Introduction Education in the United States has changed over the last 60 years. It started with President Eisenhower making sure Brown v. Board of Education was enforced. Next, the National Defense Education Act in 1858 was passed to improve math and science. In 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed to help the poor succeed in school. Finally, in 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child left Behind Act (NCLB) (Robbins & Alvy, 2009, pg. 7). The NCLB change the way schools look at student achievement. One of the biggest changes was all teachers and schools are held accountable for student learning (Robbins & Alvy, 2009, pg. 7). Schools are now graded and labeled. Teachers and schools must close the achievement gap among the different groups of students (Robbins & Alvy, 2009, pg. 7). High-stakes tests measure schools, district, and student’s success (Robbins & Alvy, 2009, pg. 7). NCLB has made schools look at better ways to teach students. Schools have turned to using research based teaching practices. Schools are now using data to guide instruction. How does a school effectively assess students to increases student achievement? How does a school use this data to guide curriculum development? This paper will look at the importance of assessment in P-12 schools to improve student achievement. In this paper a critical analysis of backward design and its effect on student achievement. A critical analysis of fact-based practices that teacher can use now to improve student achievement will be discussed. Finally, a discussion of the challenges a teachers will face when creating a culture of learning. Backward Design Baldrige (2012), states highly effective schools uses assessment data to improve proce... ... middle of paper ... ...ive school culture is a must if the education system in America is going to see real reform. Works Cited Baldrige National Quality Program (2007). Education criteria for performance excellence. Retrieved from http://baldrige.nist.gov/PDF_files/2007_Education_Criteria.pdf Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. McTighe, J., Seif, E., & Wiggins, G. (2004). You can teach for meaning. Educational Leadership, 62(1), 26-31. Robbins, P. & Alvy, H. B. (2009). The principal’s companion (3rd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin a Sage Company. Waters, T. J., Marzano, R. J., & McNulty, B. (2004). Leadership that sparks learning. Educational Leadership, 61(7), 48-51. Wiggins, G., McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
.... (2007). Tips for teaching: Differentiating instruction to include all students. Preventing school failure, 51(3), 49-54.
Another major criticism of the “No Child Left Behind” deals with the implications of using a standardized test as means of assessing achievement.
The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.
Current educational policy and practice asserts that increased standardized student testing is the key to improving student learning and is the most appropriate means for holding individual schools and teachers accountable for student learning. Instead, it has become a tool solely for summarizing what students have learned and for ranking students and schools. The problem is standardized tests cannot provide the information about student achievement that teachers and students need day-to-day. Classroom assessment can provide this kind of information.
As a result, this dysfunctional number decreased as the new principal gained trust and likeability by staff. She does so through social exchange. Her tactics in addressing pull-back focuses on sharing power and asking for assistance when needed. This person understands that she does not know all in terms of teaching all ages. As a result, teams are created to tackle problems, create solutions, and report to the entire elementary staff.
Americans schools have a tendency to try to reform certain parts in one’s school but chooses to ignore what’s being reformed. Although, once Americans schools do reform it would make it a lot easier for the one who is willing to learn to get the education they need. In the essay “Let’s Really Reform Our Schools” by Anita Garland. Garland explains that there needs to be changes in Americans schools. Garland mentions that Americans school are coming to a disaster and they are in trouble. Their needs to be changes in Americans schools to improve one’s education. For starters, the attendance should not be mandatory for the ones that do not attend. Next, the cafeteria food is revolting and needs to be changed. Last, having that huge dance so called
1. I would encourage parents at the begining of the school year to gather pictures of their family, family pets, the childs favorite toys, whatever they thought was important to the child. Then on the first day of school I would let each child talk alittle about their pictures if they wanted to before hanging them up on a cork bored, or some other sort of bored. As the year progesses if the child really wants to add some more pictures to the bored they are more then welcome. I believe having a place where children can see some familiar things when they are having a rough day can really help. I would also encourage families to come in to the classroom on occasion and share some of their culture with the children, it can be showing the kids a simple craft from their culture or making food, or even teaching the kids a few words in another langues. I want every child to know that their cultural backgrounds matter. I would also love to have a map in the classroom where families can add pins to show where their family and culture is from. each year I would love to have a different color pin so as the years progress I can look back and see all the diverse cultural backgrounds I have had in my classroom. During the day children, no matter how out going or uses to the facility they are will always have a rough day where they miss mommy or daddy so I want the children to have their pictures off the wall for them to look, but I would also love to encourage all parents at the begining of the year to creat a small story book just for their child to remind them how much they are loved and whatever else the parents want to remind their child of when they are upset. The parents would give t...
Logan, Joe. "Educators Evaluate Joe Clark's Methods." Philly.com. The Inquirer, 17 Mar. 1989. Web. 6 Mar. 2014. .
One of the major foundations of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a national law requiring public schools to distribute standardized tests at least once a year, is that schools may be sanctioned by the federal government as a result of poor test grades. Obviously, this threat places an extraordinary amount of stress on schools to do well on their exams and holds teachers and administrators more accountable. However, it also causes teachers to teach the test rather than their curriculum, allowing students to perform better on exams without actually understanding the tested material (Karp). Test-teaching has become so common that students may actually take classes helping them to improve test scores, and whole days of public school are spent teaching kids better and faster ways to eliminate wrong answers (Gallagher). Such usage of classroom time and faculty effort is by no means useful to any child?s education, and its pervasiveness is unacceptable.
Education is the basis for our nation, without education there would be no foundation to build upon. It is important for each United States Citizen to understand the main concepts of education, and the factors that influence it. Those main concepts and influences being the material taught (common core), teaching methods, discipline in the classroom, and technology. By looking at each of these topics and their effect on education one will be able to better understand the structure, functions, and weaknesses of the United States education system. The author will mainly be discussing how these concepts and influential factors affect education between the years of 1985-2015.
The biggest accomplishment made by the No Child Left Behind Act was putting a spotlight on the schools who are failing their students and demanding the improve. The Act has embarrassed many of the top schools by illuminating the low rate of success of their minority students. The No Child Left Behind Act is also responsible for the slow but steady progress toward closing the achievement gap between rich and poor and black and white. The law has also worked to increase recruitment efforts in low income areas that have previously experienced inexperienced and untrained teacher walking in and out with its requirement of teachers needing to be fully qualified. The law recognizes for the first time that teachers are inequitably distributed and has done something to fix it. But with these great accomplishments comes a numerous amount of complaints from the students, teachers, and states. Since the creation of the act schools are relentlessly focused on increasing their student’s scores on the yearly assessments to reach its AYP that they are having to narrow their vision of education and are losing subjects. The assessments only hold the schools accountable in the subjects of reading and math and thus those are the two subjects schools put their focus on. Across the nation schools are no longer teaching science as a standalone subject, instead of doing
Over the past few decades, the need for character education programs in United States’ schools has been widely debated and become increasingly popular particularly at the elementary level. Several states, including California, mandate that schools in some way focus on the social and emotional development of students through character education (USDE, 2011). According to legislation in the state of California, all California teachers are supplied with a character education manual with the expectation that each teacher impress the qualities of good character u... ... middle of paper ... ...
This emphasis on thoughtful evaluation has kept Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction a relevant, trusted companion for over sixty years. And with school districts across the nation working feverishly to align their curriculum with Common Core standards, Tyler's straightforward recommendations are sound and effective tools for educators working to create a curriculum that integrates national objectives with their students' needs. In essence, Tyler’s Rationale is represented by the four-step sequence of identifying objectives, selecting the means for the attainment or achievement of these objectives that is through educational or teaching-learning experiences provided for students, organizing these educational or teaching-learning experiences, and evaluating the outcomes or what have students attained or achieved. Tyler suggested when developing curriculum, objectives data should be gathered from three sources, namely; the learner, society, and subject matter.
In education 2130, we are ask to volunteer our time and do field experience that in return would give back to the community. I choose to do my field experience at Lula Elementary School in Hall County. During my time there I got to observe and watch teachers teach, how they handle children’s behavior and also their classroom management. In the paper I am going to discuss my field experience and what I learned in my time spent in a classroom. I am also going to try and make connections to educational psychology and what I learned in my education class. Also I am going to reflect on my emotional and professional reactions.
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...