Tucker wrote the essay titled "Asian Countries Take the United States to School" (2016). The author's main goal in this essay is to clarify the disparities in how schools in the United States teach their students as opposed to those in Asia. The gaps are important in terms of recognizing ways in which American educators can change while teaching children. When disadvantaged children in the world are relative to their peers, Tucker (n.p.) aims to narrow the gap by supplying these children with realistic lessons that can help them get a decent education. Therefore, the paper will describe the current situation with American education compared to that of the OECD nations and assure sufficient practical lessons to be learnt.
Current Situation with American Education Compared to OECD's
Currently, the U.S. is not doing to close the education gap among children from disadvantaged and wealthy families. The former performs poorly when compared to the later. However, it happens intensely in the country when compared to the OECD countries such as the Vietnam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and South Korea. In America, 12% of children performing low in the classroom are from needy families when compared to a 5% in the OECD nations (Tacker n.p.). Similar findings are correct for an average, primary score and upper ranges students in the United States when compared to those from the OECD. The low performing children in the U.S. is due to the schools and not the poverty levels associated with the children or the nation as many would argue. From the findings of the OECD tracking on the number of highest performers and lowest performers in schools, it is evident that performance improvement for the low performing students does not require a nation sacrificing the top or average performers. Like the OECD countries, the United States needs to deal with the downward spiral and stop it fast before it sinks in their schools and children. Currently, the country schools do not focus on helping children who lag behind of the others in the classroom until such students stop coming to school over the years (Tacker n.p.). It is necessary to prevent this threat to education in children before it gains momentum in the schools. The educators and policymakers need to realize that a failure in their students will be primarily on them. Hence, they should not allow any student to be left behind. The OECD countries are doing that. Consequently, it gives them a commitment to helping every student excel in their education.
Practical Lessons Valuable to Achieve Better Situation
The U.S. needs to learn from the OECD nations in what they are doing to fill the gap in performance of the lowest and highest performing students. Practically, the country schools need to implement literacy assessments for all the students and especially those lagging behind. Like Singapore, there is the need for having more and best teachers specializing on students lagging behind in American schools (Tacker n.p.). The country can also learn from Hong Kong and have programs for immigrant children before entering the regular classes. Providing resources to be used during supplementary lessons is also useful. In addition, having extracurricular activities and orientation lesson will improve the performance of low performing students. They can also pair city schools serving students from low-income families and rural schools as Shanghai is presently doing. Therefore, the local students can learn from the city students. American schools can also subsidize voluntary activities like Japan does to university students to assist families with low-performing students.
Work Cited
Tucker, Mark. Asian Countries Take the U.S. to School. The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/us-asia-education-differences/471564/. Accessed 29 Feb. 2016.
