School Vs. Society In America's Failing Schools Summary

The article “School vs. Society in America’s Failing Students” (2015), by Eduardo Porter reveals the debate surrounding the reasoning behind the failure of America’s educational system. Porter efficiently utilizes logos to fulfil his purpose of informing his audience of the multiple sides of the situation. Porter uses logos to fairly and thoroughly showcase both sides of the discussion. He begins his article by introducing the situation through a declaration of statistics of America’s ranking in the PISA standardized tests in math, reading, and science. He then presents Professor Martin Carnoy’s beliefs that “socioeconomic deficits impose a particularly heavy burden on American schools” and once these social statuses are adjusted for, the American educational system will

Additionally, the author mentions that according to the professor’s research, the “score gap between American students and those in the highest-ranked countries” decreases by “25 percent in math and 40 percent in reading” once adjustments for the student’s socioeconomic status have been made. However, this problem is getting harder for public schools to solve as “[t]he public school population is getting poorer”. Porter then introduces Andreas Schleicher, the top educational expert of O.E.C.D who runs the PISA tests, as Schleicher firmly disagrees with Professor Carnoy’s claims. According to Professor Carnoy’s results, “fewer than 15 percent” of American students should be from families of lower socioeconomic status, but Schleicher found that “65 percent of principals in American schools say at least 30 percent of their students come from disadvantaged families”. Porter shows how Schleicher’s discoveries discredit Professor Carnoy’s, in terms of logic, and by doing so, he equalizes both sides of the debate. The author does not use these facts and logic to persuade his audience to think a certain way, but instead to educate them about the discussion and let them decide