I recently read an article called, "Make No Child Honest." It is about education and how we definetly need to improve it in our country (i agreee). The author talks about how the No Child Left Behind Act has helped draw the light on education and the schools we have in the United States. A really interesting question he asked was, ” Still, how can one like a law so badly framed and rigidly constructed that it erects unfair and unreachable standards, encourages schools to ignore the children most in need of help, labels many a fine school as failing, and has the perverse effect of shrinking history, science and arts education and badly cutting into programs for gifted kids?” I agree with this! Even though the law is really bad, there are some things good with this. He also mentioned this, “There's one other essential flaw in the act that Miller does not address: It still aims to bring all students up to proficiency by 2014. Let's face it. The nation will never make all of its students academically proficient, as long as proficiency is a reasonably high standard. That's like saying all Americans will be above average. Continued growth is realistic; so is narrowing the shameful gap in achievement between white and minority students. Academic stardom for all is not. The public will not trust this law until it at least is honest.”Over all, I believe that we do need to make the NO Child honest. This was a really good article and I think that education needs to be fixed. Children are the future of our country and if we are not well educated, then our coutry will fall apart. It is important that we fix our public school system and make sure that everyone is getting adequate education and the proper materials needed.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-nclb28oct28,0,5805070.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail
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3 comments:
I agree that we need to enact many education reforms, and fast. The number of "dropout factories" across the nation is increasing exponentially, and that can be attributed to the inadequate amount of attention being payed to education and school districts. I think that if the problem is further neglected, our country will be put to even more shame. We are the richest, most powerful nation, yet our children are shamefully uneducated. I cannot understand why we allowed this to happen in the first place, but I guess that instead of dwelling on the consequences, we should focus on solutions.
I think that you are ignoring the more basic issue. No matter how much money we throw at education, there will always be the problem of effort. You cannot teach a student to want to learn, and while they may be disadvantaged, a student who really wants to excel can at least graduate and move on to higher education. (I realize that I am saying this from the ivory tower of a private school, but that doesnt make it any less valid)
Also, the biggest issue is that the neglect and sloth of the federal bureaucracy has enveloped the school system. For example: tenure makes it impossible to fire incompetant school teachers, and loose discipline makes it nearly impossible to expel undisciplined or even violent children from school. We do need reforms, but not in the form of money.
Last week I did my blog on this same LA Times article and I noted that it is super important that we fix a lot of the public school systems. I think that this article points out some logical fixations which could extremely benefit our schools, and bring more success to the students. As amazing as it is to have all Americans above averager, we all have to accept the goal as unreachable. We don't always have to shoot for the stars, but rather little steps like the readministration of the no child left behind act can get us closer to them!
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