However, some problems affect the public education system in the United States, such as the deficiencies that can be found in the areas of mathematics, reading, science and critical analysis skills to solve problems, which affect students in general and Hispanic and African-American minorities with special intensity. Precisely, according to the Program for the International Evaluation of Students of the OECD (PISA), students from the United States are ranked 26 out of 65 in the areas of reading, mathematics and science, and 17 in the general scale by countries, with 500 points (which reaches an average score of 525 if we take into account only non-Hispanic white students).
According to the PISA report, American schools are far from perfect and the mathematics score, although showing the same pattern, is lower than that of reading comprehension. That is, there is a challenge ahead to improve the way mathematics is taught. The most evident gap is the consistently low scores of African Americans and Hispanics. In the study, their reading comprehension results were 441 points (black) and 466 points (Hispanic).
Changing this is the great challenge of schools because the percentage of black and Hispanic students is growing tremendously. In 1980 it was 23% and in 2009 it was 35%.
But if anything characterizes the American educational system and makes it exceptional is the quality of its universities, the best in the world, which attracts students from everywhere and is enriched by the talent that flows through their classrooms. But also because of the role that families play in the education their children receive and how they are taught. In this country, parents have the opportunity to influence and the obligation to participate in the education of their children like nowhere else. It is considered that families and schools have a mutual responsibility in the education of children and families are expected to participate in school and extracurricular activities and that schools should collaborate with families in the education of their children.
One of the educational aspects that have gained special dynamics has been the homeschooling system, «education at home», a sample of the liberal educational system that dominates in the United States, guaranteed by the Supreme Court from the Wisconsin versus Yoder case, which ruled that : «The state’s interest in compulsory schooling must yield to the freedom of parents to mark the moral orientation of their children.»
A whole declaration of principles that marks the quality of a profoundly free educational system, which nevertheless faces formidable challenges and the progress of the Asian countries and northern Europe.
The United States takes special care of education and training throughout the life of workers. Possibly thanks to that he is the first world power and because he has not forgotten that phrase of Euripides:
Those who neglect the education of their young people, condemn their future to death».
And education has always been a matter of national pride in this country. That is why we have the largest number of Nobel prizes and remains, by far, the largest producer of new inventions, scientific research, and leader in patent registration.
