Educational Problems
IS THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN TROUBLE?
The United States has enjoyed a long history of providing public education for all students. However, many people believe that our educational system does not function well and that it has not for some time. Although multiple ways to improve public education have been tried, the belief persists that our schools produce under-educated students who are under-prepared for college or work. The goal of education is to teach students, but not all the students learn well, and for those who do not learn, we cannot always find either adequate explanations or solutions.
For some decades, the United States has attempted to use group testing to track the success of our educational programs. One attempt was by use of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests (Ipka, 2003). These tests provide raw scores of from 0 to 500. The Department of Education decided that students would be classified as performing at a "basic" grade level if their raw score was 208. Below that was considered "below basic. Higher-performing students were classified as either "proficient" or "advanced." In 1994 40% of students fell below the minimum raw score of 208 for reading, suggesting a serious problem with reading instruction (McQuillan, 1998).
Naturally, experts then looked for the cause of these apparent reading problems. One possible cause was a learning disability in reading, often called dyslexia (McQuillan, 1998). Some research suggested that as many as 20% of our students might be dyslexic, which could, conceivably, explain a significant number of the reading scores below that basic cutoff mark on the NAEP.
Finding students with learning disabilities points to an immediate solution: provide reading remediation so...
American Education System in Trouble? In an enlightening article by writer April Shenandoah, on March 20, 2002, the reality that Americas' education system is in real trouble becomes clearly evident. The writer feels that when a child in America attends school, he is, in fact, more at risk than if he did not attempt to attend. This is because, of late, it has become obvious that most negative influences that
According to the book, studies have shown non-native speaking students or students who have special needs physical or behavioral struggle depression because they are in a different country and away from family. "Psychologist David Pillemer has analyzed memories of school, and suggests that such memories have much to tell us about students' perception of success or failure. When I talk to people about their education, from factory workers to
" (Hurtado et al., p. 1) This idea of a structural change is further girded in the article by Hiebert & Morris (2012), which agues in favor of altering the fundamental strategy of instruction. To the authors, the focus on improving the characteristics of educators rather than the educational resources and parameters given to these educators if wrongheaded and problematic. Hiebert & Morris "expose the assumptions on which this logic is
Even under ordinary circumstances, the NCLB motivates teachers to spend more time teaching standardized test-taking and less time on substantive teaching. The other principal set of interrelated problems currently plaguing American education is that teachers are underpaid, there is little if any correlation between performance and compensation, and tenure policies make it virtually impossible to remove bad teachers once they have achieved tenure. As a result, the teaching profession cannot
Utopian Model of Education The utopian model proposed in this essay is an attempt to incorporate utopian ideals into the modern, flawed, classroom setting. It includes ideas for dealing with the real issue of child abuse in the schools, and the problem of inequality in education. Further, it explores the important issue of ongoing teacher education, and promotes the incorporation of computers in the classroom. Finally, an open and warm classroom
The idea of group study for students that are struggling, however, also ties in with another idea for the improvement of schooling. The students that are performing the best at a particular subject could help organize and operate these study groups, in effect acting as tutors but yet not providing that service in such a way that they would be paid for their services or would work exclusively one-on-one with
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now