Even rich school districts do poorly on international math tests

Sadly, those foreign students would probably score better in English, too!

When you can make thousands for being on a crapfest like The Jersey Shore, who needs education? Americas priorities are ALL wrong.

Tips to help your children get a better education:
1. Take away their cell phone before they go to school.
2. Take away their Xbox, Playstation, Wii, etc. on school nights.
3. No television, movies, or internet until they do their homework (or just take it away on school nights as well).
4. Make them go to bed at a reasonable hour.
5. Give them healthy food to eat.
6. Check to make sure they did their homework properly before they go to school.

Sigh, money spent has never equalled the quality or quantity of education.
You can have more stuff but it won't cram education in their ears.
Just remember that Einstien didn't ahve a computer or a calculator in his great life.
Technical junk cannot take the place of learning.

It doesn't just take money for a student to be successful in school, it has to start at home first. If parents don't take the time to instill within their kids the importance of an education they aren't going to care. Most teenagers are to wrapped up in themselves to care about an education if they don't have someone there every day making sure they get one and keep telling them why they need one. Teachers can only do so much if the parents aren't on their kids. I stay on mine to make sure they listen in class, do their homework and don't get in trouble I don't care if they do get mad at me I would rather them be mad at me every once in a while then going and screwing up their lives. Thats the problem with alot of parents these days, they are to interested in being their childs friend than their parent.

All american schools do poorly internationally. Education is just not important here.

Solyndra is a good example. The government spends 500 million trying to make solar panels then the Chinese make them better and cheaper. If charter schools do education better and cheaper than you have to ask are the public schools bankrupt. The role of government in public education should be to make sure that everyone has equal rights when trying to get an education not trying to privide it for them.

Not schools, the parents, that is where it starts. We like excuses, other countries don't listen to excuses, either their kids do well, or they take a stick to them. We can't, the law prevents that and prevents the schools from using anything more than detention or jail, god forbid if a kid is paddled.

Shows money isn't the issue.

No #$%$ You can't buy a good math score. Kids who do well in school are those whose parents take an interest in their education and don't accept poor grades. Granted those who don't have to worry about violence at school have a better chance at success, but spending $1 million per pupil doesn't mean your school is doing a good job.

No crap we score bad. Our schools don't teach the basics of math. The school my niece was attending stopped teaching things like multiplication tables and were letting them use calculators for everything. When my Sister complained to the schoool she was told "they will always have access to a computer,so they need to use calculators." My niece couldn't do math without a calculator. It is horrible schools and teachers that are making us idiots.

In addition to most major areas of the U.S., I have lived and worked in Europe and in Asia during my career. The problem as I see it is not the Teachers,nor the Politicians (at least directly), nor the people taking the student testing.

Americans are basically ignorant - NOT because they are stupid; but because our country does NOT put much emphasis on education. Most school age kids find it more important to know the latest football scores, basketball scores, etc. Then there's the all important who's who in the music, TV and sports world. In short we educate our kids to be stupid. Parents stop focusing on really dumb things (things that are important to LIFE!!!) and get an effort going to focus on your kids and their REAL education!!

I was awe struck when I first went to Europe and saw how much better the children there were educated. At times I felt actually embarrassed to be an American!

Stop bitching and making excuses and DO SOMETHING WORTH WHILE FOR YOUR KIDS!!!!!

Thanks, just goes to show you teacher UNions that throwing money at the problem is not the solution.

Money can buy intelligence but not necessarily a teacher.
Intelligence is having knowledge, teaching is the ability to convey to others your knowledge.
Privatize our school systems, get rid of the many bad teachers, to include those that want to rewrite history or limit a students ideas to conform to the teachers philosophy.
Case in point,
Not that long ago I was talking to a teacher of my grand son (17), I told him when I was in grade school, nothing times three was nothing (0 X 3 = 0) but (3 X 0 = 3 old school.)
I explained it this was, if I have three apples and take the three apples time's Zero, using the new math I now have Zero apples, I ask him where my three apples went?
NO REPLY, it is inexplicable. Logic and reason have taken a back seat to reality.
CAN "YOU" TELL ME WHERE MY THREE APPLES WENT?
This is our school system today, the truth is what they say it is.
If they can get a student to believe this HOG WASH getting them to believe redistribution of wealth is a good thing, is not a stretch.

Several decades ago, I taught several Computer Science classes to over 1,500 students in a well known 4-year college and was invariably "underwhelmed" by the extremely low caliber of most of the individuals who were attempting to obtain a degree in a computer-related field. Many of these high-school graduates lacked any mastery of elementary algebra and even worse, they usually were totally befuddled by very simple logic problems. My colleagues were just as dismayed as I was...but we all eventually discovered that the problems we were facing had started in our students' elementary school days and had continued on through their high school "stay". Our job was not just to impart the basics of Comp. Sci. but to remedy 6-8 years of deficient/neglectful primary and secondary preparation in basic mathematics and basic deductive logic.

Simply put, both the elementary and HS teachers of many of our hapless students in the US had given them passing grades (many A's and B's, some C's and D's and almost no F's) even when these students had actually failed most of their tests and quizzes and not even attempted to obtain remedial tutoring. The reasons for such outrageous practices were many but closely resembled the current "No Child Left Behind" patterns of failure. I won't try to pin the blame for these fiascos on any one group, suffice it to say that all of them were guilty, namely: the local school boards, the school administrators, the teachers, the teachers' unions, the parents and naturally last but not least the highly unmotivated students themselves.

The problems that elementary/secondary level students in the US face today are due mostly to the PC attitude that prevails in all schools where holding back a failing student is just "verboten", and absolutely and strictly anathema. In addition there is the willfull and deliberate failure to recognize that not all students are equally endowed at the intellectual level and that some students suffer from a variety of social maladjustments and mental illnesses. Just like adults, some children are extremely bright, many have average capabilities but just as many are intellectually below par with their chronological peers, and yes, it is a sad fact but some students are downright "unteachable". The old adage that "one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" was true centuries ago, it still is true today regardless of Political Correctness and regardless of how much money is wasted on futile efforts at "across the board" test-taking improvements, never mind all the political manipulations and the education-related scandals that plague many elementary/secondary schools in the US.

My own academic background is Western European; my schooling and that of my peers was not particularly enjoyable because of its strict and heavy course load and fairly rigid curriculum. In addition, there were the mandatory state examinations that sanctionned our progress (or lack thereof) from the middle of our secondary school preparation all the way through the tertiary level at the University. We ALL either have passed or have failed at the national level on our own merit...there was no P.C. and if you didn't make it by retaking classes and/or exams a second time...your school days in a state school were over for good, no ifs and no buts. Excellence was always the goal, few of us ever reached it, but my successful peers and I all had attained a sufficient level of knowledge to function well in our chosen fields according to strict national and international achievement criteria/standards i.e. our diplomas and credentials reflect our reality-based intensive mandatory preparation not the deplorable "make-believe" political correctness that plagues so many US schools.

worship money + hate math = mo' problems

"Why is our children not learning?"

At least we're the best in the self-esteem department.

Makes you think that maybe the problem is not found INSIDE the schools.
Maybe it's our "one eyed god" vegetable culture.

While some parents must accept some of the responsibility, the truth is that the public school system is broken. When merely attending school for 13 years k-12 without setting fire to it or murdering someone on videotape will get you a high school diploma, that level of mediocrity is going to hurt performance. When many districts do not challenge gifted students you will end up with unchallenged kids and lower performance. This is not to say less gifted students should not also be challenged, we need to have high, but reasonable, standards for all. The students that receive the least attention are the average ones and that should not be the case. It is not a question of money, look at the poor performance of the DC schools that have very large expenditures. The problem is where and how the money is spent. Trickle down theory does not work in economics nor does it in education. Far too much money goes to a bureaucracy that actually lowers performance. For example, in our area one of the poorest school systems in the country has a fleet of cars some of which were used to scout high school football games. That same school system bought two sets of very expensive special editions of textbooks for a special needs child while failing to ask that student if the special editions helped, they did not (although other special aids did and were worth the money). The examples of wasted money are endless (how about those expensive "motivational" speakers). Remember back to your own best educational experiences. Is it a teacher that you think of, or that very tender set of government regulations that kept you in your seat for three hours taking standardized tests?