The Importance of Providing Quality and Affordable Education in Us

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures reading, math and science through an exam sampling 15-year-olds in 72 countries every three years; the last test administered was in 2015. The United States fell just below the average in reading and science established by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and below average in math – dropping 11 points since the previous exam. This finding highlights our school system’s value for efficiency over mastery by giving students a limited amount of time to comprehend the curriculum, which then prompts an incomplete understanding of the subject material. In addition, low teachers’ salaries do not allow schools to recruit and retain teachers with higher abilities that schools need in order to offer all their students a high-quality education. A large proportion of children do not have access to food at home, promoting breakfast and lunch provided by the schools as their only meals; without these meals, many children have low attention spans, behavioral issues and discipline issues in school as nutrition is critical for a child’s brain, attentiveness, and learning ability.

Our schools moreover produce segregation among students and communities through wide disparities across racial and socioeconomic lines. Within recent years enrollment in higher education institutions have diminished. Attending university is increasing in cost, prompting students to borrow money from the federal government as means to obtain a higher education to increase their probability of securing a job position after graduation. After graduation, students must pay back the money borrowed to their loan distributors, but the student loan repayment rates are inflated by the Department of Education for 99. 8 percent of all colleges and trade schools in the United States. These rising costs and inflation rates generate increased the student loan repayment period more than the current average of ten years. Students are also underemployed following the years of higher education. This often results in students weighing the costs and benefits of higher education before and while attending universities.

We know the value of education for every child regardless of who the child is, the income of their parents, or where the child lives as all students deserve access to a high-quality education. Free breakfast and lunch for all students and a safe and healthy environment is also essential to a high-quality education because it allows students to properly comprehend the curriculum by increasing their learning ability and attentiveness while in class. High teacher salaries increase the school’s ability to recruit and retain educators with higher abilities necessary to offer all students a high-quality education. We must also decrease the cost of higher education as a higher cost is disproportionately multiplies student debt and stifle student spending, inadvertently harming our economy. Student loan repayment should also be adjusted to refinance the loans at the lowest possible rates of interests.