The United States should have the smartest students in the world, in consideration that America spends an inordinate amount of money on education as well as having ample resources to succeed in education for its population. Unfortunately, quite clearly, test results and the general disappointing amount of students that are functionally illiterate indicate that America is not going to somehow improve much of anything, by simply throwing money at the educational conundrum; without instead fundamentally making it a point to solve the puzzle which must be successfully solved, in order to begin to demonstrate by its results, that American students' educational achievements in aggregate are as good as anywhere else, worldwide.
In the scheme of things, there shouldn't be much of anything within the current educational system as it is, which should be held to be sacrosanct, so that, in fact, from the administrators of the educational system, to the teachers of it, as well as the resources so given, the hours so attended, and the structure of classrooms, itself, should all be carefully looked at, contemplated upon, and seen as something that simply is not working the way that it should be, and therefore needs to looked at from the perspective, that what isn't working very well, must be tinkered upon, at best, and wholly replaced, as needed.
America is gifted with great technological tools, in which, the very biggest and most successful technological companies of them all, are located in America, and most of those companies, make billions upon billions of dollars in profit, every year. Those companies have an obligation, if they are not already onboard, to see that some of those billions are utilized within the educational system of America, so that, students are able to take advantage of the power and throughput that laptops, tablets, desktops, and even smart phones have of representing the ready capacity to be student aids, and are able to be therefore structured In a way, that each student will have lessons that can be done utilizing these tools in conjunction with programs so written in order to more readily understand the subject matter, of which, unlike a teacher that simply cannot individually deal with thirty students at once, each student would have an online avatar that would keep track of every answer and every click and would work with endless patience with students on their learning.
That is to say, students in the same classroom work at different pace levels, further students learn at different speeds within a given subject matter, and additionally some students are much more engaged than others. The thing about tablets and other smart devices is that what a given student has learned or not learned can be recorded upon that device, of which, that information would then be readily assessable to the teacher or the teacher's aide, so that progress and understanding of a given subject could be seen for what it is, in real time. That way, there would be far less trickery and far less faking by students, for the tablet tells the tale, as well as the fact that unlike teachers that have limited resources and limited patience, a smart machine does not mind going over the same subject matter, again and again, perhaps in different ways, and through different perspectives, because that is the way that machines can be programmed to interact.
A school system in which more students have smart devices to record their progress and their answers to quizzes and tests is a system that will have a much better pulse of its student body, and in order for America to improve upon its dismal educational achievements, America needs to embrace the obvious, which is that technology, properly structured and utilized, will be of real measurable assistance towards student learning.