Transforming Public Education: The LEAP Initiative

Education Reform: The Fight for our Children 's Livelihood

Laura Jimenez’s article “The Next Frontier of Education Reform” was a well thought out article about the possibility for a new program called LEAP or LEarning Together to Advance Our Practice to help improve the failing system of improving our public school educators. Jimenez uses accurate data to show the reasons behind the need to reform educator professional development and shows different examples of how this could be accomplished. She largely looks at the DC public school system’s IMPACT and the newly created LEAP projects. Laura states that the number one source for the successes of our school children, is “the quality of the teachers instructing them”. She supports the IMPACT

Her title, “ The Next Frontier of Education Reform” brings in readers expecting some new dramatic shift to the American education system. Something that will halt past pretences, and shove us into a new generation, where America can once again claim a top spot on the world education ranking. But these bold statements are only met with the simple idea of throwing teachers into a pure capitalist like mosh pit, where only the best emerge. She entirely focuses on the introduction of IMPACT and LEAP programs, which seek to score teachers and replace those who don’t match standards of each specific

The paper even warns that “ill-structured homework might even have a negative effect on student achievement.”(Marzano). The simple idea of just reducing homework load on students is almost entirely non existent, but reshaping the entire structure of hiring educators is almost exasperates the mind, thinking that this alone will fix our entire problem. I think that Jiminez tries to focus on an idea that tries to encompass that entire education system and solve its problems with one blow. By fixing the teachers and how they teach, you will increase the student 's performance. What Jiminez lacks to address is more of a multitude of smaller problems that changing teachers or not, will continue to occur, as they are almost a natural course of action in american schools. Homework load is one of those, but sleep is another important factor for many high schools who work off of anywhere from four to seven hours of sleep or worse. Without the recommended nine hours, people become have increases in “poor communication, decreased concentration and cognitive performance, unintended sleeps, decreased motor performance, increased risk taking and changes in mood pattern”(Schaffhauser). You can even go