I am a teacher, and honestly, the state of our schools, as a nation, saddens me. We need a complete overhaul of the educational system. The current system is based on an outdated model. We need more technology integration. We need to focus more on creativity and fostering children's natural curiosities and talents.

The number one indicator of student success is teacher quality. As in, a student will perform better in a good teacher's class in a bad school than in a bad teacher's class in a great school.

We need passionate, innovative, creative, teachers. We need to pay teachers enough to motivate more passionate, innovative, creative people to the field.

We, as in all Americans, need to realize that it's not only the school's job to teach our children. It takes a village to raise a child. There has been a shift in parental involvement in education, which is crucial to a child's success. We all need to have high expectations for the children of our country and do what we can to help them succeed.

All of that being said, I have tremendous hope and faith in the American people. I know there are lots of more teachers out there like me who are young and motivated to change things, and we will make a difference.

I didn't see this question until an answer had already been submitted, but I do have something to add that I don't think was addressed in any other answer.

I don't think that a mass education setting can help each and every child develop to each child's potential, even if the teachers are terrific and the government would untie the teachers' hands to teach instead of making them spend so much time on record keeping, and even if every child's home setting were ideal.

The reason for this is that kids are individual. Each child has his or her own learning style, talents, and abilities--not to mention backgrounds and home lives. In mass education settings, to be efficient, the class has to be together doing one thing in one way (mostly--usually not in K or 1). Kids who can't get it that one way--or maybe a second way, if the teacher is permitted to explain it a second way instead of being forced by the syllabus to move on--those kids are given a poorer grade, and don't really master it, yet move on. They fall farther behind all the time unless the parents find a way outside of class to help them.

This system does help the largest part of the bell curve to understand the material to a minimum acceptable level. A few kids at one extreme actually master it; a few kids at the other extreme never get it at all.

What really helps each child reach that child's potential is individualized education. Truly individualized, with curriculum selected just for that child; with a class size of one--or at least in a classroom where each child works independently--but still a very small class. Rather than expect a perfectly bright child who learns best through hands-on experimenting to learn by listening to a book or reading a book, ideally that child would be presented with experiments and crafts that taught the same facts. Rather than expecting the child who needs to hear something read in order to understand it to read silently much of the time, that child would benefit from a curriculum that is designed to be read aloud (and they're out there).

There are schools, usually charter schools, magnet schools, or private schools, that are more like this. In rural areas they can be hard to find. And most of them teach to one learning style, just not to the same style the general government schools do.

This is why many parents turn to homeschooling. They are simply not willing to wait while the government schools continue to make minor tweaks, tying the teachers' hands even further and taking even more tax dollars, while their children continue to fall behind.

The problem with mass education and learning styles is inherent to the system as it now exists. It would take a major overhaul to make the system work. The current system was meant to integrate the children of rural workers and recent immigrants into a basic, minimal cultural knowledge and cohesiveness. It wasn't really made to educate kids in a rapidly changing world, where they might change careers several times as adults. Tweaking that old system is not going to work. It needs a fundamental change if a much greater percentage of kids are to reach their potentials.

I actually wrote an essay last year about something similar. It is about how we need to hold teachers to a higher standard, basically so they can meet the potential of students.
Basically teachers need to stop having lazy days where they just play a movie for the student to watch, especially if it has nothing to do with the class.
They also need to start teaching more Independence skills, such as money management, how to health management, stuff like that.
Shoot my boyfriend was put in a class system for people who need more help than others just because they needed more student to keep the system open. So he hated school because of it, it was too easy for him. There was no point in going for him. So he hardly went, and that has really affected him.
So NO teachers are not teaching to a childs potential as much as they should be, I am not say all teachers do not.

I am not an educator but I am a parent and have seen our education system slowly degrade over the years. Why?

I don't think it is a simple answer. There are a number of factors that create the fracture in our system.

Over the past two decades there has been a deterioration of the family unit in general. An over abundance of single parent households, unhappy two parent households and happy two parent households with parents too busy to pay attention to their children.

Discipline is all but non existent in many homes. Many parents are afraid to discipline their children for fear of being labeled an abuser. Children are exposed to media that drives home the message that it is ok to behave any way you choose. The conscience is dying a slow death and no one really seems to notice.

With little or inconsistent discipline at home teachers are saddled with unruly children with their own hands tied to do anything about it. How many adults are walking around this world perfectly well adjusted that got a good paddling for misbehaving in school? Many, and yet today a paddling equates to abuse. The outcome? Unruly classrooms, frustrated teachers, substandard learning environments.

Then we have budgeting issues.

This is a very high level opinion to a very in depth topic. My point being that there are man, many factors that come in to play. Those factors vary even depending on the geographic and economic definitions.

It worries me because I see a general decline in qualified teachers choosing to enter the field or remain in it. What will we do when we no longer have teachers willing to take on the challenge? Maybe it will never happen and then again. maybe it will.

This is a worthy discussion and one that deserves much more formal attention than it gets. Of course, this is all my personal opinion.

My personal opinion is we are lagging behind the developing world which has become highly competitive in the global economy. NCLB program could be a reason for treating all the kids at the same level to meet the government mandates. The cost of higher education is another reason. We need to invest more in education and I hope the current administration is working in that direction.

Here is a website and documentary comparing American, Indian and Chinese education.

"How do most American high school students spend this time? What about students in the rest of the world? How do family, friends and society influence a student's choices for time allocation? What implications do their choices have on their future and on a country's economic future?"

http://www.youtube.com/user/2MillionMinutes

Well, here's one problem,

Student A is studying, but then student B begins talking and student A can ignore him/her. What distracts student A from the lesson is the teacher ceasing to teach to take 5 minutes to yell at student B for talking.

The biggest one though, is motivation and efficiency. Students that are unmotivated WILL get failing grades. Also, much time is wasted on unrelated lessons, students that are sent into school as a way to keep them out of trouble instead of learn, and wasted money on events that constrict learning and aren't even fun.

I am a private tutor. From what I am understanding from students and parents, the teachers aren't doing a very good job. Most aren't taking the time to work with a student one on one, many just go through the motions, therefore aren't getting the most out of children. I am teaching some students math that their teachers arent because basically they aren't qualified to do so, it's sad really

As a student who graduated high school one year ago, it is my opinion that the public education system is working just fine. I feel that I received an amazing education and I am now continuing in college. I succeeded because I wanted to succeed. If the education system was failing, there would not be the enormous influx that there has been into post-secondary education. Colleges are full of students who took the initiative to succeed. No teacher, parent, counselor, or official can force a student to work toward his or her potential. The schools are available and working. Students either choose to take advantage of a free education or they don't.

Also, today's schools are incredibly advanced compared to those of earlier generations. We now have myriads of honors classes. We have AP courses that push students to perform at a college level while still in high school. We now have immersion programs for young children that will give them advantageous opportunities in a vastly changing global economy.

Yes, today's schools could use improvement. Systems can always be made better. But our education system today is better than it has ever been and it is working wonders for my generation.