US EDUCATION IS IN DEEP TROUBLE AND THERE IS NO EASY SOLUTION

Of course, we like to brag that we are the best of the best, our institutions are world class,
our students are the smartest, and our scores are the highest. But, in most of the cases, the
reality does not support our statements, and we do not like to lie ourselves for free. Of
course, a little moral lift and self-esteem matters, and we are good to go until we are get
confronted with reality, and with a world-class competition.

For those who really want to know the truth, they may look at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#United
_States and the things do not look good at all. It is not about money and education
investments, but something more profound and complex.

Figure 1 – Shows the rank of the United States obtained in PISA test since 2000 for the
subjects above. Relative to the average obtained for the 73 participant countries. It is seen
that the US ranks below the average while Asian countries occupy the ranks one to five.
Western Europe is above the average while US is trailing the average with a decline
tendency, except for science, that got a little growth by 2015 on the background of
decline in Math and Reading.
Not the same may be said about our near by northern neighbor Canada, that occupies a
position among the first 10, from rank 3 to 9 on all tests. Even Russia is above the
average. Singapore, China, Japan are the champions!

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These countries have so smart kids and steal our patents??? Or this is just politics, and the
truth is again against us – our enemy? That was true up to 1980s, but since then the things
changed and we just do not want to see them.

“The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study

performed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in
member and non-member nations, intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring
15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.
It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide
comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies
and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition.”

The 2015 version of the test was published on 6 December 2016. The results of the 2018
data collection will be released on Tuesday 3 December 2019 (we have to wait and see).
Table 1 – PISA Test scores of American students sorted by race.
US
Reading Average White Black Hispanic Asian Other

2015 497 526 443 478 527 440

2012 498 519 443 478 550 438
2009 500 525 441 466 541 462
2006 — — — — — —
2003 495 525 430 453 513 456
2000 504 538 445 449 546 455
Math US Average White Black Hispanic Asian Other
2015 470 499 419 446 498 423
2012 481 506 421 455 549 436
2009 487 515 423 453 524 460
2006 474 502 404 436 494 446
2003 483 512 417 443 506 446
Science US Average White Black Hispanic Asian Other
2015 496 531 433 470 525 462
2012 497 528 439 462 546 439
2009 502 532 435 464 536 465
2006 489 523 409 439 499 453

As table shows for the US, Asians are performing the best, followed by white of different
ethnicities, and those of Hispanic and black descent are the most disadvantaged.
At a simple uneducated look, it seems that the attitude towards work of Asians dominates
over that of whites in spite their higher welfare, while deep, inherited, poverty of black
and Hispanics has real consequences on kids’ results due to family background. Be aware
that the statistical distribution of students changed year by year, and is correlated with
complex social factors such as 9/11, economic crises, visa restrictions, jobs market, etc..

Making a brief analysis after GDP per capita and house hold income in 2016 one may see
that is a correlation between the relative curves of performance in education and family
welfare, and average performance in education is obtained for middle class families with

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–5% under the average house hold income that means of about $50k/year and 70% over
the average at about $80k-120k/year. Kids from rich families with few exceptions trend
to perform worse than kids from middle class, because probably suffering from afluenza,
does not give the necessary attention and importance to education knowing that using
money and relations they will be just fine, without a great degree, inheriting the family
business and they may hire educated people to work for them. We can ignore them
because demographically they represent less than 10% of the students’ population.

At the other extreme, are the poor families representing more than 50% of the population,
where because of poorness, kids are busy in after school hours, and in an homework
intensive education system, conceived like this to hide average class teachers, they do not
perform well and here is the real loss of the society.
Note: The fit function is a polynomial one and is prone to a large margin of error.
Los Alamos schools are placed at +50%, and more and good results are due to
family attitude towards work and education, but this condition is not frequently meet in
many other locations in US.
Quality and preparedness level of the teachers is hard to evaluate, because the
complexity of the problem, in spite is a fundamental issue, most of the criteria used today
for such evaluation are bogus.

It was thought that information provided that is unwanted, or unasked for, will not be
appreciated, would be ignored or not understood; the real learning process occurs only if
somebody is interested in finding the answer to a question or a problem that they consider
to be important, and to which they pay attention. In order to have that, one needs to
generate in the minds of students a state of affection, interest, and need for a certain
subject, where the student will pay attention to the information and store it in his/her
brain, and operate over it, to find its various aspects.

Is that the case in US education?

Most probable answer is NO.
This is a hot subject among educators, parents and politicians, everybody is asking for
change, but no one knows what to be changed and how. A wide range of ideas and
proposals are formulated or imposed without a real scientific base.
The most frequent change is the managerial one, where the new manager changes
everything his predecessor made, making the system bounce in disarray, based on empty
rhetoric.

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On the other side, the volume of knowledge a High School graduate is growing every
year, and if we look to a student leaving his high school aiming college, to his
knowledge, as to a shuttle launched in space, we have to see something like this, at its
minimum:

The picture also shows in rings the accumulation year-by-year, grade-by-grade from the
core knowledge, in kindergarten (K), to grades 1-12. Each subject has its motivation.
Unfortunately, our schools are unable to provide this spectrum; what they do is very
formal and theoretical, and that minimizes their usefulness in life.
The actual model for the good students is this: learn by heart, give the show, and forget.
That fact minimizes the usefulness of education and learning in the first years.
One reason for this is that the students do not have all the “knowledge foundation bricks”
in place when a new “brick of knowledge” is added, and that has to float in thin air,
because the CLASSES SYLLABI ARE NOT SYNCHRONIZED, and do not rely on
each other.
For example, a subject taught in science is not related to subjects in mathematics or
language, to be used as base and operational tools.
See for example in 7th or 8th grade science: they learn about “genetic programming”, but
they had no idea what an amino acid is, nor nitrous acid, nor ammonia, and they started
solving puzzles with letters…and of course 2 weeks after that was over they forgot
everything, and that time and effort was simply lost.
Another correlation that is most often is between Math and Physics, where physics relies
on math not yet taught to students.

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More physics is taught based on theoretical developments, instead of being correlated
with the practical world, and the students are missing the most elementary notions from
nature, that transforms physics in a bunch of blah, blah…nothing useful for life or with
practical applications, therefore they graciously forget all the formulas they learned by
heart, and they do not correlate the notions and work with them.
The problem here comes from the teachers, who 20 years ago they were taught this way,
and from manuals made by university professors based on theory more than practice,
making those scientists some parrots of science, and I will come with some examples:
Once, in a university I was working, a famous electrodynamics professor, who knew all
Maxwell equations by heart, and was making excellent lessons on electrodynamics, came
in my accelerator room near by a HV power supply, triggered my attention and I asked
him to step back and he asked me offended: “What kills? Voltage or Current?”, initially I
took it as a joke, and laughed, but seeing him seriously concerned, I got worried and I
tried not to offend him with a simple Ohm law explanation and biologic effect of the
current, so I answered him: If you have doubts on that is better to stay away from both!
And as he stepped back we changed the subject of discussion…

As a proof of my statement, I challenge the science teachers, students and community

members to solve the problem in the picture below, taken from normal life, because I
believe that very few of them understand it and can solve it, and therefore it is not
possible to transmit this knowledge to students.

For those most advanced there are two extra question:

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4 If the Cy=0.5, the lateral surface is 5 m2 and cross wind is 20 m/s, in Los Alamos, what
will be the movement of the vehicle accelerating forward after x direction.
Cx, Cy are the aerodynamic coefficients for movement of air, x is forward, y is lateral
and z is upwards, g=10 m/s2.
5 What power is reasonable for the vehicle and how it have to be applied in order to
minimize the acceleration time?

A competition will be organized, and a $200 will be paid for the first place, $100 second
place, $50 third place, and 5 honorable mentions (gift cards) will be given to first
qualified participants (K-12 students and educators only).
Please send your solution by e-mail at laaos@laaos.org with title “Car movement, insane
acceleration, solution” no later than 1 mo. after publication, the results and prizes will be
given after 2 weeks from deadline, and will be published.

In my opinion, US education is missing the practical applicative education that creates

the foundation bricks able to support the advanced theoretical knowledge.

In computer literacy, the problem is even worse, because 99% of students do not
understand computers, how they work, and become hostages of different programs and
computer brands, performing complex operations outside of their control and knowledge,
because nobody taught them the basics – such as Boolean algebra, numeration bases,
logical gates, and fundamentals of programming.
In a test applied to GATE kids in a Los Alamos school, some fundamental questions
about computers were asked, and the kids provided 200% of the answers, proving that
they heard almost anything about, the only problem was that they did not know which
was right and which was wrong, and were to apply that answer correctly, proving that
their knowledge was dangerously superficial.

There are many initiatives in education, (for example Mrs. Obama had about 7) which
briefly are: The need for post-secondary education; The necessity of school counselors;
Girls’ education; Education for African-Americans; Arts education; Healthy school
lunches; Fashion education, that is a mixture of everything and I’m not convinced that
these are her original ideas, but some of them are meant to apply correction to the results
observed in PISA tests.
For example, the healthy food school lunches come in contradiction with kids’ appetite
for junk food, which was induced for many years via all commercials, and as our current
president showed recently, “fast food” is more appreciated than a natural healthy food.
The sad truth behind the fact is that Hispanics, blacks (African Americans) and others
coming from very poor families, are fighting for survival in the American dream, which
for them is a nightmare.
We have to learn from the experience of communist countries which at school were
providing food, after-hours education and bedroom, for poor kids for free and on
payment for the rest of the kids, and which gradually turned them towards healthy food,
not only junk fast food. I said junk fast food because not all fast food is junk, and not all-
organic food is healthy…and schools have to move out from the realm of commercial
advertisement, beyond lying, and develop their own menus, loved by kids and healthier.

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There are many others, such as “Inquiry education”, “Play and learn”, STEM literacy,
etc., but while the US education is 80% based on homework, and most of the kids find
something better to do after school, all these are prone to failure, in a society that misses
incentives for higher education.
The first step is to understand what the top PISA countries are doing in order to improve
our local system, and not to change it with a radically new system with flaws that we will
only learn about after 20 years of failures.

In my mind, a spiral of progress consists of an education where one learns, repeats,

redoes, improves oneself, is active, with a drastic reduction in homework, but based on
fundamental knowledge mixed with practice, where the students will be able to
understand and apply this knowledge in life, and where laboratory practice will match the
theory and gradually upgrade, via repetition.

An important component is the psycho-affective component, where a student picks a

subject or a domain he thinks he likes and fits his/her future aspirations and model of life.
An important role in this children selection is the models offered by society and how the
society appreciates and rewards work, knowledge and honesty. Unfortunately US society
does not appreciate hard work, honesty, science and math, and that is why the school
makes desperate efforts to stimulate STEM. In the past 50% of college students in
science departments were foreigners, mainly Asian kids, now these departments are
under populated. Most of the American white (Caucasian) kids who graduate High

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School are looking for faculties that put them in a making money position after that as
law, medicine, and business and very few are going into science.
The novel chino-phobia, ruso-phobia political inspired propaganda made less and less
foreigners to apply for higher education in the US, while the autochthones are deterred by
the arrogant manner US suffering of some afluenza, is treating its scientists, and do not
find themselves bound in a such a future.
The thieving classes in US are lawyers, politicians, businesspeople, (honest or not, does
not matter if they are rich), artists, sportsman, physicians where the most appreciated
skills, are talking and human skills of hanging together in packs of connected people, and
that are the raw models provided by our society, followed by the young generation.
The kids see and understand this and then, why to bother for science?
Social propaganda dominated by Hollywood and other movie houses, is doing more harm
than good to education, promoting violence and sex, apparently these being something
most of American market understands and likes to see, people paying for. The main
characters are appreciated for other virtues than education, and where the US is always
the good guys no matter what damage and pain they inflict to others, giving masses a
false image of reality.
This grim picture is completed to the masterpiece by computer games which bring an
eulogy of violence, or are based on minimal skills, hand eye connection avoiding brain
cognitive areas, and getting the users psychologically used with ugly violence scenes
where harm is inflicted to others, so called “bad guys”, terrorists, ignoring the
fundamental truths of the history written by various nations where the “terrorist” of an
aggressor is the “hero” of the aggressed part, and the truth has lots of shades of gray.
Another toxic ingredient in society is mass media, where the most appreciated people are
the artists, politicians and rich business people, almost all drop-outs from school, these
are the guys judging others, and telling the society how to think because these people
have the most access to these media, else when and ordinary person wants to make his
point, has to commit an atrocity, because only these bad achievements are going public.
In the last year schools were a magnet for atrocities, mainly mass shooting, because a
mismatch between the individual needs of a troubled person and the kind of assistance
and stress school were providing.
In the grim picture I have provided above, is transparent that the good model for life the
kids may get in the most crucial period of their life is shadowed by the cacophony of
information in a distressed society.
These are very difficult obstacles in front of US education, and this is one of fundamental
causes for US students to trail the PISA average, and produce lack of interest for science,
math, anything based on hard work, because the kids are smart and want to maximize
their life standard, and efficiency of reaching those positions by minimizing their effort.
That is why I have said in the title that there is no easy solution, like “pay teachers more”,
“bring more police”, allow “recreational marijuana”, “allow vaping”, “ teach more”,
“give more food”, etc., the command and control system for optimal education looks like
a sound equalizer with more than 128 registers, where each of one have to be set in the
right position in order to obtain the overall harmony that to lead us towards the best
education in the world, bluntly reflected by the “superficial” (because tests just 3 main
skills) PISA test.

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Another important factor are: the educators who are the product of the society in the last
50 years, and they have the quality and level the society succeeded to give them, and that
plus the stresses of the moment (low wages, lack of respect from leaders and students,
excessive school rules and restricted, ignorant comfortable policies, politically fairness,
etc.) will reflect in the education they are further delivering to the young generation.
My purpose is to bring light upon this subject and start a discussion where foreign
nationals coming from China, Canada, Europe, Russia will share their expertise and
understanding and allow us to gradually improve the education system, until we will
succeed to compete successfully with Shanghai kids.
I do not know if the authorities in education indoctrinated by their previous experiences
and projects, pressed and stressed to keep their most often ignorant political management
happy, will give a crap about this, but in order to heal a system in pain is better that first
to identify and recognize the disease, be allowed to speak freely about it, and than select
and optimize the cure.

Your opinion and experience matters; please share it, even if you disagree, or want to
praise the US education and democracy as the best in the world. I think the readers have
enough sense of humor, as our president, who at the UN world leader gathering, when
touting his great achievements, made a hilarious moment that relaxed the atmosphere,
making the world leaders acknowledge that US is the most viable, world class laughing
stock.
Hopefully, the deciding factors in education will hear and understand, and will be able to
improve the system.
Meanwhile, let me see how many of you are able to solve that problem, and I will be
happy that you to prove me wrong, in spite I took a higher risk for that, because being in
Los Alamos, a oasis in the US with the highest concentration of PhDs per square meter,
the probability that there will be few people to know how to solve this problem is much
higher than outside a 10 mile radius. The best 3 solutions will be sent for publishing
together with extracts from other solutions meant to “revolutionize” the physics.
The purpose of this paper is to trigger a more active debate on how to improve the
education, in order to reach the highest performances and to be customized on the local
customs, needs and aspirations, using the support and input from the community.

NOTE: Because Los Alamos is such special place, some of the comments and conditions
described may not fit totally or in part the local realities, that is why reader have to apply
weighting factors to match a local reality. This is a kind of disclaimer, but in fact is
another variability in education that makes the application of a certain set of corrective
measures more difficult.

Liviu Popa-Simil, Ph.D.,

Executive Director,
LAAS – Los Alamos Academy of Sciences
E-mail: laaos@laaos.org