newjerseynewsroom.com

BY NICOLE JAMES

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

You know the education system needs serious improvement when even the students say the work they are assigned is not difficult enough. Perhaps New Jersey Governor Chris Christie should consider the students’ recent criticism of their classwork being too simple a serious wake up call.

According to a study done for the Center for American Progress, 37 percent of fourth-graders in the nation say that the math work they are given is too easy. Yes, you did read that correctly but I’ll write it again in case you’re still in disbelief. The students polled feel their math work, as in the arithmetic you probably loathed in school, isn’t challenging enough. How is that for a shock? It gets worse. That same study, based off the analysis done by the Center for American Progress of a federal database, concluded that 72 percent of eighth-grade science students aren’t learning engineering and technology. In New Jersey, 21 percent of students say they are not reading enough, specifically fewer than five pages per day in class as well as at home. According to Ulrich Boser, who is co-author of the study and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, that percentage is better than the national average of 30 percent but it is still cause for concern.

These findings may explain the disconnect between students and their teachers; the students are not understanding the class lectures and are not grasping what it is they are supposed to learn. “They are not engaged in the classroom, they are not following what their teacher is saying and they don’t get it quite frankly, which is a very disturbing trend to see across the country,” said Boser, according to NJ 101.5.

The fact that students in New Jersey and the rest of the nation are admitting that school is too simplistic suggests that, contrary to what some individuals may think, students really do want to learn. The idea that the nation’s youth are concerned enough about the quality of education they are receiving to recognize and speak publicly about their school’s mediocrity is wonderful. At the same time, it is disheartening because the educators themselves are seemingly not doing anything to solve the problem.

USA Today quotes Boser as saying, "It's fairly safe to say that potentially high-achieving kids are probably not as challenged as they could be or ought to be." Maybe now the school districts in New Jersey and the rest of the country will finally treat this serious issue with the higher level of urgency it deserves.