wanted to be on a harder key than each other. She also sang us our spelling words, and then the selling of that word from the song would help me remember it.

— Brycinea Stratton, J.R. Masterman

The State of Education: Rebuilding a More Equitable System

Covid-19 has exposed long-standing inequities in america’s education system..

The pandemic’s toll on our education system has had a broader effect on academic regressions than initially predicted. And the most vulnerable learners—students of color, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and students with additional learning needs—have been impacted the most. While the pandemic has exacerbated existing disparities, it’s also presented a unique opportunity to dramatically overhaul our education system.

We convened education advocates and practitioners, from both K–12 and higher education, to explain how the disruption of the pandemic is pushing forward long-overdue pedagogical reform. And we outlined the innovative solutions that should be implemented to create an equitable learning environment for all students.

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Where does education reform go from here, a session presented by bill & melinda gates foundation.

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What Changes to the U.S. Education System Are Needed to Support Long-Term Success for All Americans?

With the pandemic deepening inequities that threaten students’ prospects, the vice president of the Corporation’s National Program provides a vision for transforming our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures 

At no point in our nation’s history have we asked so much of our education system as we do today. We ask that our primary and secondary schools prepare all students, regardless of background, for a lifetime of learning. We ask that teachers guide every child toward deeper understanding while simultaneously attending to their social-emotional development. And we ask that our institutions of higher learning serve students with a far broader range of life circumstances than ever before.

We ask these things of education because the future we aspire to requires it. The nature of work and civic participation is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and social media are driving rapid changes in how we interact with each other and what skills hold value. In the world our children will inherit, their ability to adapt, think critically, and work effectively with others will be essential for both their own success and the well-being of society.

At Carnegie Corporation of New York, we focus on supporting people who are in a position to meet this challenge. That includes the full spectrum of educators, administrators, family members, and others who shape young people’s learning experiences as they progress toward and into adulthood. Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

All of our work is geared toward transforming student learning. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for success today call for a vastly different set of learning experiences than may have sufficed in the past. Students must play a more active role in their own learning, and that learning must encompass more than subject-matter knowledge. Preparing all children for success requires greater attention to inclusiveness in the classroom, differentiation in teaching and learning, and universal high expectations.

This transformation needs to happen in higher education as well. A high school education is no longer enough to ensure financial security. We need more high-quality postsecondary options, better guidance for students as they transition beyond high school, and sufficient supports to enable all students to complete their postsecondary programs. Preparing students for lifelong success requires stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and work.

The need for such transformation has become all the more urgent in the face of COVID-19. As with past economic crises, the downturn resulting from the pandemic is likely to accelerate the erosion of opportunities for low-skilled workers with only a high school education. Investments in innovative learning models and student supports are critical to preventing further inequities in learning outcomes. 

An Urgent Call for Advancing Equity 

The 2020–21 school year may prove to be the most consequential in American history. With unfathomable speed, COVID-19 has forced more change in how schools operate than in the previous half century.

What is most concerning in all of this is the impact on the most underserved and historically marginalized in our society: low-income children and students of color. Even before the current crisis, the future prospects of a young person today looked very different depending on the color of her skin and the zip code in which she grew up, but the pandemic exposed and exacerbated long-standing racial and economic inequities. And the same families who are faring worst in terms of disrupted schooling are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn and disproportionately getting sick, being hospitalized, and dying.

Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

Every organization that is committed to educational improvement needs to ask itself what it can do differently to further advance the cause of educational equity during this continuing crisis so that we can make lasting improvements. As we know from past experience, if the goal of equity is not kept front and center, those who are already behind through no fault of their own will benefit the least. If ever there were a time to heed this caution, it is now.

We hope that our nation will approach education with a new sense of purpose and a shared commitment to ensuring that our schools truly work for every child. Whether or not that happens will depend on our resolve and our actions in the coming months. We have the proof points and know-how to transform learning, bolster instruction, and meet the needs of our most disadvantaged students. What has changed is the urgency for doing so at scale.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have. We need to reimagine the systems that shape student learning and put the communities whose circumstances we most need to elevate at the center of that process. We need to recognize that we will not improve student outcomes without building the capacity of the adults who work with them, supporting them with high-quality resources and meaningful opportunities for collaboration and professional growth. We need to promote stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and employment so that all students are prepared for lifelong success.

The pandemic has deepened inequities that threaten students’ prospects. But if we seize this moment and learn from it, if we marshal the necessary resources, we have the potential to transform our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures.

In a pandemic-induced moment when the American education system has been blown into 25 million homes across the country, where do we go from here?

We Must Learn to Act in New Ways

These are not controversial ideas. In fact, they constitute the general consensus about where American education needs to go. But they also represent a tall order for the people who influence the system. Practically everyone who plays a part in education must learn to act in new ways.

That we have made progress in such areas as high school completion, college-going rates, and the adoption of college- and career-ready standards is a testament to the commitment of those working in the field. But it will take more than commitment to achieve the changes in student learning that our times demand. We can’t expect individuals to figure out what they need to do on their own, nor should we be surprised if they struggle to do so when working in institutional structures designed to produce different outcomes. The transformation we seek calls for much greater coordination and a broader set of allies than would suffice for more incremental changes.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have.

Our best hope for achieving equity and the transformation of student learning is to enhance adults’ ability to contribute to that learning. That means building their capacity while supporting their authentic engagement in promoting a high-quality education for every child. It also means ensuring that people operate within systems that are optimized to support their effectiveness and that a growing body of knowledge informs their efforts.

These notions comprise our overarching strategy for promoting the systems change needed to transform student learning experiences on a large scale. We seek to enhance adult capacity and stakeholder engagement in the service of ensuring that all students are prepared to meet the demands of the 21st century. We also support knowledge development and organizational improvement to the extent that investments in these areas enhance adult capacity, stakeholder engagement, and student experiences.

Five Ways We Invest in the Future of Students

These views on how best to promote systems change in education guide our philanthropic work. The strategic areas of change we focus on are major themes throughout our five investment portfolios. Although they are managed separately and support different types of initiatives, each seeks to address its area of focus from multiple angles. A single portfolio may include grants that build adult capacity, enhance stakeholder engagement, and generate new knowledge.

New Designs to Advance Learning

Preparing all students for success requires that we fundamentally reimagine our nation’s schools and classrooms. Our public education system needs to catch up with how the world is evolving and with what we’ve come to understand about how people learn. That means attending to a broader diversity of learning styles and bringing what happens in school into greater alignment with what happens in the worlds of work and civic life. We make investments to increase the number of innovative learning models that support personalized experiences, academic mastery, and positive youth development. We also make investments that build the capacity of districts and intermediaries to improve learning experiences for all students as well as grants to investigate relevant issues of policy and practice.

Pathways to Postsecondary Success

Lifelong success in the United States has never been more dependent on educational attainment than it is today. Completing some education beyond the 12th grade has virtually become a necessity for financial security and meaningful work. But for that possibility to exist for everyone, we need to address the historical barriers that keep many students from pursuing and completing a postsecondary program, and we must strengthen the options available to all students for education after high school. Through our investments, we seek to increase the number of young people able to access and complete a postsecondary program, with a major focus on removing historical barriers for students who are first-generation college-goers, low-income, or from underrepresented groups. We also look to expand the range of high-quality postsecondary options and to strengthen alignment between K–12, higher education, and the world of work.

Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning

At its core, learning is about the interplay between teachers, students, and content. How teachers and students engage with each other and with their curriculum plays a predominant role in determining what students learn and how well they learn it. That’s not to say that factors outside of school don’t also greatly impact student learning. But the research is clear that among the factors a school might control, nothing outweighs the teaching that students experience. We focus on supporting educators in implementing rigorous college- and career-ready standards in math, science, and English language arts. We make investments to increase the supply of and demand for high-quality curricular materials and professional learning experiences for teachers and administrators.

Public Understanding

As central as they are to the education process, school professionals are hardly the only people with a critical role to play in student learning. Students spend far more time with family and other community members than they do at school. And numerous stakeholders outside of the education system have the potential to strengthen and shape what happens within it. The success of our nation’s schools depends on far more individuals than are employed by them. 

We invest in efforts to engage families and other stakeholders as active partners in supporting equitable access to high-quality student learning. We also support media organizations and policy research groups in building awareness about key issues related to educational equity and improvement.

Integration, Learning, and Innovation

Those of us who work for change in education need a new set of habits to achieve our vision of 21st-century learning. It will take more than a factory-model mindset to transform our education system into one that prepares all learners for an increasingly complex world. We must approach this task with flexibility, empathy for the people involved, and an understanding of how to learn from what’s working and what’s not. We work to reduce the fragmentation, inefficiencies, and missteps that often result when educational improvement strategies are pursued in isolation and without an understanding of the contexts in which they are implemented. Through grants and other activities, we build the capacity of people working in educational organizations to change how they work by emphasizing systems and design thinking, iteration, and knowledge sharing within and across organizations.

Two recent surveys by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup offer insights into how our education system can better help all Americans navigate job and career choices

Join Us in This Ambitious Endeavor

Our approach of supporting multiple stakeholders by pulling multiple levers is informed by our deep understanding of the system we’re trying to move. American education is a massive, diverse, and highly decentralized enterprise. There is no mechanism by which we might affect more than superficial change in many thousands of communities. The type of change that is needed cannot come from compliance alone. It requires that everyone grapple with new ideas.

We know from our history of promoting large-scale improvements in American education that advancements won’t happen overnight or as the result of one kind of initiative. Our vision for 21st-century education will require more than quick wins and isolated successes. Innovation is essential, and a major thrust of our work involves the incubation and dissemination of new models, resources, and exemplars. But we must also learn to move forward with the empathy, flexibility, and systems thinking needed to support people in making the transition. Novel solutions only help if they can be successfully implemented in different contexts.

Only a sustained and concerted effort will shift the center of gravity of a social enterprise that involves millions of adults and many tens of millions of young people. The challenge of philanthropy is to effect widespread social change with limited resources and without formal authority. This takes more than grantmaking. At the Corporation, we convene, communicate, and form coalitions. We provide thought leadership, issue challenges, and launch new initiatives. Through these multifaceted activities, we maximize our ability to forge, share, and put into practice powerful new ideas that build a foundation for more substantial changes in the future.

We encourage everyone who plays a role in education to join us in this work. Our strategy represents more than our priorities as a grantmaker. It conveys our strong beliefs about how to get American education to where it needs to be. The more organizations and individuals we have supporting those who are working to provide students with what they need, the more likely we are to succeed in this ambitious endeavor. 

LaVerne Evans Srinivasan is the vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s National Program and the program director for Education.

TOP: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a lower-school substitute teacher works from her home in Arlington, Virginia, on April 1, 2020. Her role in the school changed significantly due to the pandemic. Whereas she previously worked part-time to support teachers when they needed to be absent from the classroom, amid COVID-19 she now helps teachers to build skills with new digital platforms so they can continue to teach in the best way for their students and their families. (Credit: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Andrew Carnegie Fellow Marcia Chatelain calls for innovative and inclusive ways to teach and support first-generation students across the U.S.

Addressing post-pandemic learning loss should include far greater support for programs that involve parents and caregivers in their kids’ educations

The child care system is broken. Here are 5 striking statistics that show why.

As more than 1,000 providers shut their doors for a day without child care, we examine a few numbers that reveal why the landscape is in crisis..

On Monday, more than 1,000 U.S. child care providers plan to temporarily shut down facilities or call in sick to take part in the country's third annual “Day Without Child Care.” The event seeks to raise awareness about early learning professionals' critical role in the nation’s economy and how little they earn in return for that labor. 

“We can’t make it work without more money, bottom line,” Yessika Magdaleno, who has provided child care for nearly 23 years in Garden Grove, California, said in a statement. “I’m always told that I should close my doors and try working in a different, more lucrative industry, but I don’t want to do that.” 

For a short period after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, society seemed to acknowledge that early learning professionals are the workforce behind the workforce, making it possible for essential employees to be on-site at their jobs.

The sector received an infusion of relief funding, including a historic $24 billion from the federal government. Tens of thousands of centers that would’ve otherwise shuttered kept their staff on payroll and stayed open. Parents were able to keep their positions. 

But that funding expired last fall . And while some states have since increased child care allocations , many have not. An analysis published this month by the National Women’s Law Center found that, in states without significant funding increases, the percentage of families unable to access child care has grown since the federal dollars dried up. Nearly a quarter – 23.1% – can’t find or pay for care, up from 17.8% in the fall. 

The workers planning to take the day off have drawn attention to inequities faced in their profession. Here are five striking statistics that shed light on America’s broken child care system. 

Day Without Child Care: Hundreds of providers closed as educators went on strike. Here's why

That’s the median hourly wage for a child care worker in this country.

While the numbers vary by state and locale, these professionals earn less in part because they work with younger children, a situation scholars refer to as "a pay penalty." Poverty rates among early childhood professionals are 7.7 times higher than those among educators who teach students in grades K-8, according to research out of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. 

The pay penalty is especially pronounced among women of color, who account for much of the child care workforce. Black early educators, for example, are paid $0.78 less per hour on average than their white counterparts, according to the UC-Berkeley research.

One in 5 families spends this amount or more on child care in a single year, according to a report from Care.com , an online marketplace for finding such services. That’s nearly $12,000 more than the average cost of attending a public four-year university – including tuition, fees and room and board. And it’s more than double the average cost of rent in the U.S. 

More broadly, the report found that nearly half of parents spend more than $18,000 a year on care expenses. This is unaffordable for most families, especially people struggling to make ends meet.

Yet the vast majority of children whose parents would be eligible for subsidies through the largest federal child care program don’t receive that support in a given month . That program – the Child Care and Development Block Grant – is severely underfunded. 

According to a federal report last year, that’s the portion of a single parent’s income, in some areas (such as Washington, D.C.), that is spent on infant care . The cost is untenable even in states on the low end (such as South Dakota), where infant care accounted for a quarter of a single parent’s household income.

High child care costs often compel parents to leave the workforce. But without alternatives, many single parents turn to the lowest-cost option, which may mean unlicensed providers . 

14.4 million

This is how many U.S. children 5 and younger have all available parents in the workforce and thus need care, Census data suggest . That's roughly 2 in 3 children in this age group . In other words, households with more than one income struggle, too.  

Many parents find themselves having to choose between work and child care. In one 2023 poll of voters, more than a quarter of respondents with children under 6 said they or a family member had to miss work because of child care issues . Nearly 6 in 10 participants who aren’t working or only working part time said they’d work full time if they had access to quality, affordable child care. 

Child care relief: Billions in funding just expired. Costs are already skyrocketing.

$122 billion

According to a report by ReadyNation , this is how much money is sucked out of the nation’s economy due to its child care crisis. The crisis forces parents out of jobs and undermines young children’s learning trajectories, culminating in huge losses in earnings, productivity and revenue. 

In other words, it’s not just parents who suffer. Businesses and taxpayers also take a hit.

Why is the child care system so broken? The biggest reason is that such care is too expensive for families, and public funding is inadequate, said Marcy Whitebook, director emerita of UC-Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. “More often than not, public investment is temporary because policymakers decide the problem it was designed to solve is over. Of course, the needs aren't temporary in child care.”

As Kishia Saffold, a child care owner and operator in Alabama, put it, “It’s only a matter of time until the system implodes.”

• The Education Gradebook

Florida again ranked No. 1 for education by U.S. News

• Divya Kumar Times staff

Florida is the top state for education for the second year in a row, according to U.S. News & World Report’s latest ranking announced Tuesday.

The outlet said the state’s standing is “ largely fueled by several stellar metrics in higher education, and less so by Florida’s still fairly strong performance in the prekindergarten- through-12th-grade arena.”

The recognition follows a period of controversial change in the last two legislative sessions for a system that includes 12 public universities and 28 state colleges. Gov. Ron DeSantis and lawmakers have banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campuses; approved a measure regulating campus restrooms according to gender; removed sociology from a required courses list; and weakened tenure protections for faculty, among other changes.

In a separate U.S. News ranking, Florida also landed in the No. 1 spot for higher education alone for the eighth year in a row. Students at the state’s colleges and universities had the nation’s second-highest graduation rates and paid the lowest average in-state tuition and fees, the organization said.

The state ranked No. 26 for the average amount of federal student loan debt held by young adults and No. 25 for the share of those 25 years old and above with at least an associate degree.

Many of Florida’s public universities have been climbing in the rankings in recent years. In September, the University of Florida dipped to No. 6 in the U.S. News rankings among public universities after being named a Top 5 school two years in a row. The school was recognized last week by Forbes as one of 10 public “new Ivies.”

“Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have prioritized higher education and ensured our universities have the resources and support they need to focus on academic excellence and provide safe learning environments for all students,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said in a news release.

Rodrigues said the state increased funding to the State University System by $1 billion last year.

Meera Sitharam, chairperson of the University of Florida’s faculty union, praised the state for investments in higher education that have kept tuition low. But she said the metrics don’t capture everything, and the recent climate around higher education in the state could erode the education students receive.

“The quality of education and what exactly (students) learn, is hugely connected to the culture and the values, including academic freedom,” she said. “I would say academic freedom is the fundamental value, which is absolutely, the grounds. Without academic freedom, everything will come crashing down. Education simply doesn’t exist. Even democracy won’t exist.”

Jessica Magnani, chairperson of the St. Petersburg College Faculty union, said the ranking was a testament to the work of educators across the state, but that salaries for teachers and faculty have not kept up with either the rise in rankings or the cost of living.

At St. Petersburg College, she said, starting salaries are $39,000 for full-time faculty roles. Florida recently ranked second-to-last of all states for teacher pay.

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She also wondered if the state would maintain its rankings in years to come. “I think we’ve not yet seen the results of the legislation that recently passed,” she said.

In K-12 education, the state ranked No. 10 this year, U.S. News said.

It ranked No. 5 among states for college readiness, No. 12 for preschool enrollment and No. 19 for high school graduation rates.

Florida ranked No. 21 in reading scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” In the same assessment, the state ranked No. 32 in math.

Utah ranked No. 2 for best education state overall and Massachusetts came in at No.3.

Divya Kumar covers higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, working in partnership with Open Campus.

Divya Kumar is the higher education reporter. Reach her at [email protected].

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I have fond memories of high school in America. I'm worried my daughter won't feel the same in Singapore.

• Novelist Jason Erik Lundberg has taught at schools in the US and Singapore.
• He worries about the amount of pressure that gets put on his teenage daughter, who attends a local school in Singapore.
• He remembers her losing 10 pounds while studying for a standardized test one year.

Growing up, school was always very important in my family. Now, many of us — myself included — are even educators. My sister teaches drama in the US, and my mother retired from her position as a tenured university professor of journalism several years ago. I live in Singapore and lecture in the creative writing and publishing graduate program at Nanyang Technological University , but have also taught at the high school, undergraduate, and community college levels.

In 2007, my now-ex-wife (a Singaporean citizen) and I decided to move to Singapore from the US. I got a full-time position at one of the country's highest-rated independent all-boys secondary schools. It was there that I was introduced to Singapore's competitive and high-pressure education system .

I was surprised by how much extra work my students had to do on top of their regular coursework. They had to work on group presentations, research papers, and community projects on top of homework and hours of mandatory co-curricular activities like Taekwondo, modern dance, or robotics club.

I tried to be as compassionate as I could in the face of this workload, but I also had my own KPIs to meet, which were dictated by the school administration. I lasted four years before deciding to move on.

It made me recall my education experience growing up in Oklahoma and North Carolina, which I largely look back on with fondness.

For the most part, I enjoyed my classes, as well as my extra-curriculars, which in high school consisted of marching band, French club, and physics club. It's possible that, in the 30 years since graduating from high school , my memories have become rose-colored, but I do remember feeling like I had a good balance between my school life and my personal life.

I worry about the stress that gets put on my 14-year-old daughter

My daughter is now in Secondary Three — the equivalent of ninth grade in the US — and it has been eye-opening following her through six years of primary school and two and a half years of secondary school. She gets good grades, but she is far more stressed out than I remember being at the same age.

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As part of the co-parenting arrangement with my ex-wife, I have custody of our daughter on weekends, yet I can only remember a handful of those weekends over the past eight and a half years —including public and school holidays, during which she should be resting — when she wasn't overloaded with homework.

From the time she arrives at my apartment on a Friday evening until I take her to her mother's place on Sunday night, her attention is primarily on the assignments she has to complete before Monday morning.

For example, when she was 11 and in Primary Six, Singapore was still under heavy COVID-19 restrictions, which was taxing enough for a young student. However, she also had to take the standardized Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), which would determine the secondary schools she'd be eligible for the following year.

From where I sat, she spent the majority of that school year studying for that test, and felt intense pressure — along with the rest of her cohort — from the teachers to do well. This led to prolonged neurosis that year, and as a result, she lost over 10 pounds, when she was a slender kid to begin with.

A lot of the pressure is self-inflicted by students

All of this has been compounded by my daughter's high academic standards for herself, much of which has come from her school environment. When she doesn't have enough time in the day to be her best in each subject, she feels like she's letting her parents, teachers, and herself down, which leads to further anxiety.

On a positive note, it does look like things are getting better. Over the past few years, Singapore's government has announced a shift in the focus of education away from purely academic grades and test results.

In 2023, mid-year exams were no longer required, per The Straits Times . In addition, many schools have now instituted subject-based banding, where students are placed in the appropriate subject difficulty based on their aptitudes. Parents also get regular newsletters from the Ministry of Education that show an increased understanding of the difficulties that students face . However, as with any type of government bureaucracy, things are still moving slowly.

I am exceedingly proud of my daughter. She's intelligent and creative, but even more importantly, she is kind. She is a far better person than I was at her age. I can see her doing very interesting things as she gets older, and I only hope that the pressures she's under don't do lasting damage to her ability to get there.

Got a personal essay about culture shock or relocating a family that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: [email protected] .

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• Cambodia: Guidance on implementation of new e-filing system; tax incentives for education sector

New desktop application “GDT e-Administration”; tax incentives provided to the education sector until the end of 2028

New desktop application “GDT e-Administration”; tax incentives

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Guidance on implementation of new e-filing system

The General Department of Taxation (GDT) issued Instruction No. 11936 GDT (dated 21 March 2024) providing guidance on the implementation of the new desktop application called “GDT e-Administration” which replaces the e-documents submission system on electronic filing (e-filing).

Under the new application, taxpayers are now able to submit the following administrative letters and documents electronically without having to physically submit said documents to the GDT or tax branches:

• Letter for enterprise information update
• Letter to pay stamp duty on transfer of immovable property ownership or possession rights
• Administrative protest letter against tax reassessments
• Letter to request tax installment payments
• Letter to request certificates or other approval letters
• Letter to requests through the administration and other documents

Taxpayers are now also able to track the status of their documents through a QR code or bar code upon submission of their letters.

For submission of documents other than the abovementioned (e.g., tax declarations, request for tax agent license, request for confirmation of proper accounting records or certificate of tax compliance, request for temporary suspension or resumption of the business activity, request for residency certificate and DTA applications etc.), taxpayers will need to follow the existing procedures for the respective application.

Tax incentives for education sector

The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) issued Prakas No. 172 MEF.Prk.GDT (dated 20 March 2024) clarifying the tax incentives provided to the education sector in Cambodia until the end of 2028.

Prakas No. 172 supersedes Prakas no. 209 (dated 2020) and is effective from 1 January 2024.

Read a  May 2024 report prepared by the KPMG member firm in Cambodia

The KPMG name and logo are trademarks used under license by the independent member firms of the KPMG global organization. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee and does not provide services to clients. No member firm has any authority to obligate or bind KPMG International or any other member firm vis-à-vis third parties, nor does KPMG International have any such authority to obligate or bind any member firm. The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation. For more information, contact KPMG's Federal Tax Legislative and Regulatory Services Group at: + 1 202 533 3712, 1801 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006.

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