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Essays on the achievement gap in us education
Essays on the achievement gap in us education
Homeschooling effects on academics
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Imagine lacking the educational foundations to keep up with the standard schooling program of public schools in today’s society. According to Education by the Numbers, 1.6% of 8th graders are held back every year due to not having the ability to reach the performance level expected for moving to the next grade. A student who was one of the few to experience this unfortunate situation is named Steven Gene Senatro. Steven wasn’t prepared to become a freshman in high school. He was young and not prepared for the next level of education, so his parents made the executive decision to not let him proceed to high school, and put him in homeschooling to fill in the educational gaps. This decision seemed tragic and unfortunate at first but later became …show more content…
From the beginning of middle school, his teachers failed to report Steven’s decline in his understanding of the schooling subjects. Each year, Steven moved onto the next grade without realizing he was lacking education that was crucial for the next level. By the end of 8th grade, each student was required to take the AIMs test to see the comprehension and literacy skills of the students. Steven received his test results at the end of the year and the results were nowhere near his 3.6 gpa. His reading and math skills were at a 4th grade level. Steven and his parents as well as his teachers were perplexed at his lack of education and took it to the school board. The members of the board decided that Steven’s parents could make a decision by either choosing to let Steven continue into any high school that would accept him or homeschool for a year. His parents decided to take him off and homeschool him till he was ready for freshman year of high school. “It’s hard not to be a normal kid in a normal world” (Steven Senatro). Steven was truly disappointed, realizing that he would have to leave his childhood friends behind and begin a new chapter in his
Serpico (1973) is a movie that reveals the true story of Frank Serpico who was the only honest cop in the New York police sector at his time. The film shows the realistic view of the corruption that was evidenced in the New York police and highlights the character of Frank as being honest and courageous. Although he started as an inexperienced cop, he later worked as an undercover officer and was determined to bust all the criminal activities especially the drug dealers and pushers. Unlike the other cops, Serpico refused to take any bribes from the wrongdoers. More so, he felt that the other officers were doing wrong by accepting bribes and wanted to expose the situation. The other officers were so corrupt that they collected more money through bribes than the salary they earned, a situation that did not please Serpico. His strong stand concerning corruption made his friends turn against him, placing his life in danger. The anti-corruption efforts of Serpico jeopardized his life at the hands of his colleagues. He was later transferred to the Narcotics Squad where he was shot by a drug dealer after his partners betrayed him by failing to support him. The cop was then rushed to hospital. The shooting made Frank deaf since it affected the brain, rendering
...eral topic of school. The sister strives to graduate and go to school even though she is poor while her brother blames the school for him dropping out and not graduating. “I got out my social studies. Hot legs has this idea of a test every Wednesday” (118). This demonstrates that she is driven to study for class and get good grades while her brother tries to convince her that school is worth nothing and that there is no point in attending. “‘Why don’t you get out before they chuck you out. That’s all crap,’ he said, knocking the books across the floor. ‘You’ll only fail your exam and they don’t want failures, spoils their bloody numbers. They’ll ask you to leave, see if they don’t’” (118). The brother tries to convince his sister that school is not a necessity and that living the way he does, being a drop out living in a poverty stricken family is the best thing.
In modern society, the rules for school are simple and straightforward. To do well in school means to do well later in all aspects of life and guaranteed success will come. Sadly however, this is not the case for Ken Harvey or Mike Rose. Author Mike Rose goes to Our Lady of Mercy, a small school located deep in Southern Los Angeles where he meets other troubled students. Being accidentally placed in the vocational track for the school, Rose scuttles the deep pond with other troubled youths. Dealt with incompetent, lazy and often uninvolved teachers, the mix of different students ‘s attention and imagination run wild. Rose then describes his classmates, most of them trying to gasp for air in the dead school environment. On a normal day in religion
Just as a caterpillar changes into a complex and beautiful butterfly over time, education too is evolving and changing into something completely different than the “3 R’s” of the past. How education should evolve is a highly disputed topic. Although there appear to be many solutions these solutions often have many flaws. There has yet to be a single solution to solve this dilemma. Even though their perspectives on education differ, Brian D. Ray and Rachel S. Cox seek to tackle this issue in their respective articles, “Does Home Schooling Promote the Public Good?” and “The Home School Debate.” Ray is biased toward home-schooling being the solution to the ails of public education and believes that education issues can be resolved by encouraging
In the end of the story, Andrew’s dad helps Andrew be able to go to school. His dad says to Andrew, “Andrew you have to start school this Summer.” Andrew answers, “How?” His dad responds back with, “I don’t know but you’re going.” This shows how Andrew’s dad really believes that Andrew will go to school next Fall. It also shows how Andrew’s never gives up on Andrew going to school. He helps him by never giving up and making him go to school.
Parents withdraw children from school for concerns that are not being managed to their satisfaction. Bullying manifest, basic skills being reinforced poorly, and no one on one interaction, consequently, dissatisfaction within the public school system exists. Under those circumstances, homeschooling in some cases is necessary. Children who are homeschooled apprehend various social settings, maintain the offbeat school scheduling, and acquire knowledge from diverse sources other than teachers, while still maintaining a sturdy set of skills.
According to Gretchen M. Wilhelm and Michael W. Firmin, in their article Historical and Contemporary Developments, the Department of Education found that over 1,700,000 students are homeschooled. That’s 3.4 percent of all school age children (304). Homeschooling is defined as an education that contains less than twenty five hours of public school teaching each week and is based out of a household. The earliest forms of education were originally taught from home, then later developed into public schools (Wilhelm and Firmin). Homeschooling not only affects the students taught, but also fellow Americans in the race to advance a nation. Homeschooling needs to be understood in order to revise education into a better and
Moreover, some families choose to Homeschool in order to screen their child’s curriculum to remove secularist views found in modern day public school curriculum (2002). Others have children with special needs or learning disabilities, so they choose to homeschool (Maaja, 1997). Ultimately, families are looking for what they believe is best for their children. And these families want to be actively involved in the education of their children. Homeschooling parents do not want strangers raising their children. They want to raise their children with freedom from government systems and institutions (Ray, 2000a).
It’s Wednesday and a mother just kissed her son goodbye as he walked into the classroom. The mother walks back to her car and proceeds to work. Her son has Down Syndrome, but attends a private school where special needs children have their own classroom. Her son Alex loves going to school to see his friends, like any child would. With Down Syndrome, Alex has some rough days in the classroom.
While the majority choose to do so for academics, the reasoning goes beyond simply that. Homeschool families are often stereotyped as extremely religious and attempting to hide their children from the corruption and sin of the world. Families that do keep children out for these reasons are still prevalent within the homeschooling community; my mother contemplated homeschooling me and my brothers for this reason, and one of my best friends is homeschooled in a religious home. As homeschooling grows more mainstream, more families believe that public school squashes a child’s creativity and attempts to conform all children into the same person. Lynn Schnaiberg, a writer for Education Weekly, gives the reasons for four homeschooling families in her article “Staying Home from School.” In this article, the first family, the Scandora’s, believe “learning is not a product of teaching” and that their children should be free to learn at whatever pace they want. Another family featured in Schnaiberg’s article, the Collins family, is dissatisfied with the Baltimore city schools, which had some of the lowest test scores in the state. The Hoyt family has two children who are considered “gifted.” Because public schools do not give proper attention
In today’s American society, quality education is important for one to succeed. Without proper education, a person will find it extremely difficult to apply for college, a job, or to pursue his or her dream. Typically when Americans think of education, public education is the first to come to mind. Public education has been around for centuries and is provided to most children throughout the United States. Due to this fact, public education has been the go to education source for years. Though, this trend is slowly changing with many parents deciding to home school their children instead. Many factors are the cause for this issue, but the common arguments arise from a certain few. For students, public school provides many opportunities ranging from social connections, school sports, and the exposure to teachers who are experts in their fields. But homeschooling is often superior because it offers additional time for students to participate in various extracurricular activities and community service, allows for more individual attention, personal character development, and it offers less exposure to discrimination that is received in the public school environment.
Former United States Secretary of Education John W. Gardner evaluates the current state of American schooling in this way: “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.” Whether or not Gardner is right about schools failing to provide analytical instruction needed, something is awry in today’s public schools. The legitimacy of this assessment can be seen in the advancement of the homeschooling movement. Parents’ requirements are in some way not being fulfilled, but what area needs improvement? Schools produce sub-par academic products, Isabel Lyman indicates in her article “What’s Behind the Growth in Homeschooling?”, and they are hatcheries of crime. Kurt Bauman states in his article, “Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics”, that while academic concerns could be a major cause, religion and values are a more prevalent theme. In short, academic and religious faults are favored by authorities as the cause of the trend, but the gradual understanding and social acceptance of homeschooling should also be considered a possible instigation. While parts of the expanding trend of home education can be accredited to factors like academic superiority and moral freedom, the main cause of the increase in the number of homeschoolers is not in the excellence of home education, but rather in the spread of the knowledge of its excellence.
As the population in public schools increase, the problems in these schools are also on the rise. These changes are leasing to the way parents are schooling their children. Many parents are leaning towards homeschooling as a solution to this problem. This increase in homeschooling can be directly related to an increase in school violence, the offering of a lack luster curriculum, and lack of student teacher interaction.
“Is getting a good education important to you?” Most people when asked this question would answer, “Yes.” This is because it teaches us valuable life skills and prepares us to communicate and engage with others in the world. Education has taken on many forms over the years, and one of the more successful components of education has been homeschooling. Once considered a criminal act of defiance, homeschooling is now legally an option in all fifty states for parents to consider, and it has a substantial
Today, many parents are homeschooling their children. A U.S. Department of Education’s report shows that approximately 1.5 million children were being homeschooled in 2007 (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). This is almost 3 percent of all school age children (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). A private researcher, the National Home Education Research Institute, estimates 2.5 million children were being homeschooled in the 2007 – 2008 academic years (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). By either count, homeschooling is growing exponentially.