Blog Stage 6

In Dense America, I read a blog posting which spoke about our nation's education system and where the faults are. First of all, I do agree that our education system needs some sort of reform. There are vast inequalities across the nation and even from city-to-city from the same region. Qualities of education, teachers, resources, and motivation change drastically when comparing areas.

Now I do agree, also, that most of the fault lies in the administration, however, I do not want to dismiss teachers or students from any blame. Students are responsible for pursuing their education and to work hard; teachers declared a duty when they took their jobs to properly educate the future of America.

"No Child Left Behind" seems limiting in all the ways mentioned in "Reforming our Education." However, in Texas we already had state-wide standardized testing before the legislation passed in 2001. I remember taking TAAS tests in elementary school before the TAKS tests came out. It was in elementary school that we practiced the standardized testing questions more, and that is a crucial time in a child's education. There were many students who did not really need the practice and others who needed it desperately. Standardized testing does alter methods of teaching, curriculum, and the urgency with which teachers teach at the primary levels, but if we did not have standardized testing, there would be students who would not have basic reading comprehension, writing composition, and math skills; there are still students who lack those skills. I understand that standardized testing is not the most efficient way of measuring learning, but with the growing number of students around the nation, it is difficult to come up with another alternative.

There are a wide variety of students in our country. As a whole, American teens may straggle behind other countries educationally. "No Child Left Behind" sacrifices our average educational level by providing everyone a chance. Additionally, American teens are allowed to participate in many more extracurricular activities beginning at a young age. In other countries, social life and education is seen differently.

Administration should re-evaluate how funding is distributed for educational purposes. The method that is used is not effective because usually those schools that are scoring poorly need more/better resources than those who are scoring highly. Additionally, I think administration should take a look at the qualifications to be a teacher again. Many teachers I have had were very qualified to do their job, and did it well. However, there were always those who were not so good and did not necessarily seem qualified to teach the subject. I lived in a fairly nice area and know that areas that were not so good always had trouble keeping teachers, much less being able to convince qualified ones to come.

The quote at the conclusion of the posting is clever. It is a nice reminder that education is everything around us, not necessarily just school.