While there are major problems with the American high school system and it may be beneficial to abolish it, Botstein's plan is not a good enough replacement. His critiques of the system are agreeable but his solution is only acceptable for part of the population. Some students could easily finish early and go right to work, other students need the whole time to get ready for college, and some need the whole time just to understand the basics. To fix this problem educators need to get away from the one size fits all mentality. Creating a whole new system that is just as rigid as before, which was suggested by Leon Botstein, will not help.
In his essay Botstein tries to convince people that sixteen year olds have the same level of mental and biological maturity as eighteen year olds had when high school was invented. Whether this is true or not ending school two years early would not allow enough time to learn all the necessary skills needed for college. He suggests starting school earlier as well but this would deprive students of a valuable part of their childhood.
Some students may be ready to leave high school early but many others are not. Joining the world sooner will not benefit everyone.
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She claims the “No Child Left Behind” system is to blame for the problems with the American School System and that many of the problems will be solved if it is stopped. She believes this systems’ “simpleminded and singular focus on test scores distorts and degrades the meaning and practice of education.” (Ravitch) All students have different learning styles and needs. Because of this the school system only needs to be modified so it fits the individual needs of students. Botstein’s answer to the problem is to extreme. The students just need more freedom of choice and a less structured, less test oriented
Mike Rose details the faults of the education system in a piece concerning his own personal experiences. His high school education was radically changed when his school swapped his test scores with the scores of a student with the same last name. The system depended upon test scores to determine the path of classes that individual students must take, and due to the weak performance reflected in Mike Rose’s alleged scores, he was placed on the vocational path. Unfortunately, the vocational path was implied to be the lowest tier of classes in the school - so despite Rose’s natural intelligence, he was placed within remedial classes due to the IQ within his file.
Miss Ravitch begin the chapter 3 by describing how President George H. W. Bush met in January, 1989 to set goals for 2000. The goals that were set was that American students would be first in the world, in respect to subjects such as Maths and Science, at least 80 to 90 percent of students would graduate from high school, all children would have control over subjects that are challenging in nature, all adults would be literate, and every school would be free of alcohol, drugs and violence. In 2000, none of the goals were attained. From the reading I notice that a strong point was made that the greatest obstacle to systemic reform was the number of stakeholders such as textbook publishers and test publishers. The chapter also spoke about literacy, touching on the subjects of how students are taught to read as well as the differences between the strategies used to teach.
In Chapter 2, a specific reform that was discussed in American education were both accountability and choice, how the standards movement turned into the testing movement. This reform was introduced through President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind program and a Nation At Risk report. My thoughts on this reform are much similar to the author of the book, Diane Ravitch. She states her opinion throughout the chapter as well as the whole book. I agree with her that there should be a curriculum taught not just test taking.
Just because a student’s parent makes a lot of money does not mean they are capable to pay tuition that is over a thousand dollars. Another point she argues is that standardized testing is misused, and hurts the
Since the passage of No Child Left Behind Act 12 years ago, teachers are judged based on standardized tests and their students’ scores. The tests are often used as a measure for schools to determine if teachers should keep their jobs. The whole teaching profession is being shamed as inadequate. Joe Nocera, opinion columnist for the New York Times newspaper, by examining a thinker named Marc Tucker, argues for a new way to approach educational reform. To begin with, Nocera addresses reforming and reconstructing our current schools.
In the essay, “America Skips School”, Benjamin R. Barber states how he thinks education is not of great importance in America, and he gives advice on how to fix educational issues. He describes how Americans lack simple literacy skills, and says Americans do not truly value educating future generations. Barber says that the blame gets put upon the teachers for not teaching children the proper material, and often times the children themselves get blamed for not carrying the responsibility of the future properly. But Barber himself believes the true blame is children are mimicking society’s actions, and ignoring what they are taught in school. He says children don’t take education seriously because society shows them they can advance and become
In 2007 when Diane Ravitch descended from her 20,000-foot view of the education reform landscape to examine what was going on at ground level, she did not like what she saw: children suffering nose-bleeds and vomiting from test anxiety, school personnel and parents humiliated by test results designed to satisfy the failure quotas imposed by cynical and self-serving corporate privateers and political ideologues; educators being blamed for the effects of poverty that no amount of good teaching could fix alone; untrained beginners replacing education professionals in schools that needed the most caring and experienced teachers; schools that had functioned as community centers of identity and activity being closed; a pathological fixation of quantifiable
(43). Berger gives some insight on what she thinks is the best way to invest in education. She states that she would reduce and adjust how often the standardize tests are and that parents are the ones that need to get involved in their kids’ lives for their children to succeed. Through this information not only students will see the damage that teaching to the test has done, but also the damage to society. The society needs to understand the importance of challenging a student in their education and not letting a student’s simply go through the phase of higher
Additionally, she believes that Guggenheim uses incorrect evidence and deliberately omits certain statistics in order to advance the film’s propaganda. Ravitch attacks several of Guggenheim’s “facts”, such as in the subject areas of poverty, the link between teachers and student achievement, student academic performance, and international educational methodology. In terms of this film’s many pieces of false data, Ravitch states: “Perhaps the greatest distortion in this film is its misrepresentation of data about student academic performance. The film claims that 70 percent of eight-grade students cannot read at grade level. This is flatly wrong.
The author’s purpose is to wake up the policymakers of the educational system in order to raise the standard of the quality of education each child receives regardless of income. Ravitch writes to an audience that are invested in the construction of the educational system and the parents along with other interested readers. Ravitch establishes a formal and professional tone for her audience. In this essay I will be focusing on a particular element Ravitch
It is well known that education in society today is a crucial component for achieving success in the modern world. Illustrating this importance is the fact that the United Sates has made K-12 schooling mandatory for all students and even provides this education free of charge to everyone via its public school system. However, despite the fact that the intentions for our public education system are good-natured, at least on the surface, some rather critical viewpoints have developed that put into question the true motivations surrounding this type of schooling. Most notably, John Taylor Gatto, a writer and former school teacher with just about 30 years of experience in the New York public school system, provides his take on the true purposes of our educational system. He argues that, based on his considerable experience in the field, this system fails miserably to succeed in its perceived — but not at all correct — goal of producing good people and citizens that are performing at their personal best.
The two articles presented have impacted my post high school education experience and my college experience in very obvious ways. When I was in high school, the main goal for the teachers and educational government was not that students learned the subject, but that he/she passed the test. Moreover it was all about passing the test and not learning. This experience can relate with Ravitch’s article because what she was trying to explain is that the government started to care more about the test score than the knowledge gained by the students. Greene’s article is moreover talking about how social factors can poorly impact student’s performance in school.
By doing so, we can rely on assessments that allow students to practice and apply material in order to foster retention and mastery (Ravitch 261). Ravitch discusses Finland and how they completely reformed their educational system into a structure that has students take zero standardized tests until they reach the college application process, a method that was enacted to promote teacher accountability and place a stronger emphasis on the noncognitive aspects of individual development. A component of the basis for the argument, Ravitch states, is that while standardized testing may be effective when it is administered fairly, it often impairs students’ abilities to critically analyze information and leaves them practicing how to guess the “right answer.” Addressing this issue is a responsibility that falls on administrators and policymakers; they must be held accountable and required to make changes that best meet the constantly evolving needs of the students. In this case, completely modifying the concept of standardized testing is a necessity.
In “here I stand”, Erica Goldson encourages change in the American schooling system. Erica points out a lot of flaws in the schooling system. No one is learning to learn, everyone is learning to graduate. People aren’t studying in order to learn more, people are studying in order to get through school faster. School puts down the creativity located in each and every one of us.
Therefore, the curriculum will continue to narrow even more than it did under George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Program, as a result of the link created between teacher wages and student scores. Furthermore, there will be less time available for the arts, as most arts classes do not have standardized test to evaluate student performance (Ravitch).