The American public school system's current "spiral method," doesn't let its students make a great deal of progress, making them unable to compete effectively in the international education playing field.

Drawn by: Margaret Ringler

American schools rank twenty-fifth of the OECD countries in math, behind nations including Estonia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. How is it that the United States can have the world’s highest GDP and GNP yet her education system is sub-par on an international scale? According to Eric Hanushek, a fellow at the Stanford Hoover Institute, “middle school does not provide the skills necessary to succeed in high-school.”

Hanushek believes that “we don’t get as much out of high school and college” because during high school, the American education system continues to establish the base amount of information that should have been learned during middle school. Hanushek insists that because Americans are not getting the degree of specialization they need in high school, they are “not competitive internationally.”

The issue at hand is the fact that the spiral education method, or the gradual establishment of general knowledge, is not limited to middle school and is spilling into high school. In order to avoid the continuation of spiral education, some charter schools and nearly all magnet schools encourage specialized education at the high school level by focusing primarily on either the humanities or the sciences.

As Hanushek remarks, charter and magnet schools also encourage parent and student involvement, which increases teacher accountability and quality. As do many private schools, charter and magnet schools give families an active say in the curriculum, forcing teachers to respond to student needs. Charter and magnet schools’ pro-active student teacher bodies fit Hanushek’s belief that “the number one mission is improving teacher quality”. However, he says, “We cannot just wave our hands and have better teachers.” Therefore, Hanushek encourages parent involvement in charter and magnet schools in order to improve American education.

Internationally, the top school systems focus either on intense student competition (as in Shanghai) or absolute student self-motivation (Finland). However, America’s spiral education system falls under neither of these categories. Whereas Shanghai schools motivate students by channeling cultural and familial pressures, and Finnish schools exempt students from external standards, schools in America often rely too greatly on a system of standardized testing, without cultivating either internal or cultural motivation to excel.

Hanushek holds the American education system’s emphasis on standardized tests, such as the high school exit exam, accountable for our failing to create either of these educational environments. Once again, charter schools fix this problem as they are exempt from state educational requirements and can have the freedom to specialize and go in depth on certain subjects without the constraint of teaching to state standards.

Hanushek also sheds light upon the fact that the intensity of student rivalry in East Asia can lead to an overabundance of competition to the point of being detrimental. Therefore, we propose following the Finnish example, in which the self-motivation of the individual students is encouraged and students are implored to learn from one another.

Finland, following this model of self-motivation and cooperative learning, ranks as the world’s number one country in terms of education. Magnet schools would steer America towards following the Finnish model, aside from the fact that they are still required to follow state standards. Therefore, we propose to apply the state standard exemption we see in charter schools to magnet schools in order for American education to once again to be internationally competitive.

“As it stands a third of State college students are taking remedial courses, the content of which is intended for high school,” says Hanushek. In order to ensure that high school and college students get the specialization they need in order to remain competitive internationally, we propose that the spiral education system remain confined to middle school.

To guarantee specialization in high school, we must combine an exemption from state standards and the promotion of teacher quality that are common in charter schools with the emphasis on student self-motivation of magnet schools.