More handpicked essays just for you.
The history of the american education system
The history of the american education system
The history of the american education system
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
President John F Kennedy once said “children are the world’s most valuable resource and it best hope for the future”. When people speak of the future they imagine a time where the all of the world’s problems are solved and everyone is kind to each other and happy. If we want this future to be possible then as Kennedy stated the children are the key. We need our children to be well educated so they can grow up to be the future leaders we need to change the world. Unfortunately with the two education systems that have been educating this nation’s children for the past fourteen years have not been doing an adequate job. The No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core standards both have fragments that work to benefit students and help them develop …show more content…
Bush on January 8, 2002 in Hamilton, Ohio and was the education standards for the next ten years. This act was designed to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that was put into effect in 1965 and to increase the federal government’s role in holding schools accountable for student success and failure. Democrats, Republicans, and the Bush administration signed this bill into law in hopes of advancing American competitiveness internationally and to close the gap between minority students and their advantaged peers. The minority groups that were specifically focused on were English-language learners, special education students, poor children, and children from ethnic minority households. This new act did not mandate the States to comply with its requirements but threatened to take away the state’s federal Title I money if it did not. No Child Left Behind demands schools to test students in grades third through eighth and once in high school in the subjects of math and reading and to report the results on the whole student population and of particular minority subgroups. The end goal was for the schools to bring all of their students, regardless of their minority status, to the proficient level on the state standardized test by the school year of 2013-14. Each state was able to decide what the proficient level looked like and which standardize test it wanted to …show more content…
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
The implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act applied a market approach to school reform as a way of improving the school system. This new law promised an era of high standards, testing, and accountability in
The No Child Left Behind Act was put into place to help disadvantaged students, educators and the education system reach their full potential and succeed in life. This Act also drove student achievement to reach its highest and to hold both states and schools more accountable for each student’s progress. They represented significant changes to the education landscape at the time and helped shift the country’s focus on education (U.S. Department of Education, 2001).
Just three days after taking office in January of 2001 as the forty third president of the United States, George W. Bush announced his plan of No Child Left Behind. Signed January 8, 2002, it was the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the central federal law in pre-collegiate education. (Rebora) No Child Left Behind cleared Congress in a landslide with overwhelming majorities. (Seligman) It was said to be the most ambitious school reform effort in at least a generation. (Symonds) No Child Left Behind, is a landmark in education reform, designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of America's schools. Bush describes his plan as 'the cornerstone of my administration' (Rebora).
The current debates surrounding the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 are both positive and negative. Many politicians and people that previously supported the Act are now standing against it. In the beginning many supported the new Act because everyone was aware that a change needed to happen in the education system and the proposal of No Child Left Behind seemed like the answer we were looking for. As the No Child Left Behind requirements began to be felt in the school systems across America and the assessments results started coming in, everyone took a step back and really began to look at the new law. The results were not what everyone expected, what was once considered an answer was now becoming the problem.
There are new types of public charter schools that are another form of opportunity inequality because they are almost a public and private school blended together. These charter schools are becoming more popular and their number of students is growing exponentially. A website called uncommonschools.org defines what a charter school is and how their different when they write
In 2002, President George W. Bush passed the “No Child Left Behind Act” which tied in schools’ public funding to standardized tests and enforced the tests in elementary and high schools every year by state education departments. This law also began to put more emphasize on standardized tests which has diminished our level of education and the law “made standardized test scores the primary measure of school quality” (Diane Ravitch 28). Bush hoped this law motivated more students to do well on these exams and teachers to help them prepare better, but it ended up hurting many schools in the process. These exams like the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) should not play such a prominent role in schooling and the government should not make tests the main focal point.
Holmes, Sarah E. (2009). “Standardized Testing and the No Child Left Behind Act: A Failing Attempt at Reform“. English 1200. 12 December 2013.
Funding, depending on the status of the school can be convenient or it may cause misfortune. On January 8, 2002 president George W. Bush signed a new law reform that is still presently known as “No Child Left Behind”. The law contained standards that were necessary to be met by school districts. The Educational Standards explains that the law received bipartisan support but even so the funding was not just.
Anatole France said, “An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.” Through the No Child Left Behind program students are being tested in a manner that does not accurately measure learning. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB or The Act) Act was proposed in 2001, an addition to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to assist students who have a disadvantage or are a minority. Through this Act students were required to take standardized tests. One main reason of implementing the standardized testing as a part of NCLB was to raise schools AYP, adequate yearly progress; this measures a schools progress in reaching certain standards set by the Federal Government. The Federal Government should eradicate the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 because it is creating substantial problems, limiting learning, and has proven to be ineffective.
Since we established our first schools in America, we have been in a constant state of change. We have progressed from schools made purely to teach young white boys the bible so that they could become preachers, to schools that allow women, to schools that are made to prepare everyone for their future. Even though we have had an abundance of good change, we have also had an abundance of bad change. Education Reform, in concept, is a great idea. Society is changing so our schools should be changing at the same rate. Our schools are struggling and we need to work towards reforming them for the better. The problem is, this reform is being put in place and decided by people who have never taught a day in their life. There are many different examples of reforms put in place by people who have never taught, that are failing out students. No Child Left Behind, Common Core State Standards, Race to the Top, and other reforms are all examples of these failures. We need to look back on the mistakes that we have made through these reforms, and use this knowledge to improve future reform.
Proper school funding is one of the keys to having a successful school. Americans believe that funding is the biggest problem in public schools. School improvements revolve around funding. There needs to be funding not only in the successful schools but also the schools that aren’t doing as well. In documentary, Waiting for Superman, it talks about how smaller class sizes will help students. Funding is what will help the smaller class sizes. State funding mechanisms are subject to intense political and economic scrutiny (Leonard). Studies have shown that funding is inversely related to accreditation levels (Leonard). School funding needs to be increased, but there must be accountability as well.
The No Child Left Behind Act should tremendously be re-examined and amended because the focus on the standardized tests decrease the quality of other subjects not on the tests, the tests are not an efficient tool to make certain that a student is receiving an excellent education and the tests create unnecessary stress for the students, teachers and administrators. The purpose of No Child Left Behind is to provide every student with the opportunity to receive a top-grade education. This is a great proposal to strive towards but, legislation plans on achieving this proposal by making schools responsible for their students’ proficiency and to measure their proficiency with the use of standardized tests. After the students take the standardized tests, the school district must report their scores and if the scores do not meet the adequate yearly progress (AYP), they are punished, usually by a deduction in federal funding. Therefore, an excellent education is very critical for a child’s success but standardized testing is not the best way to ensure that the students’ receive a good education because they take away the focus on other subjects, causes extra stress for the students and other people involved, and is not the most efficient way to ensure the students are receiving a high quality education.
The NCLB was passed by Congress in 2001 and later signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002 (“No Child Left Behind Act.” 1). It regulated public education in elementary and secondary schools and sought to “improve student performance, hold schools accountable for student progress, and provide assistance and options for students in failing schools” (“No Child Left Behind Act.” 1). President Barack Obama’s RTT is a series of competitive grants that have been awarded to states willing to embrace the administration's favored policies to improve public schools (Lyndsey, 3). Lyndsey established, “Race to the Top has been controversial among teachers unions, which have argued that federal tax dollars should be spent equally among school districts instead of creating ‘winners and losers.’” (3). Instead of forming a sense of fairness among schools, Race to the Top has placed labels on schools. Furthermore, the Common Core State Standards are a set of uniform expectations for American students in English language arts and mathematics (“Common Core” 1). The standards – assigned to students in kindergarten through 12th grade – are designed to prepare students for college and the workforce (“Common Core” 1). Many claim that these standards allow the federal state and territorial governments to control school systems (“Common Core” 1). If they hadn’t already, most states had planned to implement Common Core State Standards in the 2014-2015 school years. While these acts were supposed to improve the educational system, they failed to deal with the real matters at
Parents across America are working longer hours and trying to provide a better and surge future for their children, but Americans are unhappy with the K-12 education system, which we are told is the key for success. The United States has spent more on education any other develop country in the world, and education is ranked 31st and 23rd in Science and it seem that students are falling behind year after year. Yet, we are adding programs to our education system that suggested it would help our kids to more proficient in the classroom. Therefore, is this new approach on education really helping students? It seems that the Common Core debate is not just being fought in the classroom, but also in the court. The issue of a demising education structure
Education is one of the most important aspects of our society. By educating Americas youth we are molding the minds who are going to run and find new solutions to the problems are country faces today and for the future. However education, in general, is facing some serious problems. One of the most important aspects in running anything, including a school, is finances. If a school does not have adequate funding, the students will not be able to learn and grow to achieve their goals. The problem schools across the country and in particular Ohio is facing is, what is the best way to fund public school? There are many aspects that go into the funding of school but the question is being raised, do we need to change the way we go about funding our