Donna Klein Jewish Academy (DKJA) is located in Boca Raton, Florida, the southernmost city in Palm Beach County, on the southeast coast of the state. One of the wealthiest communities in Florida, the city is host to approximately 200,000 residents, including “snowbirds,” full-time residents, and college students. Boca Raton is known for its educated and affluent population, including a large “Boomer,” Jewish, and senior citizen demographic, and, due to these idiosyncrasies, the city often has been a featured locale in film, television shows, and media. Beaches, golfers, luxury cars, and shopping centers adorn the city, and its Florida Atlantic University currently enrolls over 30,000 students. Boca Raton is home to over forty private …show more content…
Students are placed in either an honors-level class or a regular-level class. The regular-level class is more of a modified curriculum with a majority of the students needing special education services. The school is unwilling to re-title the class appropriately; therefore, it receives the “regular” designation. The remaining classes are labeled honors (not including Advanced Placement classes). Oftentimes a class will have one regular section and two honors sections. This means any student not needing special education services or remedial work will be designated as honors. This has caused much trouble, due to the fact that students have no “middle class” to be in: they are designated either regular (“special ed”) or honors. The administration is aware of the issue but unable to make changes to the class designations. They even go so far as to call some of the students “honors” and some “fake-honors,” as many of them do not belong in such a high level. The implications of this have been far-reaching: students excelling in a “fake honors” class, expecting to move on to A.P.; parents believing their child truly is an “honors student”; an overly heterogeneous mix of students in what should be a distinctive course; and, the most pressing issue, a severe inflation of
From the beginning of high school, students strap on their seatbelts and prepare for one of the most vigorous races of their lives – becoming successful. With the rare occurrence of a break, kids are expected to keep on driving as fast and as powerfully as they can in order to get into a “great” college, which would be followed by graduate school and then an actual job that would make a lot of money. In American society, common values include working hard, determination, and being so productive that free time is not even a question. However, this philosophy is taking a major toll on American college and high school students. For at least 40 years, America’s future has been steadily growing unmotivated, tired, and hopeless due to the overemphasis on performing well in school. This phenomenon is appropriately expounded in William Zinsser’s “College Pressures”, which takes a look at the top four sources of tension that cause these feelings of dejection and agitation. After reading this article, I came up with a few solutions to this national problem. It is time to switch the harsh, over-encouraging green light of education to a comfortable yellow one. In order to make this ideal transition, directors of education across the country need to primarily reduce the amount of out-of-class assignments, lighten the grading system, and incorporate days in the school year that allow students to express their thoughts about school and provide useful feedback.
However, the students that are on the lower end of the achievement gap are caught between being members of a disadvantaged community and aspiring to be a part of the middle class. This causes them to have to adapt to the communities that they are a part of. This act of adapting to the difference in normative expectations is what Morton refers to as “straddling the gap” or “code switching”. These students not only have to navigate differences in language and dress codes but they have to switch dispositions to ones that are unfamiliar to them, which can come into conflict with those at home (Morton 276). There are benefits to the code-switching that these students do. For example, multicultural societies are characterized by the intermingling of cultural communities and the students who belong to different communities have the greatest position to help new relationships form between them (Morton 277). However, educational systems are being used to potentially alienate the students from their communities values and relationships in order to form them for a labor market. Morton believes that “whether educational institutions are justified in undertaking the task of rectifying this injustice by shaping a
The city I chose was Las Vegas, NV that ranks 298 on the Building Resilient Regions website. The Spanish named this huge valley that was full of wild grass and minerals “The Meadows” that then translated into Las Vegas. Now, Las Vegas is very different among U.S cities for it is famous for the luxury casinos and the shows. It has the title of being the “Entertainment Capital of the World” and is very prosperous in cultivating a diversified economy. I chose this city because it is a city that truly never sleeps and always has some sort of resource going in or out. Another reason why I chose Las Vegas is because it is one of the strongest economic cities in the United States and certainly takes up a lot of resources to fuel this never stopping city. I was very interested in researching to see why Las Vegas wasn’t resilient and what could be improved.
While Miami is experiencing some hard times during the past years, it is still a city full of life and opportunity. Cultures come together in Miami like a city unlike no other. It has the fame and glamor, but still suffers from poverty and corruption. It provides many of opportunities for people, especially those coming from Latin America. While Miami is still one of the biggest cities in the United States, I believe it will continue to survive and reclaim its title as the “Magic City”.
Alexander had a rigorous Health Science Magnet program that admitted around 120 students each year, and I was one of them. Students in this program were admitted based on an achievement test given the summer prior to their freshman year in school. If admitted, all students in the program were required to take only Pre-AP and AP classes throughout their 4 years in school. Outside of the program there were AP, Pre-AP, GT, regular, and remedial classes that were readily available to any other students. There were always those students who spoke in the hallways about the kids in “regular” classes who were “too dumb” to be put in Pre-AP or GT. Or those stuck in remedial classes because they didn’t pass their TAKS test requirements. But there were other students too, including some of my best friends. They were the ones who had the capability of succeeding in an AP course, yet they were put in regular classes. I never had any problems with this process since my status in the magnet program automatically ...
Currently, many public high schools allow students to select their own classes and in turn, some students enroll in classes far below their intellectual ability. Major problems are down the road should students decide to go on to post-secondary schools. Students should be assessed when entering the 9th grade. Standardized tests should be given to help determine what course of study would be best for a particular student to pursue during their four year high school career.
When students arrive at university, professors expect them to understand the material to an exceptional standard. The problem is that grade inflation is occurring more regularly in secondary schools and universities across the country and when these students’ marks are sent to universities or colleges, the student may be given multiple scholarships for something that he/she should not have earned. Grade inflation is conceived between both students and teachers, meaning that the students are given higher grades when they have inadequate learning, reading, and verbal skills, while the teachers do not have to grade as many papers as they should in the real curriculum. There have been multiple examinations that have confirmed that grade inflation is very real and still occurs today. Students seem to think that they do not need to put forth much effort in school to do well and grade inflation encourages this thought.
In “How Grading Reform Changed Our School,” author Jeffrey A. Erickson discusses about how it is common in high schools to pass each student by their accumulated average of the entire class period. He described many examples to display the way of grading in high schools such as in behaviors, lessons, and tasks. He talks about the changes that were made and were in effect to achieve a grading average that reflects the student 's’ abilities and knowledge .
The American education cannot forgo the wise words of Spock on Star Trek,”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one”. The “needs of the many” are meet in ability grouping, and all students will be challenged to their full potential. In mixed ability classes only the middle group of students needs will be met. Ability grouping doesn’t hurt any student , nor does it discriminate an racial or socioeconomic classes. It is imperative that America schools ability group their classes in order to have American students better compete with other students around the world.
However, such accusations such as laziness and entitlement, although common, have been prevalent amongst those of college age as proven in “A’s for Everyone.” Shepard had investigated the cause behind this and had put the blame on grade inflation in the years prior to entering college, the pressure to get superb grades due to high tuition costs, and most importantly the belief that “effort” constitutes a grade bonus. However, if one has entered the school system in America, one could see the relative ease in which one could improve their grades through inordinate amounts of extra credit. Multiple students have heard and even seen fellow students ask their parents to even come in for meetings of which equate to blaming their child’s poor grades on the teacher and harassing said teacher to allow their child, soon to be a hardworking, productive citizen of society, to get the “grade they
I mentioned earlier that within my own school, we have a problem with segregation between students that take different classes. While not an official program, my school system does have a practice of tracking students together based on achievement levels. Starting in elementary school students tend to grouped based on their academic ability. Often times you will see students of color and students from low-income families in what are often called the “bottom” classes. The students many times are then stuck in the classes that do not have the same high expectations as the one or two classes of our “top” students. Those “top” classes are often times over represented by the white students as well as students from more affluent families. Going back to Orfield, et al (2010), one way to keep this from happening is by “detracking” students (p 25). Oftentimes students are labeled at a young age and sent on track that will carry on all the way through graduation. Minority students, ELL students and students from low income families generally do not test well at young ages and then are put on track of education that has lower expectations than their peers that are from affluent white families. According to Orfield, et al (2010), schools that use detracking strategies for their students often see increased
The expectations teachers have for their students attempt to prepare the students for the rigorous academics ahead. Students are told that in typical colleges, teachers do not care about one’s excuse for a late assignment or attendance issues. Therefore, high school teachers expect their students to turn in assignments on time and be in class. If those expectations are not met, some high school teachers will not accept the assignment or will expect the students to find out what they missed on their own. “The transition from a public high to a top U. can be difficult, stressful, and frustrating. You will have to learn to excel in...
Don't get me wrong; my parents never mandated that I take all the honors classes I could gain admission to. No one told me to take three honors classes. No one, that is, except the little voice in my head that convinced me scholarly success was based upon the number of "H's" on my high-school transcript. The counselors cautioned me not to do it, students who had fallen into the trap before warned me against it and my parents just left it up to me. Through it all, I just smiled and reassured them, "Don't worry; I can handle it." The trouble was, I didn't have the slightest idea what lay ahead.
The lower class student’s major issue with learning in class is a shortage of confidence based on real or apparent weakness in the home environment. These students often feel undesirable. They are very aware of the class in which they come from and of the place and position people classify them under, they often feel the urge to hide their background. Students that are categorized in this particular class frequently come to school with a lower level of academic skills and involvedness than their peers that are categorized in the midd...
Within a typical high school, there will be many different kinds of students. Likewise, there will be many types of different classes. There will be students (similar to me when I was in high school) whose main focus is getting into a quality university program. For these students, there will be a rigorous set of honors courses. Any student may enroll in these courses; the advertised amount of extra work they require will keep out the students who don't belong in them.