This article was not easy for me to write. I had a difficult time concentrating this weekend due to exams as well as writing a few papers for classes. Even staying focused on those things was difficult. I wanted to bum the entire weekend, sprawl on the couch and eat potato chips while playing video games.

I wanted to do that but, necessity called. I had too much on my plate.

Finding the topic for my article, I did not have a set idea in mind. I had no idea what I was going to write about. I considered writing about the Bronco and Seahawk game, since they had previously faced each other in the last Super Bowl. Alas, the Broncos lost, so I decided that I was too frustrated about that to write about it. Instead, I thought about conversations with my older sister, who is a fourth grade teacher, about the American education system. She even says that it is broken.

But, why is it broken?

I have noticed that they have attempted to fix it, whatever the brokenness is, by nudging up the standards for tests and bumping up the number of tests for students. This solution means nothing. It merely becomes busy work.

As a college student, I can tell you that busy work does not teach you anything. Well, it does teach you to regurgitate rather than apply.

So, what is it that is broken? Elaine Weiss, the national coordinator for the Broader Bolder Approach to Education, may have said it best in an opinion piece published on the Washington Post’s website.

“A new study showing explosive growth in student poverty suggests, though, that we have misidentified the problem,” stated Weiss.

“If we have actually been teaching the right skills in U.S. schools all along – math and reading, science and civics, along with creativity, perseverance, and team-building? What if these were as important a hundred years ago for nurturing innovative farmers and developers of new automobiles as they are now for creating the next generation of tech innovators? What if these are the very characteristics of U.S. schools that have made us such a strong public education nation, and the current shift toward a narrower agenda just dilutes that strength? What if, rather than raising standards, and testing students more, the biggest change we need to address is that of our student body?”

Weiss went on to explain a major difference in public education many ignore.

“Fifty years ago, we educated mostly working-class kids and up, and we did not expect those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder to graduate,” she stated. “Now we educate all students, including the very poorest and otherwise disadvantaged. And we expect them all to graduate. Compounding this shift, a large and growing proportion of U.S. students live in poverty and even concentrated poverty, have a disability, and/or are learning English as a second language. THAT is the paradigm shift, and we need a totally new set of policies to address that 21st century reality.”

We should, as a nation, ignore the competition to be one of the ten top-ranking countries for education and address our own issues. If we look out too far, forgetting the problems on our own shores, then we have lost the real focus. And, until we stop and pay attention to this new revelation of poverty as an issue in the American Education system, we are powerless to even advance as a nation.