In, “Problems of School Reform,” Nel Noddings discusses the complexity that exists in schools in the areas of equality, accountability, standards, and testing. I decided to direct my response towards accountability because I feel that this has become a prevalent dilemma in education during the past two decades. Speaking about this, Noddings shares that accountability in education was the result of the business community. Today, policymakers view accountability in the form of focusing on teachers and students outcomes on standardized testing. As result of the pressures of accountability many teachers rely on teaching to the test—like Paulo Freire’s “banking model”—limiting students exposure to creative forms of teacher pedagogy. Therefore,
It’s no surprise that there are faults within our schools in today’s society. As both authors’ point out if our educational system is
Since the U.S. Congress passed the No Child Left Behind program, standardized testing has become the norm for American schools. Under this system, each child attending a school is required to take a standardized test at specific grade points to assess their level of comprehension. Parents, scholars and all stakeholders involved take part in constant discussions over its effectiveness in evaluating students’ comprehension, teachers’ competency and the effects of the test on the education system. Though these tests were put in place to create equality, experts note that they have created more inequality in the classroom. In efforts to explore this issue further, this essay reviews two articles on standardized testing. This essay reviews the sentiments of the authors and their insight into standardized examination. The articles provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that standardized tests are not effective at measuring a teacher’s competency because they do not take into account the school environment and its effect on the students.
The controversial topic about the function of school is discussed at many school board and PTA meetings throughout America. In Anita Garland’s opinion, schools are not functioning properly. Garland states her reasons as to why the purpose of school has to change in her article, “Lets Really Reform Our Schools”, where she starts off by saying, “Desperate illnesses require desperate remedies. And our schools are desperately ill.” She proceeds to list the remedies in order to transform our schools into a more healthy, successful environment. First, Garland claims that the students who are not interested in studying should not be allowed, better yet, never forced to attend school with kids who want to receive
their education in a more intellectual way, and those that choose to work can draw upon
Many teachers have taken acceptable measures in improving their students’ scores, such as simply “teaching to the test”, and taking class time to teach test taking techniques and procedures often resulting in a significant loss in time for other important standards and benchmarks that are not tested on. Taking a deontologist stance, one would propose that the teachers are merely acting from their duty to help their students succeed, and that if the standardized test is a true reflection of the material a student should have mastered, “teaching to the test” exactly the course a teacher should take. With the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 teachers are “implicitly encouraged to reallocate classroom time, because it only requires testing in reading and math in seven grades and science in three” (Phelps) and taking any other form of action would result in failure for the students and the instructor. One can argue that teaching to the test can easily be squashed by changing and rotating test topics between all of the benchmarks and standards teachers are ethically obligated to teach; however, this arises the question, do administrators and educators really want to stop this well adapted to process? This phenomenon places a utilitarian at a conflict of short term versus long term effects and benefits. When focusing on the short term benefits, a utili...
The United States was engulfed with movements calling for social revolution before the advent of the civil war. Reformer led associations pursued transformation of education in public schools, the elimination of social problems including drunkenness, prostitution and to ensure American families remained intact and strong. They also demanded changes to the system that would uplift the lives of the poor and bring slavery to an end. Several reform agendas from this period have present day equivalent in the efforts to modify welfare, eradicate drug menace, put an end to domestic violence, and reduce crime. Although some were considered controversial, the temperance, education, prison, women's rights, and antislavery movements engineered the deepest
The ability for all children from varying walks of life to receive a well-rounded education in America has become nothing more than a myth. In excerpt “The Essentials of a Good Education”, Diane Ravitch argues the government’s fanatical obsession with data based on test scores has ruined the education system across the country (107). In their eyes, students have faded from their eyes as individual hopefully, creative and full of spirit, and have become statistics on a data sheet, percentages on a pie chart, and numbers calculated to show the intelligence they have from filling out bubbles in a booklet. In order for schools to be able to provide a liberal education, they need the proper funding, which comes from the testing.
Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Basic, 2010. Print
Politicians claim that Accountability is needed. Dylan Wiliam wrote that “The logic of accountability is deceptively simple”(110) He goes on to say that “students attending higher quality schools will (by definition) have higher achievement than those attending lower quality schools, so that the differences in quality of schools will result in systematic differences in achievement between schools”(110). Yes indeed accountability is needed. It is needed for those who pay for education (tax payers) and the people who are educated (the students). The institutions that regulate education should be held accountable for the policies they enact as well as the government that approved those actions. “Of the total variance in mathematics achievement of 15-year-olds in the United States in 2004 only 8% was attributable to the actual quality of the education provided by the school, the results in science are similar” (111). This is an indictment of the American school system, it points out that standardized testing is in fact inaccurate and unnecessary.
The education reform movement is made up of voices that disproportionately are not of comprised of the very races, ethnicities, and cultures it attempts to serve. Recently, I read an article directly addressing this issue and acknowledging the calls to diversify by African American education leaders including Kaya Henderson, chancellor of the DC public schools and Howard Fuller, Marquette professor. Fuller stated, “The people who are being liberated must be a critical part of their own liberation.” This statement made me reflect on my own experiences as a researcher and advocate within education reform.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton stated that the United States needed, “ a national crusade for education standards - not federal government standards, but national standards, representing what all our students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century”(http://books.nap.edu/books/0309062802/html/13.html). The way to succeed in this journey is through standardized testing that results in consequences for teachers and students.
In “What’s Wrong with Schools,” Casey Banas uses the experiences of Ellen Glanz, a high school social studies teacher to express how different students and teachers feel about schooling. Ellen Glanz chooses to improve her teaching by pretending to be a student and sitting in on several classes and what she finds in the typical classroom includes students doing the bare minimum, disinterest, cheating, detachment, the list goes on and on. I agree with Ellen Glanz in that this separation between educators and students causes a great amount of passivity. Unfortunately, these types of circumstances in classroom settings are becoming more and more typical.
The author addresses paper and pencil tests with no special accommodations, and analyses trends throughout past decades. He also writes of the new era of standardized testing and accountability. Stiggins suggests that while standardized testing may be useful and effective in some aspects, most are not used correctly and that the high-stakes put intense pressure on teachers, making it difficult to actually complete their job which is to teach students new skills. They simply spend their time reviewing already learned skills to ensure good scores on exams.
The decade of the 1980s saw numerous calls for widespread school reform, with changes recommended in teacher education, graduation requirements, school structure, and accountability measures. With the advent of the 1990s, school reform finally to...
There are platitudes of issues and elements that pertain to the educational process as well as curriculum development that are addressed on a routine basis. As many researchers have discussed, and administrators and teachers alike have grown to understand, if this current educational model/system is to produce creative, productive, active, and technologically savvy students-citizens the worst actions are perhaps having no actions at all (Stansbury, 2013). In addition to the grandiose mistakes of becoming stagnant (progress), educators and administrators are faced with increasing demands at the highest levels; this of course is making reference to both federal and state legislation such as No Child Left Behind, perhaps the most groundbreaking legislation to date. These rigorous demands are curriculum based, creating definitive and innovative opportunities for educators, especially those in positions to promote and formulate new curriculum models as well as propose the implementation of a new curricula into the system, to better prepare students within their educational system/process exactly what the demands of a 21st century requires. These demands are in reference to an article written by Richard Long titled Career Success Demands Strong 21st Century Literacy Skills. Long states several skills that will be required if American students are to play catch –up with the rest of the world as well as perhaps attain their position at the top of the upper echelon of world educational rankings (Long, 2010).