Music Education Argumentative Essay

In 2009, during Obama’s presidency, Common Core was introduced to the public. According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, Common Core is “a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA)” created “to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.” However, the controversy on Common Core arose as many opponents such as Diane Ravitch found faults in the Common Core standards in the design of the standard and its inability to perform what it is designed to do and the purpose of ststandardized testing. Will the students benefit from these standards or will these standards

Standardized testing is a popular tool used by a lot of schools and universities to measure the qualifications of a candidate attempting to enter a program, university, or even a high school. These tests are designed in such a way that they offer a consistent reference to school and university administrators in order to determine whether the applicant has the necessary skills to succeed in future academic endeavors. These tests usually have multiple choice questions and the applicant is awarded a grade based on a point system. Some argue that standardized testing is an inaccurate tool and cannot really measure the intelligence or knowledge of a student. On the other hand, many also argue that these tests are considered an unbiased and objective method to measure a student’s academic ability; and one of the

Finally, some people might say that teachers will make a lot of more money with merit pay but some students might not learn or test well due to reasons the teacher can’t help with. To emphasize, Bernie Froese Germain, a researcher at the Canadian Teachers Federation says that, “Tests that assess what students have learned are not intended to be, nor are they, measures of teacher quality. It is easier for teachers to get higher test scores if they teach advantaged students. If they teach children who are poor or children who are English language learners, or homeless children, or children with disabilities, they will not get big score gains. So, the result of this approach—judging teachers by the score gains of their students—will incentivize teachers to avoid students with the greatest needs. This is just plain stupid as a matter of policy” (Germain). This quote is important because it relates to students not learning well because of issues at home or medical reasons. To explain, it talks about children with disabilities or who are homeless or something along those lines aren’t going to learn as well as other students. If teachers have these students in their class then they aren’t going to get paid very much from them. They can try to teach them a little differently or give them extra help but there test scores still aren’t going to be as high as the other students. This wouldn’t be fair to the teacher when there isn’t very much that they can do for the student to

As a student in high school did you ever feel like the standardized test are helping you or making you get in to a better college? Have you ever thought about how many hours students and teachers spend preparing for the standardized test? Many hours and studying are being put into those test but are they really effective and are the test doing the students good in life? Standardized tests are really just to effective, teachers and students spend too much time on them and it’s not doing the students any good, and even it’s not doing the teachers any good. Standardized tests in schools today in Ohio should be stopped because they are causing for teachers to be evaluated by the test results of how the students do on the tests, they are having the students more stressed about school and do they benefit you in colleges and university and do they really look at how well students do on them test.

Common Core is a set of standards that was put in place to make sure that every student is on the same level. It was created to get students ready for college and prepare them to face the global economy. But, has Common Core accomplished what it was put in place to do? Although it was supposed to help students get a better understanding of the criteria they are learning, Common Core has not helped students learn or compete with high performing countries because there is sufficient evidence in schools across the nation.

There is a doctor, Thomas Armstrong, that focuses on youth development, and he believes that standardized tests don’t help or let anyone, whether it’s teachers or students, improve. He wrote that “Standardized tests don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better. The results aren’t even given back to the teachers and students until months later, and there are no instructions provided by test companies on how to improve these test scores” (Armstrong). Since the test companies of standardized tests don’t give feedback to teachers and students, it is impossible for them to know what they need to work and improve upon. If students can’t improve their scores, they are stuck either staying in the same spot or downgrading in the education system. Students that get advanced scores on tests are able to move ahead and have better opportunities in their schools, but students that don’t score well are left behind, sometimes barely moving from grade to grade. When making changes to the schooling system, Thomas Jefferson said “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually” (Congressional Research Service, 269). The president of the United States of America, when setting up a part of the education system, said that only some of the extra-intelligent students would be taken and given amazing opportunities. He himself said that they would be taken from the rubbish,

As well as being a form of expression it has also been linked to helping with boosting one’s self-confidence and motivation inside and outside the classroom. A student getting involved in art programs, drama clubs, or music programs are activating and stimulating a part of the brain that correspond with retaining information which can be a benefiting factor in helping other subjects. Studies have shown that kids who listened to music such as Mozart had a higher IQ than kids who did not. Study after study proves that the arts have been linked to helping develop a young mind and can be used for so much more than a way for someone to express their feelings. It has been proven that countries such as Japan, Netherlands, and Hungary who require all

Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith (2003) found a weakness in the relationships between TAKS scores and other outcomes such as high school graduation rates and scores on college entrance exams. Other researchers (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Steecher, 2000) analyzed increases in scores in Texas on the NAEP, increases that they state political leaders attributed to the accountability system, and found that Texas score improvements in mathematics at grade 8 are not significantly different from those of other states that did not have strong accountability systems in place. In fact their data show evidence that the achievement gap between white students and underrepresented minorities actually increased. Some argue that the data show that the accountability program actually negatively impacts schools that were already academically behind before the implementation of the accountability system (Fassold,

Perhaps one of the most valuable opportunities in life is education. In a conversation between Adam Howard, associate professor of education at Antioch College, and Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, in “Where Are The Poor Students,” some subjects at hand are the availability or unavailability of opportunities, the missed value of education, and the irrelevant comparison of test scores directed towards the poor students. Likewise in “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, topics such as schools missing opportunities to engage students to their intellectual

It would be nice to imagine that everyone begins at the start line together. Unfortunately, a majority of people start at a disadvantage. In most public elementary schools, there are students in every grade level that are reading behind grade level. Consequently, these same students will encounter tests throughout their whole academic career. Starting in elementary school, a literacy gap will begin to emerge among students. As this gap grows, standardized testing will remain or increase to a point where some students are so far behind that it becomes intimidating to be in an academic setting. While many factors can contribute to the literacy gap, there are companies and corporations that continue to profit off of distributing

Jane L. David and Larry Cuban do a great job of informing the reader of issues involving closing the achievement gap in education in their book, “Cutting Through the Hype”. David and Cuban, friends and colleagues for forty-five years, collaborated yet again to revise “Cutting Through the Hype” to re-address the “far more pronounced” effects of the federal role and the philanthropic foundations in funding and setting the policy agenda for reforming U.S. schools. Chapter three, Closing the Achievement Gap, begins with a realistic scenario of a fifth grade classroom of thirty students that range from six non English speaking students, limited English speaking students, and fluent English speaking, high performing students. The

The article, “Cheating report confirms teacher 's suspicions,” examines the Atlanta Public School system’s Georgia state Criterion Reference Competency Test scandal. CNN author, Paul Frysh, discusses former East Lake Elementary school teacher, Julie Rogers-Martin, account of events involving her fellow colleague’s involvement in the artificial inflation of their students’ standardized test scores in attempts to fulfill the requirements necessary for continued federal funding, job security, as well as bonuses.

Even though many students absolutely hate them, state assessments are a big part of the American education system. Everyone has taken a standardized test at some point in their life, and almost everyone has done poorly on one. They are primarily used as a measurement of how well students learn, but are they truly accurate? There are strong arguments on both sides, which has started a heated conflict about the productiveness of these tests. Standardized testing has been around for many years, starting in Imperial China where it was intended to determine a person’s aptitude for a government position (“Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students’ Abilities?”). In some states, these tests are even used to decide whether or not a student

Did you know that marching band members spend so much time putting drill on the field for an entire summer break?The Friday nights, and Saturday afternoons we spend on a football field? The energy, sweat, and pride we put onto a football field or parking lot? All this, but unfortunately, marching band is still known for an “elective”.

According to Johns Hopkins School of Education’s website, bringing in music to a classroom could result in altering one’s brain wave, a higher level of concentration, and increased attention and imagination (Brewer 1995). These are very similar to the positive outcomes that Romick discussed in his article that he noticed occurring in his classroom after creating lesson plans correlated with songs. Also similar to Romick’s beliefs, Chris Boyd Brewer states, “Music will activate students mentally, physically, and emotionally and create learning states which enhance understanding of learning,” which will not only benefit the teacher, but also the student while gaining a greater knowledge in the class (Brewer 1995). The music helps create different feelings to emerge, inspiring creativity and a different outlook than simple textbook related material. Another well given point I found that was stated by another ELA teacher, Heather Wolpert-Gawron, was that music enhances the brain and inspires great writing prompts or poetry connections, similar to what Romick referred to as well (Gawron