The Education System

Before I delve into the topic of the education system (here in America) I'd like to give any potential readers a brief history of where I've come from.
While I was in middle school, I didn't have a very positive experience. Granted some of the decisions I made lead to me having a crappy experience, but a lot of it had to do with the teachers. Thanks to Dubya's "No (Rich White) Child Left Behind" act, public schools have a set of standards that they must reach within a certain period of time, or face having the government come in and run the school. The teachers I had in middle school, with a few exceptions, seemed to be about the numbers. As long as most of their students were performing at a C average or better, they essentially said "screw you" to the students that were performing poorly.
In middle school I lacked the organizational skills and motivational skills to get A's in all my classes. Though the F I received in math in 8th grade was due to my teacher not being qualified to teach math. I don't mean to sound superficial, but I'm a smart student. My grades my first two years of high school at the Plaza Academy prove it, my grades at ONW right now prove it.
The fact that intelligent students like myself end up failing classes due to teachers not being qualified to teach is probably a big reason why America lags behind every other industrialized nation.

At the Plaza Academy, a small private school, it is about the student. The teachers genuinely care about the success of every student. For example, If an entire class fails a test, they make adjustments to the test or offer extra credit so students can bring their grade up.

In a public school, it is about the numbers, and more specifically the standards that the state sets for education. Are these standards necessary? Absolutely. But especially with middle school students, the solution isn't always to bog them down with homework. Studies show that at a certain point, homework can begin to harm a student's ability to perform in school (this varies from student to student.)

For me, I'm very sensitive to the amount of homework I get. I need free time, and when I'm able to have free time, I function better. Anyone who's known me since middle school can attest to this. The fact is, I enjoy learning, and learning for me doesn't stop at the school doors. I recently completed a 1:50 scale model of the International Space Station; done completely in my spare time, applying skills I had learned in math, and even learning new skills that I didn't learn in school until this summer.

With only an hours or so worth of homework each night, I'm making A's in every class except Physics, which is a B. I'm happier than I've ever been, and I can attest that happiness is the key to success. If schools want students to perform better, they need to make them feel more confident about their performance, because only once a student enjoys school, can they reach their full potential.