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As compared to all other nations except Luxemburg, our country spends more per student for secondary and elementary education. However, students from many other growing countries are performing far better than our students.

An ongoing research conducted by the National Center on Education and the Economy shows that the reason for this is simple. It is evident that these nations spend most of their funds in developing students who are hard to educate rather than on those who are academically good.

Most of the high performing countries also have in place great academic standards along with a matching curriculum, great instructional materials and high quality exams. They also have highly qualified and trained teacher force adept at teaching the set curriculum. Teachers have a good direction and focus as they are considered to be and treated as professionals.

All schools in these nations take only quality teaching forces filtering the best right at the time of application. Teachers who apply for elementary school teaching jobs must hold at least a minor degree in the subjects they wish to teach. Those who want to teach at the secondary level must hold a major in the subject.

Before they are placed for full time teaching, aspiring teachers have to serve for at least a year under an experienced teacher. In countries like Singapore, initial pay for teachers is at par with any other profession. This is one of the major reasons that such countries never face a shortage of teachers and are never in a position wherein they have to compromise on teacher licensing standards.

It is evident that teacher these nations strong believe in investing in their teachers in order to provide the highest quality education through equitable funding which is why they outperform others. This is definitely in contrast to what is happening in our nation.

Highly affluent students from wealthy communities have access to qualified, good teachers as compared to the poor students. It will take a long time for us to meticulously build a powerful and coherent system of instruction for the entire core curriculum.

In our country, it is very easy to get into teacher colleges as the standards set are very low. The basic issue lies in the fact that our system does not require elementary school teachers to be college educated. This leads to a sorry state where many teachers have not themselves mastered the basics of science and mathematics.

Today, in America, there are many alternative routes that allow teachers to take charge after just a few weeks of training. As compared to those who hold professional degrees, starting salary for teachers are far below average in most states.

Due to severe teacher shortage, we often tend to employ teachers who are under qualified and this makes it impossible for us to produce high performing students. In spite of the blatant proof demonstrated by other countries, America is yet to pursue similar initiatives to fine tune the system. It is time to put our heads together and think hard to come up with quality standards that match our competitors if we wish to regain our global position.