Time for Teachers to Take Responsibility
Identifying the problem.
In today's society, many factors contribute to the academic failure in urban education. As time passes, however, schools and teachers are placing more blame upon the students for lack of potential, discipline, and motivation to learn. In reality, however, this scapegoat allows many teachers' to relinquish any responsibility for their students' not learning. Many students in urban schools live in poverty, have learning disabilities, or come from bilingual backgrounds where English is not their native language. When in this society did we start blaming the victim, or in this case the students, for not having the resources needed to nourish their bodies and minds, let alone their educational needs. As teachers, we need to break the vicious cycle of blame and start being held accountable for the achievement gap that progressively grows wider as urban children develop.
The current status of the issues.
In January of 2002 the Bush administration passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which "proposes to close achievement gaps and aims for 100 percent student proficiency by 2014" (Guilfoyle). This law requires schools to give standardized tests to students and holds individual schools, districts, and teachers accountable to nationwide standards. These tests carry consequences for schools and districts that perform poorly. If schools fail to bring enough of their students to proficiency, they face government reprimands. Are our schools measuring up to academic standards? According to a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, "most states
are doing a poor job of narrowing achievement gaps despite attention focused on poor and minority students by the fe...
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...hey became a teacher in the first place.
Works Citied
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Guilfoyle, C. (2006). NCLB: Is There Life Beyond Testing? Educational Leadership, 64(3),
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Jacobson, L. (2006). States Get Poor Grades on Closing Achievement Gaps. Education Week,
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Karns, A. (2006). [Lecture]. The Blueberry Story.
Laitsch D., Lewallen, T. & McCloskey, M. (2005). The Whole Child: A Framework for Education in the 21st Century. InfoBrief, 40.
Washor, E. Murkowski, C. (2006/2007). What Do You Mean by Rigor? Educational Leadership, 64(4), 84-87.
Welsh, P. (2006). Mclean, Virginia. For once, Blame the student. USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-07-forum-students_x.htm.
Every state in the United States has different standards and expectations for public education. For example, some states require an exit exam in high school whereas others do not. One reasoning for this is because of test scores. Explained in an article titled “High School Exit Exams: Issues to Consider,” is that some states have a high number of students that are failing the exams, and so they either lower the standards or remove the test in order to raise the graduation rate at the end of the year (GreatSchools staff, n.d., p. 2). Setting lower standards is causing major problems for the United States as a whole because it reflects poorly on the nation’s report card. In the case of Nevada and Wisconsin, both states differ f...
In many low income communities, there are teachers that are careless and provide their students with poor quality education. These teachers are there just to make sure that they keep receiving their monthly paychecks and act in this way because they believe that low income students do not have the drive, the passion, or the potential to be able to make something of themselves and one day be in a better place than they are now. Anyon reveals that in working class schools student’s “Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.” (3). This is important because it demonstrates that low income students are being taught in a very basic way. These children are being negatively affected by this because if they are always being taught in this way then they will never be challenged academically, which can play a huge role in their futures. This argument can also be seen in other articles. In the New York Times
The act encouraged states to conduct standardized testing so that schools nationally could reach a proficiency level of 100 percent in math and reading as projected. However, the problem is that the Unites State has only met a twenty to thirty percent proficiency rate. Compared to other advanced countries, the U. S. has met only twenty-fifth in Math and a decrease in Science at twenty-five percent. Even though billions of dollars have been dedicated toward the academic achievement of the public school system, the Coleman Report revealed negative outcomes in the standardized test scores. This is when Americans confirmed how the system was broken.
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.
The “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) act (P.L. 107-110), was signed into law by George Bush in 2001 to replace the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. NCLB has as one of its major requirements that all students from 3rd to 8th grade be required to take a standardized tests every year, and once in grades 9-12, these tests are on the subjects of math and reading, and must be expanded to science by 2007. In addition to the tests, states must implement an accountability system using the same assessment for all public schools in ...
For as long as any American can remember, education has been a top priority of the majority of the population. The more schooling a child receives, the brighter their future becomes. Everyone wants their child to be successful in and out of the classroom, and the government has been working to make sure of this in schools nationwide. Over the years, a series of programs have been implemented to better the education of elementary and secondary students, including the No Child Left Behind Act, establishing guidelines and requirements that public schools are expected to follow and accomplish in order to provide a quality education to all of their students. But are these plans, policies, and promises working? Are the goals and objections being reached by each school as expected? Although some may argue that the No Child Left Behind Act has some positive aspects, overall, it is not working because some teachers have studied the outline of standardized tests, reworking their curriculums to teach students what they need to know in order to reach the required standards and students’ learning abilities, socioeconomic status’, and native languages are generalized into a single curriculum.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) deals with student achievement standards by holding schools accountable for the achievement of their students (Implementation 11). The NCLBA uses standardized tests to chart the success of students. If students are not meeting standards, the school is required to offer tutoring, which is funded by the state with Title I, the education mandate passed in which granted all public schools access to federal grants, money (No Subject 7). The Act itself is not the problem; the problem is that the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard which is a big part of the NCLBA is not being met. The AYP standard is not being met because schools are not changing their methods quickly enough. It was said in the NCLBA that schools nationwide were to have 100% proficiency of the AYP standard within 12 years (Implementation 9). Since the passing of the NCLBA in 2001, most public schools, nationwide have not improved at all.
As is common in the school systems, more prolific neighborhoods can use sources not available to another school in a poor neighborhood. There is a common thread in education that the students with access to more options, consistent teachers and environments perform better. This is revealed in HST to an excessive degree. In 2002 the No Child Left Behind was enacted. This act was fuel in the fires of HST, and ironically was meant to rectify the problem of poverty dictating education. “The NCLB (2002) places a significant emphasis on increasing academic achievement for all students, regardless of ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status (SES), limited English proficiency, or students with disabilities on the local, state, and federal levels.” (Domond) NCLB (2002) was meant to challenge schools to address the gaps in the socioeconomically affected areas. Nonetheless, HST has exacerbated those gaps and penalized the schools in the geographical locations that have a higher poverty
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.
Most educators and parents would desire an educational system where all students receive a balanced education that will afford all students the ability to compete in our ever changing society. This desire is great among students who live in economically challenged environments and those who attend poor schools. These students are at most risk of receiving a a proper education. This is partly due to lack of funding, and the inability for those poor schools to afford highly qualified teachers. Much controversy stems from this issue, poor schools not being able to afford highly trained teachers, students not having access to improved curriculums and extraordinary dropout rates. In an effort to combat these issues, the Bush administration implemented an act that purported to help schools to receive necessary funding for qualified teachers and to close the racial and ethnic gaps, known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA). However, the NCLBA failed to deliver on its promises and left already struggling schools and children in disarray attempting to reach government mandates rather than ensuring a balanced education for every student.
Urban America has been deteriorating for decades. Plagued with poverty, crime, and unemployment, it is a wonder that educational institutions exist at all. The present state of urban public schools is quite disheartening. With issues to face such as inadequate facilities, widespread violence and rising drop out rates it is no longer a question of who will succeed, it is a question of who will survive. Urban schools have become institutions well skilled in the desensitizing of its students to the importance of the qualities that an education should embody: idealism, imagination and creativity. Author Jonathan Kozol suggests in Savage Inequalities that public schools promote nothing but inequalities among students. In actuality, finding the root of this problem is much more involved. The problems in urban public schools are as interconnected as a spider's intricate web. Every strand connects to another and so on, until the problem is not merely one segment of the web, but the web itself. Every problem facing urban public schools is intrinsically related to one another. In order to isolate the underlying issue it is necessary to define the one element broad enough to encompass the widest possible range of solutions. Kozol's analysis depicts inequality as the blanket that covers every single problem in urban schools. More realistically, inequality is merely a strand in the overall web of problems in which America has become entangled.
For decades now, there have been educational problems in the inner city schools in the United States. The schools inability to teach some students relates to the poor conditions in the public schools. Some of the conditions are the lack of funds that give students with the proper supplies, inexperienced teachers, inadequate resources, low testing scores and the crime-infested neighborhoods. These conditions have been an issue for centuries, but there is nothing being done about it. Yet, state and local governments focus on other priorities, including schools with better academics. It is fair to say that some schools need more attention than other does. However, when schools have no academic problems then the attention should be focused elsewhere, particularly in the inner city schools.
As noted by the graph our standings in education is below average, especially with African Americans and Hispanic children compared to other states. If this is the outcome in elementary school what should we expect by grade 8. With all of the various reforms enacted throughout the 30 years the curriculum in public schools did not improve nor did our standing compared to the rest of the world. Even though in each presidency monitoring tool was developed to ascertain the level of learning based on the test. In states where students passing their test equated to more funding of the school as well as the school remains open, jobs for the educators. So oppose to teaching students the information needed educators taught to the test. This is due to politicians not addressing the core issues that prevent children in low social economic status of of color due to cultural biases. Then there is the political climate of education including ignorance towards the benefit of vocational schools and real world learning.
Education is an integral part of society, school helps children learn social norms as well as teach them how to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. These schools have lower test scores and high dropout rates. In Trenton Central High School West, there was an 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often from low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial reasons to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and further teacher education, urban schools can be transformed and be better equipped to prepare their students for the global stage.
For the most part it is not the students fault as to why they are failing, but the teachers. In run down schools in poor towns, most teachers can only do so much with what they are given. In most cases it leads the teachers to just give up. In David K. Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Shipler states, “It had been a science class, and the teacher had given up and allowed a student who had brought a Nintendo game to plug it in” (Shipler 240). If the teacher ends up giving up or stops caring all together, the student will follow suit. In the student’s mind if the authority does not see it as important, why should they. It is important that the teachers, no matter the school, not give up on the students, for most it is the only the students have to look up to. According to Lyndsey Layton, writer for the Washington Post, just about 11 million children were living below the poverty level (Layton). For that amount of children to be living that low in life is unacceptable, but because of how education is in these areas where the children are living in are bad, they don’t have much hope for their future. Education is the only outlook these kids have for a better future and if that is corrupt or interfered with than there is a really good chance of them not being able to escape the poverty. Although there are millions of teachers that do strive to provide the best for his or her