The jury's decision is out. United States are still well below expectations when it comes to internal test results. They still score well below other less-developed countries like Korea, Singapore, China, Sweden, etc. This has continued to cause a havoc amongst parents, teachers, and lawmakers who have not pushed to implement a new set of standards in literacy and mathematics, in order to address this issue.
However, in my humble opinion, the main problem is that our students have failed to buy into their education. This is why teachers often receive questions like, "When are we going to ever use this in life?" That being said, an effective solution to the low test score could be simply having the students buy into their education. Somehow if the schools and the teachers can get them actually excited about what they are learning, it can go a long way. There was a study done in 2009 that yielded results that students who were emotionally in-tuned, i.e. excited about learning, performed significantly better than those that weren't (Pekrun, 2009). Stephen Erhmann who is the vice-president of the TLT group- World Campus Competencies for Online Teaching Success (COTS), spoke on teachers, students, and their interaction impacting education, in agreement to this view.
Erhmann presented a possible solution to improving the quality of education. He presented a study done that showed that the most effective teachers were the ones who constantly tried new things. They saw and kept what worked and discarded and moved on from what didn't. Thus, faculty development towards getting students excited would be a great way to energize the students.
Sources:
Perkrun, Richard. http://www.education.com/reference/article/student-emotions/
