Dissatisfaction in our education system had been growing since the 1960s. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its famous A Nation at Risk report, in which it stated that the weakening of the education system in the United States was threatening our country's well being. This report spawned a wave of education reform efforts, including the adoption of standardized testing.

Research suggests that these reform efforts have not promoted effective learning and comprehension. The average verbal SAT scores for entering college classes dropped by 37 points between 1967 and the present. The math SAT scores have also dropped, although they have been inching upward since the mid 1990s (note that the SAT was renormed in April 1995, and many credit this renorming and other changes made to the test for the increase in scores after 1995).

When compared to other countries, our education system does not fare well. The National Center for Education Statistics' Statement of Condition of Education 2000 and 2001 notes that "international comparisons of student performance and instructional quality raise concerns about how well the American educational system compares with the systems of other economically developed countries, especially at the middle school and secondary levels." In 2000, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reported national competency averages for 15 year-olds in 27 participating countries. The United States scored 15th in reading literacy, 18th in math literacy, and 14th in science literacy. In addition, the PISA report indicated that about half of the US students admitted they try to memorize as much as possible when studying. The US percentage is higher than the average, suggesting that a greater proportion of US students use memorization as a learning strategy. According to Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, memorization is a low-level learning strategy that does not necessarily translate into understanding. Marci Kanstoroom reports one result of the overemphasis of memorization in her paper Balancing Act. She notes that Texas students entering middle school were strong on computational tasks, but weak in problem solving and the application of mathematical concepts. According to the 1999 Third International Mathematics and Science Study ( TIMSS ), this is a national problem.

The quality of the content of our education system also fares poorly when compared to other countries. The TIMSS included a study of eighth grade mathematics in Germany, Japan and the US. The study found that "the quality of the mathematical content of eighth grade mathematics lessons in the United States was rated lower than the quality of those in Germany and Japan." The study also found that 83 percent of US lessons contained "task-controlled" tasks in which the teacher demonstrates a solution and the students are expected to replicate the solution. In German and Japanese lessons, there is a much greater emphasis on "solver-controlled" tasks (52 percent and 83 percent, respectively) in which students are encouraged to seek alternative solution paths on their own. Likewise, German and Japanese teachers are significantly more inclined than their US counterparts to include deductive reasoning as part of their lessons. The study also found differences in the overall quality of the mathematical content of the lessons: 39 percent of the Japanese lessons and 28 percent of the German lessons were rated as containing "high-quality" mathematical content, but none of the US lessons received such a rating. A vast majority (89 percent) of the US lessons was rated as having "low-quality" mathematical content.

While many researchers have concluded reforms are needed in the US education system to bring it to a world-class level, reform efforts over the past forty years have made little progress. Part of the problem is that initiatives have focused on specific segments of the education system instead of the education system as a whole. The TIMSS report stressed that:

Improving students' opportunities to learn requires examining every aspect of the educational system, including the curriculum, teacher quality, availability and appropriateness of resources, students' motivation, instructional effectiveness, parental support, and school safety. There is no "magic bullet" or single factor that is the answer to higher achievement in mathematics or science. Raising achievement involves improvements in a number of important areas related to educational quality.

In addition to the well-documented problem of sub-standard quality, EduFX notes the following key problems in the current system:

• It is structured in a way that resists change. In his book We Must Take Charge, Chester E. Finn talks about the organizational complexity of the education system, noting that "nobody has the authority to ensure that a change gets made yet almost everyone has the capacity to prevent it." To deliver world-class education to our children, the US needs a system that is flexible and able to quickly integrate and adopt new technology, teaching techniques, and approaches to learning.


• It cannot provide each child with the learning experience they need when they need it. The system forces all students in a class to learn at the same rate. Those that fall behind become hopelessly lost and unmotivated. Those who are capable of learning more quickly, but are being held back, also often become bored and are robbed of learning opportunities they might otherwise have had.


• It cannot support students with special needs in a standard classroom without penalizing average and gifted students. Students with special needs who are relegated to separate classrooms lose valuable peer-to-peer learning opportunities and run the risk of developing poor self-esteem.


• It does not adequately support the teacher. Teachers are often asked to do more than they can handle. The Department of Education, in its Seven Priorities of the U.S. Department of Education, stated that the US education system loses up to 30 percent of new teachers due to a lack of support and a "sink or swim" approach. A study published by the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, Teacher Turnover, Teacher Shortages, and the Organization of Schools, notes that lack of support is one of the major causes of dissatisfaction among teachers.


• It does not take advantage of new technology. In his book, Multimedia Learning, Richard Mayer notes that film, radio, and television never lived up to their promise of revolutionizing K-12 education. What Mr. Mayer did not discuss was that these technologies did live up to their hype of changing the way our society learns about and views the world. In reality, this failure was not due to any flaw in the technology, but to the inability of our education system to take advantage of the technology. Computer and Internet technologies will fail for similar reasons if we do not change the overall system.