Speech for the Day
Apr. 2nd, 2004 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
songofjoy02I'm not quite sure how to do the hanging indentation for the references section, so I formatted it differently than the handbook says to do it.=) Don't know how many people will actually be interested in this, but I think I'll make the post public...under a cut... Oh, and let me tell you...I did not manage to say that all because I only had five minutes. I didn't even take long enough to cite my sources properly.=\ Hopefully that won't be too much of a problem in my grade. Doing the speeches is actually necessary to passing the class, so that's a helpful thought. Haha. But I didn't do a perfect job. Anyway, the topic interested me greatly. And one girl came up to me to talk about it afterwards...saying that the United States really isn't doing as great academically as she had thought when she was fourteen...and moved to Mexico, where she discovered that the schoolwork was much more difficult than she had anticipated.
The Problem
Most of us have heard that the United States ranks low in the world academically. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the United States had a low ranking in mathematics for fourth-graders in 1995 and eighth graders in 1999. I know that people say that Arkansas students seem to be close to the worst in the country. I have not been able to find out whether that is true or not, but I think it is reasonable to believe that a problem exists. Politicians are using education as a campaign issue and parents are complaining about the school system. One mother I know is a certified teacher who only substitute teaches at the moment. She is a single mom with two children in public school—one in elementary school and one in middle school. She feels like they don’t really teach the students. Her complaints are that her children hardly ever have homework (although what some kids I know have told me indicates that this varies according to the teacher) and that they spend way too much time on test preparation. She said her son’s school is under pressure to raise test scores, so they are spending more class periods doing practice tests to prepare for the real tests.
This Affects You
I have not been able to find out whether all of this is happening, but this lady is not the only one I have heard complaining about “the system.” The main three groups I see talking about this issue are politicians, parents, and educators. As voters, parents or future parents, and/or taxpayers, we should all be thinking about this issue. Originally, I thought that the proposed solutions were either political or personal, with the political meaning legislative changes and the personal meaning something that does not involve the government, but another category exists that seems to be a combination of the two.
Proposed Solutions
The first group suggests that the public school system needs to be reformed, that it can be changed and that we should focus on the goal of increasing academic achievement. They emphasize the need for legislation that will require and fund school reforms. The second group believes that it is impossible to reform the education system, so they suggest that the task of education be shifted to more private institutions. However, they still want the government involved because they think that public funding should continue for education at these institutions. The third group, however, is not interested in reforming the public school system or in pursuing public funding. They see an educational need and are looking to meet it in whatever ways they consider most expedient and most effective.
Public School Reform
The first group, the one that focuses on public school reform, is suggesting accountability, improved teacher quality (through higher qualifications), improved teacher-student ratios, and improved curriculum. Governor Huckabee says that the state of Arkansas has improved the student-teacher ratio so that we now have one teacher for every eleven students; according to him, that is one of the lowest numbers of students per teacher in the nation. However, he says that this has not solved the problem and he is now head of a special council that is recommending changing the curriculum. Another thing the state of Arkansas has tried is improved accountability. I am not quite sure what effect this has had, since this does encourage outcome-based education (a buzzword from not too long ago, I believe). President Bush, in his No Child Left Behind act, has the goal of getting a qualified teacher in every classroom by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. He intends to achieve this through incentives for people to pursue teaching as a career and through a better education for those who make this choice.
Public Funding for Private Education
The second group of people does not think that the school system has the answers, but they still think the government should be involved financially. They suggest ideas such as charter schools and vouchers. Charter schools, according to US Charter Schools, are actually a growing movement across the nation. Charter schools are basically private schools with public funding. Although they are accountable to someone (usually the local school district) for academic achievement, they are not subject to the same regulations as traditional public schools. They are also smaller according to the philosophy that smaller schools mean a better education because kids in a smaller school are less likely to fall through the cracks. Vouchers, on the other hand, are not as popular and they are highly discouraged by the National Education Association, which says that vouchers take away from the funding and the focus necessary for increasing the academic quality of public school education. The NEA also says that voters have not approved vouchers over the last thirty years. However, Andrew J. Coulson, of School Choice, believes in “[g]radually phasing out government involvement in education, and moving towards a competitive educational marketplace” (1998). His idea is for the government to provide lower-income families with the money they need to participate in this kind of marketplace.
Private Education
While these first two categories require legislative changes because of having regulation and funding in the first and funding in the second, the third group of people does not focus at all on receiving education or any kind of funding from the government (at least not for the most part). Some of these people are parents who have lost all faith in the public school system and who have chosen to put their children in private school or home school them. Others are educators who feel like they can have a stronger impact through private education so that they truly will not have to worry about government regulations. Rather than relying on the government for funding, one school that Susan Olasky mentioned in World raises a lot of its own support. Basically, the emphasis is almost entirely private rather than political. Instead of trusting that legislation will be effective, they are ready to do what they can to improve education even on a small scale.
Advantages of Each Type of Reform
Certainly, each of these perspectives seems to have its own merit. Like the NEA says, public schools guarantee education access for all school aged children in America, unlike other possibilities that are not so easy for them to regulate. If the public school system is reformed, then the government can, at least theoretically, ensure that students are getting a quality education. However, like the people who request funding think, it may be more effective to put children in smaller institutions where educators can focus more on educating than on meeting regulations. If these schools are still accountable to the local district, it seems strange that the government would need to be involved beyond that in knowing the many details that they monitor in public schools. The private education group is probably the hardest to monitor in terms of regulating curriculum and teacher qualifications. However, it would involve the fewest legislative changes and the least government spending. It would also make education more of a “free market,” like Coulson calls it.
Final Thought
As parents or future parents, people who know children, and taxpayers, we should all weigh the advantages and disadvantages of these options. Whether we choose to emphasize more legislative changes in the government or personal changes by impacting education from a more ground-up standpoint, this issue affects us because of its influence on future generations.
References
Coulson, Andrew J. (1998). School Choices: Position Statement. Retrieved April 2, 2004, from http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/position.htm
Huckabee, Mike. (2003, August 23). Education. Governor Huckabee’s News Column.
Retrieved March 25, 2004, from http://www.accessarkansas.org/governor/media/columns/text/c08232003.html
Mathematics Performance. U.S. Department of Education, NCES. (2000). Pursuing
Excellence: Comparisons of International Eighth-Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement from a U.S. Perspective, 1995 and 1999 (NCES 2001-028) (TIMSS and TIMSS-R). Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2002/charts/chart13c.asp?popup=true
Olasky, Susan. (2004, March 13). Built to scale. World, 27-35.
A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom. (n.d.). Retrived March 30, 2004, from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/teacherquality/
Springdale Test Scores Show Trend of Improved Performance. (2003). Retrieved March
25, 2004, from http://www.springdaleschools.org/Business%20Office/Handbook%202002-2003/5%20-%20Data,%20Calendars,%20&%20Phone%20Numbers/1%20-%20District%20Data/District%20Profile-2003-2004.pdf
US Charter Schools. (2003) Retrieved March 30, 2004, from
http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/o/index.htm
Vouchers. (2002). Retrieved March 30, 2004, from http://www.nea.org/vouchers/
Education Reform
The Problem
Most of us have heard that the United States ranks low in the world academically. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the United States had a low ranking in mathematics for fourth-graders in 1995 and eighth graders in 1999. I know that people say that Arkansas students seem to be close to the worst in the country. I have not been able to find out whether that is true or not, but I think it is reasonable to believe that a problem exists. Politicians are using education as a campaign issue and parents are complaining about the school system. One mother I know is a certified teacher who only substitute teaches at the moment. She is a single mom with two children in public school—one in elementary school and one in middle school. She feels like they don’t really teach the students. Her complaints are that her children hardly ever have homework (although what some kids I know have told me indicates that this varies according to the teacher) and that they spend way too much time on test preparation. She said her son’s school is under pressure to raise test scores, so they are spending more class periods doing practice tests to prepare for the real tests.
This Affects You
I have not been able to find out whether all of this is happening, but this lady is not the only one I have heard complaining about “the system.” The main three groups I see talking about this issue are politicians, parents, and educators. As voters, parents or future parents, and/or taxpayers, we should all be thinking about this issue. Originally, I thought that the proposed solutions were either political or personal, with the political meaning legislative changes and the personal meaning something that does not involve the government, but another category exists that seems to be a combination of the two.
Proposed Solutions
The first group suggests that the public school system needs to be reformed, that it can be changed and that we should focus on the goal of increasing academic achievement. They emphasize the need for legislation that will require and fund school reforms. The second group believes that it is impossible to reform the education system, so they suggest that the task of education be shifted to more private institutions. However, they still want the government involved because they think that public funding should continue for education at these institutions. The third group, however, is not interested in reforming the public school system or in pursuing public funding. They see an educational need and are looking to meet it in whatever ways they consider most expedient and most effective.
Public School Reform
The first group, the one that focuses on public school reform, is suggesting accountability, improved teacher quality (through higher qualifications), improved teacher-student ratios, and improved curriculum. Governor Huckabee says that the state of Arkansas has improved the student-teacher ratio so that we now have one teacher for every eleven students; according to him, that is one of the lowest numbers of students per teacher in the nation. However, he says that this has not solved the problem and he is now head of a special council that is recommending changing the curriculum. Another thing the state of Arkansas has tried is improved accountability. I am not quite sure what effect this has had, since this does encourage outcome-based education (a buzzword from not too long ago, I believe). President Bush, in his No Child Left Behind act, has the goal of getting a qualified teacher in every classroom by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. He intends to achieve this through incentives for people to pursue teaching as a career and through a better education for those who make this choice.
Public Funding for Private Education
The second group of people does not think that the school system has the answers, but they still think the government should be involved financially. They suggest ideas such as charter schools and vouchers. Charter schools, according to US Charter Schools, are actually a growing movement across the nation. Charter schools are basically private schools with public funding. Although they are accountable to someone (usually the local school district) for academic achievement, they are not subject to the same regulations as traditional public schools. They are also smaller according to the philosophy that smaller schools mean a better education because kids in a smaller school are less likely to fall through the cracks. Vouchers, on the other hand, are not as popular and they are highly discouraged by the National Education Association, which says that vouchers take away from the funding and the focus necessary for increasing the academic quality of public school education. The NEA also says that voters have not approved vouchers over the last thirty years. However, Andrew J. Coulson, of School Choice, believes in “[g]radually phasing out government involvement in education, and moving towards a competitive educational marketplace” (1998). His idea is for the government to provide lower-income families with the money they need to participate in this kind of marketplace.
Private Education
While these first two categories require legislative changes because of having regulation and funding in the first and funding in the second, the third group of people does not focus at all on receiving education or any kind of funding from the government (at least not for the most part). Some of these people are parents who have lost all faith in the public school system and who have chosen to put their children in private school or home school them. Others are educators who feel like they can have a stronger impact through private education so that they truly will not have to worry about government regulations. Rather than relying on the government for funding, one school that Susan Olasky mentioned in World raises a lot of its own support. Basically, the emphasis is almost entirely private rather than political. Instead of trusting that legislation will be effective, they are ready to do what they can to improve education even on a small scale.
Advantages of Each Type of Reform
Certainly, each of these perspectives seems to have its own merit. Like the NEA says, public schools guarantee education access for all school aged children in America, unlike other possibilities that are not so easy for them to regulate. If the public school system is reformed, then the government can, at least theoretically, ensure that students are getting a quality education. However, like the people who request funding think, it may be more effective to put children in smaller institutions where educators can focus more on educating than on meeting regulations. If these schools are still accountable to the local district, it seems strange that the government would need to be involved beyond that in knowing the many details that they monitor in public schools. The private education group is probably the hardest to monitor in terms of regulating curriculum and teacher qualifications. However, it would involve the fewest legislative changes and the least government spending. It would also make education more of a “free market,” like Coulson calls it.
Final Thought
As parents or future parents, people who know children, and taxpayers, we should all weigh the advantages and disadvantages of these options. Whether we choose to emphasize more legislative changes in the government or personal changes by impacting education from a more ground-up standpoint, this issue affects us because of its influence on future generations.
Coulson, Andrew J. (1998). School Choices: Position Statement. Retrieved April 2, 2004, from http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/position.htm
Huckabee, Mike. (2003, August 23). Education. Governor Huckabee’s News Column.
Retrieved March 25, 2004, from http://www.accessarkansas.org/governor/media/columns/text/c08232003.html
Mathematics Performance. U.S. Department of Education, NCES. (2000). Pursuing
Excellence: Comparisons of International Eighth-Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement from a U.S. Perspective, 1995 and 1999 (NCES 2001-028) (TIMSS and TIMSS-R). Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2002/charts/chart13c.asp?popup=true
Olasky, Susan. (2004, March 13). Built to scale. World, 27-35.
A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom. (n.d.). Retrived March 30, 2004, from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/teacherquality/
Springdale Test Scores Show Trend of Improved Performance. (2003). Retrieved March
25, 2004, from http://www.springdaleschools.org/Business%20Office/Handbook%202002-2003/5%20-%20Data,%20Calendars,%20&%20Phone%20Numbers/1%20-%20District%20Data/District%20Profile-2003-2004.pdf
US Charter Schools. (2003) Retrieved March 30, 2004, from
http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/o/index.htm
Vouchers. (2002). Retrieved March 30, 2004, from http://www.nea.org/vouchers/
