The current education system is severely broken. In the lower levels it is being degraded to little more than a baby sitting service. Students are not allowed to fail, and there is no way to maintain control within the classroom. The teachers are underpaid and the students don’t have to learn basic skills unless they are motivated to do it themselves. I find it hard to believe that someone can go through 12 years of school and still come out functionally illiterate. Only 73% of high school graduates can read at a basic level, and in the Black and Hispanic communities the results are even worse.
Education is quite often the means that the poor can raise themselves up to a higher standard of living, yet it is in the poor communities that the school budgets are being cut and the schools allowed to fall further into disrepair. There needs to be a move towards putting extra funding into the poorer areas so that those students can go on to higher education. There also needs to be role models in those schools to show the students, particularly at an early age that by staying in school that they can get ahead.
Another part of the solution is the need for a change in the funding model for higher education. Right now, only the rich can afford to go to college or university, since the tuition rates are so high. Or the student is burdened with massive student loans, which quite often end up keeping them from raising their standard of living, which was the reason for going to university in the first place. University should change to a model where the grades determine the cost of tuition. If you can attain a high average, you don’t have to pay any tuition, poor students, or those that are just there to party would pay a higher tuition. This would allow the bright student from a poor area to attend university and not be burdened by student loans when they graduate. There are scholarships currently available, but there are too few of them and they are focused on the wrong students. A large number of scholarships are based on proficiency in sports, not academics. Most scholarships should go to the student who will benefit from the access to higher education, not the student that is good at catching a ball, who will do the minimum required to pass their education and will take the easiest course they can find.
There also needs to be more encouragement for students to enter trade apprenticeships. There is a growing shortage of skilled tradesmen, but most students that go on to higher education are discouraged from going into a trade, instead they go to university and graduate in fields that are oversupplied and end up working dead end jobs just to pay off the massive student loans. Had the same student gone into a trade, they would have had a secure job, and the possibility of starting their own business once they got some experience.