Fix the education system!

 The United States of America is the greatest country on the planet. However, just because It is my home land, doesn't mean that I agree with everything happening around our country.  One of the biggest problems plaguing our nation is about how our country and our education system are positioning people of the middle and lower class for failure. In this amazing country, we expect stellar results from our once highly esteemed public school system, but in the modern day, our schooling system has not lived up to America's excellence and continues to fail millions of its students.To send one child to a public school for one year costs about 10,000 dollars, which is the fifth largest amount by any country. With this amount of money invested in them, we should be able to give them one of the best educations in the world, but this is where we go wrong. Even with this spending, polling shows that the US ranks 17th in science among industrialized countries, and 23rd in math!  These statistics should shock you, and probably do, but honestly it just gets worse. Because schools are funded by the property value of the neighborhood, areas with Low property value, which tend to be where people have lower incomes live, receive significantly less funding, which contributes to the cycle of poverty. according to the New York Times, students from suburbs across the country graduate within four years 73% of the time while students in cities graduate at a rate of 53%, which is a 20 point difference. That is significantly lower. A great example of this is in the city of Cleveland.
The students of the Suburban part of Cleveland graduate within 4 years 80% of the time, while urban students graduated a measly 38% of the time. This is not okay for a place commonly referred to as the greatest country on earth.

 Not only is a strong education important for job and career prospects after your school years,but also, the culture in a well run school can impact how a student is raised and how they will hold themselves throughout life.  Though it is hard to explain why this is happening, some of the reasons that are obvious with light research are that some teachers do not feel the need to work as hard, due to the “perks” of Tenure. Tenure is enforcing the idea that as long as you work somewhere for long enough, you're much less likely to be fired. Yes, there are good things tenure can do, such as providing job stability for teachers who have worked longer than others, but this system is significantly flawed and must be eradicated. According to new studies done by the National Center for Education Statistics in 2011-2012, five times as many non-tenured teachers were fired due to poor performance than tenured teachers.  Innovative ideas need to be instilled into the teachers, and they need to have a passion for what they are talking about.  I know in my experience that teachers who have a passion for what they teach are easily the most impactful.  Though teachers are a big problem in these schools, they are not the only problem, family structure can also play a role in how students perform.  Many families do not have the necessary support from their parent or parents in the household, whether it's because of the lack of time spent with the children due to their jobs, or just because of the culture surrounding the families, students do not feel the need to go to school and study.  It is already easy for a low-income student in a poor neighborhood to not do well in school. There is a cycle of poverty that affects their potential and access to resources that we need to break. on top of being less prepared for a future career, research shows that underperforming high schoolers and drop outs are much more likely to go to prison. actually, as explained by Anne Devear, a professor at Stanford, a high school drop out is three and a half times more likely to be incarcerated.  Also, a whopping 68% of males in prison today do not have a high school diploma. Once these individuals leave prison, they have a permanent, tarnished record. This on top of the fact that they only have high school diploma at the very best will define their lives forever and increase recidivism. These idea shows that the lack of discipline in students, combined with teachers who do not care to help them, as well as a culture in cities that discourages ambition in class, ruin their chances to flourish and become the citizen they have the potential to be. According to studies, as I said before, it costs 10,000 dollars for one student to stay in school for one year, while it costs an average of 30,000 to keep one person in jail for one year.  These costs only stress the significance of an education, which can prevent the costly and tragic expense of being sent to jail.  This is why these root problems need to be solved, because there are many people in jail, only in there because they never had a chance to be taught, to become something great, to do what they may have once dreamed of, only to have their dreams snubbed by bad teachers and no hope, which both problems can be easily changed, partially by eliminating tenure and giving teachers incentives and motivation to work.

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