The Goals 2000: Educate American Education

The state of Texas has been in a constant struggle within itself over just how to evaluate education, and standardized testing in Texas has been a major influencer in terms of the state’s standards for over thirty years. Though these methods of testing have been utilized for decades, resentment to the tests have been continuously rising among educators, parents, and students, but not everyone agrees. Despite government officials trying to quell these protests with changes to administration, and the way the test itself is formatted and formulated, there seems to have been little to no improvement made and those opposing the tests have started calling for an end to all standardized testing. For one to truly understand this ongoing struggle, one must first look at standardized testing’s beginning, then how government today is trying to fix the broken system, and finally consider the opinions of notable figures in the testing world.

If you were to change something about the education system in the U.S, what would you change? How would you critique the quality of education? Education historian Diane Ravitch answers these questions in her excerpt that was published in 2014, “The Essentials of a Good Education.” In her text Ravitch argues that the education system is flawed and that the vision of a good education is unfair and unequal. Ravitch supports her claim by providing examples of the negative effects of the educational system and using historical context. 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

As Michelle Obama once declared, “If my future was determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.” The performance of a school’s organization is based off of the results of standardized tests taken by students (Walberg). Standardized tests are a guide to the board of education on how a school can improve its curriculum in a way that is most beneficial to students (Walberg). “The scores of standardized tests are not the same as student achievement” (Harris). In spite of the people who believe that standardized tests are a key factor to determine a student’s academic abilities, standardized tests distract students from their current studies, they are only designed for one way of learning and comprehending material, and they are biased to students.

This is a key part in schools today because it’s enforcing a higher bar of achievement for teachers and students (Catapano, 2018). Implementing standards into a school system that are internationally benchmarked means all states and countries have a way of measuring their academic performance. They can use this also as a tool to compile scores and understand the weaknesses to improve students’ knowledge. This provides teachers with various ways to assess their students more frequently through observations and informal assessments to understand the student’s comprehension level of the lesson material. It will help the teachers to strive to improve her test scores by adapting lesson materials to the needs of each

Dewey’s vision for education could not be any farther from the truth of how today’s school systems operate. Instead of focusing on students’ aptitudes and expanding on them, the Board of Education confines everyone into a box. Any person who doesn’t fit into that box, doesn’t excel in standardized testing, doesn’t have the chance to succeed in life. As Dewey said, “The notion that the essentials of elementary education are the three Rs mechanically treated, is based upon ignorance of the essentials needed for realization of democratic ideals.” Students lose themselves once they reach high school, cemented in the same pattern of just trying to get the work done, never actually enjoying learning.

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 Elementary and Secondary Education Act also represented a landmark commitment to help to equal out the ability for people to have a very good education. President Lyndon B Johnson believed that good education opportunities are very very important and should be the first national goal. A purpose for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was to provide additional resources to all students in America, and to help them to improve their knowledge so that they can be successful in life and have a good education. This act has been reauthorized once every five years. The reauthorization by President George Bush was known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The No Child Left Behind Act required more responsibility from the students of the school and more responsibility from the teachers of the school. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was then reauthorized again in 2015 by the President Barack Obama. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was then named the Every Student Succeeds Act. The Every Student Succeeds Act was a United States law that was passed in December of 2015. This Act was made to govern the United States K–12 public education

In my opinion, public educational curriculums and accountability guidelines should be established at the state and local levels where parents/guardians play an integral role in the decision making process. I do not believe standardized tests alone are an accurate measure of a student’s knowledge; their classwork, projects, and literary works also represent a student’s talent and capabilities. In agreement with Robert Schaeffer, a representative for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, that federal mandated programs such as the No Child Left Behind and The Race to The Top high-stakes tests foster the temptation to cheat because they serve as means to both punish and reward students, teachers, and principals based solely upon test scores (Schaeffer,

The purpose of my project is to investigate which level of government has the most significant impact on education policy, and how certain decisions can affect not only the decisions teachers make on a daily basis, but also how education issues are addressed in the United States as a whole.

In “How Grading Reform Changed Our School,” author Jeffery Erickson, the assistant principal of Minnetonka High School in Minnesota, discusses why and how he and his colleagues changed the way students received their grades. Erickson’s main argument in his essay is, “What should go into a grade?” His answer to this is that a student’s grade is solely reflected based on what a student knows and his or her ability to perform.

States love to have has much control over every aspect of government. Many states like Missouri were happy to join the ranks of states implementing the Common Core State Standards because it makes sense in terms of unifying standards for all states so all students will have the necessary skills needed to become successful in college career and life. States like Missouri are beginning to have second thoughts about the standards because they argue that the standards restrict the state’s control over educating children, but they seem to forget the rationale for original implantation which is to have all of the involved states working under the same set of standards in an effort to prepare all students for life after high school.

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.

Education is defined in the Benokraitis’ Soc 3, Third Ed. textbook as, “A social institution that transmits attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, values, norms, and skills to its members through formal systematic training.” Yet despite the many essential benefits that education offers, “only 34% of Americans have a lot of confidence in our public schools.”

Education reform is legislation to improve the quality of education in the United States. Once, grades were the most important achievement for students. However, politicians and the public were concerned that our standardized test scores were not as good as those of other countries. Therefore, state and national governments started making laws to make school more challenging and to test kids more. One of those laws was “No Child Left Behind”. Recently, the Common Core State Standards were developed and kids were going to be tested more than ever. However, all of this education reform has been a failure because our testing scores have not improved, the testing makes children suffer, and it doesn’t improve how teachers teach.

Out of all the issues with American education today, one of the most overvalued yet problematic for students is the grades and scores that represent their classroom proficiency and content knowledge. It is true that today, in the United States, the easiest and seemingly most reliable way to track student performance and rank schools by quality of education is by simply marking students based on their scores on assignments and assessments done in school or on standardized exams designed to measure mastery of content, and by comparing and analyzing the