Using Neuroscience to Help the Schools

               Throughout the recent decade, the US has had a multitude of different issues, whether it be a failing economy, racial tensions or lessening of its global influence. While it seems like each of these issues are so different in nature, they can all be partly explained by the slow decrease of the quality and effectiveness of education policies in the US. Looking to each of these issues, one can see the downturn in the United States’ education ranking aligning with the start of these issues. Seen in the Huffington Post's analysis of a recent Harvard study, U.S. Students Still Lag Behind Foreign Peers, Schools Make Little Progress in Improving Achievement it can been easily seen that the US has decreased considerably in its educational improvement rank. The US has fallen from being a leader in every subject to 25^th in math, 17^th in science and 14^th in reading out of 49 countries (Huffington Post). While these ranking might not seem to be as alarming, one looks farther to see that countries near the top are increasing their lead in strides and bounds, as they improve their standardized test scores up to three times quicker than the US.

               So now, one may ask the question of how to fix such an issue, especially one seen nationwide. One of the most common attempts to fix the education decrease is just to throw money at the system and to hope that the schools will be able to teach students better with more funding. Yet this has been countered, shown especially by the case of Utah and New York, with Utah having a higher high school graduation rate, with close to half of the funding New York Schools get (per student) (Huffington Post). Recent results from the study of labs of Wang and Voss may now have possibly given the US education system a possible route in fixing the issue without incurring massive costs. One change possible change could be seen through the case of active versus passive learning, measured by memory tests. In the discovery of novel information, (learning pattern and sequences) Wang and Voss have shown that active learning significantly increases score on memory tests over their passive learning counterparts (Wang). These results can now be passed onto US school systems through policy changes, with more active learning in the classroom, in the form of labs, lesson exercises and more student questions/involvement, at the cost of decreasing passive learning, especially with less lectures and power point learning. The need for active learning is not the only thing uncovered, as Voss and Wang also go to show the discovery and learning of novel information is better facilitated through staying on topic. This was shown as those that stayed on topic, this discovering all new information in each quadrant, significantly outperformed those that continuously changed from quadrant to quadrant (Wang). Looking to the application of education systems today, this can call for the increasing of class times, possibly calling for high schools to adapt college style learning, with classes only on certain days. These longer classes can help students stay on topic and more thoroughly understand each lesson, leading to a strong improvement in information retention and test scores. Overall, this would allow for class times to increase without increasing school day lengths. So while  the US has lagged behind, shown decisively by the Harvard study, there are definite routes for US education administrators and legislators to take to help restore US to becoming a leader in education again, going on to help the US improve as a whole. 

Citations:

Article:
"US Students Still Lag Behind Foreign Peers, Schools Make Little Progress in Improving Achievement." The Huffington Post. HuffingtonPost.com Inc. September 22, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/us-students-still-lag-beh_n_1695516.html
Note: no author listed

Harvard Study:

Hanushek, E., Peterson, P., Woessmann, L. (2012). Achievement Growth: International and US state Trends in Student Performance. Harvard University; Harvard Kennedy School. Retrieved April 28, 2015
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG12-03_CatchingUp.pdf

Journal:
Voss. J., Wang, J. (2014). Brain Networks for Exploration Decisions Utilizing Modeled Information Types during Contextual Learning. Neuron 82, 1171-1182.
https://luc.app.box.com/s/4c031c26bsh2bj3619si/1/2926648297/24814540863/1