1. Sex education should be implemented into the U.S. public school system. A study done in 2011 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifies that over forty-seven percent of all high school students say they have had sex, and fifteen percent of high school students have had sex with four or more partners throughout their lifetime. Amid students who had sex in the three months preceding the survey, 60 percent conveyed condom use and 23 percent conveyed birth control pill use during their last sexual encounter. Sexual activity in teens does carry some very harsh consequences. Though the teen birth rate has deteriorated to its lowest levels since information gathering began, the United States still has the highest teen birth rate …show more content…
The literacy scores of native-born U.S. adults rank 10th among the 17 high-income nations. In order to correct this problem, the United States will need to revamp its education system and get rid of the common core standards that the children are being tested by now. According to the Core Standards website the content of the standards is designed to capture the skill and knowledge of the student and prepare them for life outside of the classroom. However, this is far from being what the core standards allow the students to prepare for, most teachers will tell you that the core standards are just a way for the governments to have a harness on how and what is taught in the classroom. Core Standards are nothing more than a cheat sheet to the test at the end of the year, and if the teacher doesn’t stray off it or teach things a different way the students should have a blueprint to the test at the end of the year. Our new President Donald Trump, has promised to do just that, to revamp our education system and get rid of common core. Stronger literacy in children breeds stronger literacy in adults. Also, each of those top contenders taught their children that you must work hard and make an explicit effort to be the top of your class to be recognized. The No Child Left Behind is a great act but we are forgetting what actually makes a country great and that is hard
Though standardized testing has played a part in America's education system it took several tries before it played such a large role in education like it does today. The No child left Behind Act of 2002 was the foot hold standardized testing needed in order to be implemented into schools at a national level with such force. During the 1990’s the U.S felt as though it was falling behind on the Programme for International Assessment. “After No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed in 2002, the US slipped from 18th in the world in math on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to 31st place in 2009, with a similar drop in science and no change in reading”(walker 1).
Today’s young Americans face strong peer pressure to be sexually active and engage themselves in risky behaviors (Merino 100-109). Anyone deciding to have sex must first think about all the risks involved. Kekla Magoon, author of Sex Education in Schools, says that “half of all teens aged 15 to 19 years old in the United States have had sex” (Magoon 64-65). It is currently not required by federal law for schools to teach Sex education and those few schools that do teach Sex education have the decision to determine how much information is allowed. Advocates from both sides of the Sex education debate agree that teens need positive influences in order to make practical decisions (Magoon 88-89). Opponents of Abstinence-only education believe it fails because it does not prepare teens for all the risks of sex (Magoon 64-65).
In 2001 George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act and the act took effect in 2002. The United States, and President Bush, thought that the act would aid immigrant students and American students in education from the time they entered elementary throughout adulthood. The NCLB does just the opposite for most immigrated students and native students. Although the act was a good idea at the time in 2001, the lasting effects on students with their education now are appalling because of all the negative feedback that the act provides for most school districts because all the students’ different learning abilities show lower test scores in standardized testing. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed in 2001 for aiding the development of education from 2001-2014 by creating standardized testing in hopes of creating more intelligent children, but there are more children left behind now, supporting the opinion that the act fails.
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.
The need for basic literacy skills is vital in order for our nation to continue to operate successfully. With approximately 5 million students, graduating below the National Standard for Literacy and unable to read, we must take a look at the curriculum and teaching techniques to assess whether the current systems need to be revised to better assure ALL students are successful. (Adolescent Literacy: A Policy Research Belief p. 1) The issue begins first with the definition of “Literacy”, and the fact that there are several aspects of literacy which are not currently included in the curriculum. Another issue is the “old” standards which are in place do not support the level of diversity which is now seen in many school systems. Then comes the issue of funding for schools and many schools in better neighborhoods obtain the highest level of private, and public funding and therefore are able to provide the higher level of education. However, in “The Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act”, Senator Patty Murray states, “Research also shows that low income children are less likely to have access to high quality, literacy rich environments. These same children perform 40% lower on assessments of literacy achievement even before they start kindergarten.” (Murray) So, whose responsibility is it to ensure the success of the upcoming generations? Will the Federal Government step in to create a better system for the generations to come? There are quite a few solutions which have been used by Teachers, but with such an “old” system in place the issues of diversity, financial demand, inflexibility of the curriculum to assist individual students, classroom sizes increasing on a yearly basis, pressure to achieve sp...
In the U.S., more than 750,000 girls ages 15-19 become pregnant every year. More than 80 percent of these are unintended pregnancies. (Lorrie) Sex education and how it should be taught has been a controversial issue for many years. This is such a hot topic because everyone wants to find the best method to teach sex education so that children will be well informed and able to take care of their bodies and health. The need to teach children sex education will continue to be an ongoing issue and is not something that cannot be ignored. Educating students on sex education in school will ensure students are receiving correct accurate information.
The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate of all developed countries. That’s pretty scary being compared to China and other developed countries with higher populations and still having the highest pregnancy rate. Schools need to start programs that encourage abstinence, and show or list the consequences of being sexually active. “They are not taught the importance of abstaining from sex nor, at the very least, the proper use of effective birth control and protection from sexually transmitted diseases” (Johnson). And the problem that occurs with this is that the parents or family that interact with the teenagers are no more educated than the teenager themselves.
A study conducted on teens in Sweden and the Netherlands showed that teens in those countries were just as sexually active, but the teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rate was much lower. Researchers say this is due to sex education that begins in elementary school and continues on(Bender p.13). Only ten percent of American school-age youth participate in a comprehensive program lasting at least forty hours(deMauro p.89). Teens in America also score low on questionnaires based on sexual knowledge(Gordon p.
(2014) exclaimed that why do 62 percent of parents think the Common Core is not perfect for their kids, despite it has fascinated some entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and the secretary of education. In a case in point, parents should get more involved in the education of their children if they do not approve of measures being used. She agrees to the idea of a federal government using incentives to adopt their specific education program, but then again she only sees that parents complaining and not taking action. In another context, “parents have no choice about whether their kids will learn Common Core, no matter what school they put them in, if they want them to go to college, because the SAT and ACT are being redesigned to fit the new national program for education”. (Pullmann, J. 2014, September 24, p. 1). In fact, Porter (1989) states that the Common Core standards became as opposing to teachers and teaching occupation, and the tactics are not good strong enough for enabling teachers to be dependent. The teacher is often understood to be the planned without rules. Moreover, some voices against the criticism of the common core, they believe that it is meaningless because districts are still permitted to select which material goes out with stem the basis stated by the Common Core
Stanger-Hall, K. & Hall, D. (2011). Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S. PLoS ONE 6(10).
The government likes to pretend that if high school students get taught the “abstinence-only” method they would never think of taking part in sexual activities. Statistically this is incorrect. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “56 percent of high school students are virgins”(Martin). For the 56 percent abstinence only is doing them well, but there are still 44 percent of high school students engaging in sex without knowing the precau...
The No Child Left Behind Act was set into place with the goal to improve student performance in school, and close the achievement gap between students; as Stecher, Vernez, and Steinburg state, “When congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), it established an ambitious goal for the nation’s states, districts, and schools: All children will be proficient in reading and mathematics by the 2013-2014 school year” (1). While the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented with good intentions, the act itself is one of the main reasons the United States is falling behind in educational rankings. One of the most common complaints of parents surrounding the No Child Left Behind Act is the weakest link factor: the weakest student sets the pace in the classroom. The weakest student...
Three million teenagers will contract a sexually transmitted disease and one in three women will become pregnant before they are twenty years old. Teens are contracting sexually transmitted diseases and getting pregnant at an alarming rate, causing the government, schools, and parents to scratch their heads. America is the country with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world. Many are wondering what can be done to stop this. A debate has been going on about whether abstinence education is doing any good for high school students in America.
Though the teen birth rate has declined to its lowest levels since data collection began, the United States still has the highest teen birth rate in the industrialized world. Roughly, one in four girls will become pregnant at least once by their 20th birthday. In addition, young people ages 15 to 24 represent 25 percent of the sexually active population, but acquire half of all new STIs.
“Forty-one percent of teens ages 18-19 said they know nothing about condoms, and seventy-five percent said they know nothing about the contraceptive pill” (Facts on American Teens). Even if schools taught just abstinence it still would not be enough. “In 2007, a study showed that abstinence only programs have no beneficial impact on the sexual behavior of young people” (Facts on American Teens). Sex education is not taken as seriously as it should be in schools, it is treated like it is not a big deal. Schools should require a sex education class that specifically teaches students about sex and goes into depth of all the possible consequences because of the high pregnancy, abortion, and virus rates.