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Public education system in the united states essay
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The film Waiting for Superman, informs how public schools are doing in the United States. Every president is always trying to improve the education system in America, but they have not succeeded. Bush set a goal of 100% efficiency in math and reading tests, but two years later only 18% of the students had reached 100% efficiency in Alabama, 14% of the students in Mississippi, 40% on the New Jersey students, 30% of the students in New York and 24% of the students in California were only able to reach the goal. Only 20% to 30% of the students were proficient in the whole country. The nation’s capital had the worst score with 12% of the students.
One of the problems, the film shows is that many teachers in public schools have tenure, which means that many teachers are guaranteed a job for life. The film shows that a principal at a school fired coupled bad teachers, but he had to rehire with a year’s salary. Tenure has become a huge deal in America, especially because there are many teachers unions where they keep fighting for their rights. For example, in Illinois one out of every fifty seven doctors lose their medical license, one out every ninety seven lawyers have lost their license, but only 1 out of 2500 teachers lose their teaching credentials.
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This probably why charter schools have grown a lot, but unfortunately it is very hard to get in for students with financial problems. For example, Harlem Success Academy in New York has only 40 spaces with 792 applicants. The film also indicates that Woodside High School, the school I attended, has 62 graduates of one hundred students and only 32 are ready for a four year college; while Summit Prep charter has 96 graduates out of 100 students and all of them will be ready for a four year
Educational systems in America are impaired, and the very educators that are meant to teach are the one’s pulling it down. That is the apparent message that Davis Guggenheim attempts to convey in his documentary “Waiting for Superman”. He uses many strategies to get his message across. Some of these include cartoons, children, and those reformers that are attempting to pull the system out of the ditch that it has found its way into. He makes his point very well, and uses facts and figures correctly. He does leave out some of the opinions of the opposing views, but it does not take away from his point that the educational system in America is in need of repair.
In Rereading America Michael Moore entitled “Idiot Nation” focuses on the failing educational system in the United States of America. The American nation has decreased in their studies and have lowered their standards, yet America still claims they have their priorities in order, which is education. Moore attempts to persuade his readers that the people who are to blame are lack of education in politics and the budget cuts they are making, however, politics blame teachers for making America decrease in their schooling test scores. Americas have many opportunities and useful tools to be successful; however,
He also argues that without tenure it would to be easier to fire the 10 percent of teachers that are poor performers. I personally agree with Matthew Miller’s proposal.
Webber, Karl. “A Nation Still At Risk.” Waiting for Superman: How We Can Save Save America’s Failing Public Schools. Ed. Carl Weber. New York: PublicAffairs. 2010. 3-10. Print.
The first article that I chose to work with is “The Rubber Room” by Steven Brill. This article is published by The New Yorker on August 31, 2009. Brill is an American Lawyer and a journalist-entrepreneur. “The Rubber Room” is about how it is wasting the city’s money as teachers are placed in this room where all they do is just sit around and play games. They are placed in these as they are waiting for their case to be heard by an arbitrator which could take up to many years. While they are sitting in these rooms, these teachers are still getting paid which is a waste of the city’s tax money. Brill also talks about tenure and how once teachers have tenure they seem to slack off at their job because they know that they have job security as mentioned in the article “she was given tenure after her third year of teaching, and then, like ninety-nine per cent of all teachers before 2002, she received a satisfactory rating each year.” (Brill 2)
The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.
The problem of the American public school system is a complex one. In many ways, it is tied directly to the problems with America as a whole. However, the film “Waiting for Superman” brought this problem to light, and now is the time to act. Many critics focus on just the film, and don’t focus on proposing an alternate solution to the one proposed by the film. However, there are many others out there conducting research and trying to get to the bottom of the issue. A solution is coming, whether it is complex or simple, but in one way or another, we have found superman.
From the reading “Ethical and Legal Issues in U.S. Education”, there were three points that that surprised me. One point was that it is so surprising to me that there are so many steps that a teacher, on tenure, must go through before they get fired. It makes it so difficult to be fired and such a long process that they will never be fired unless they commit a major crime and I believe that this should change. As a teacher, we need to be at the top of our game at all times, and teachers with tenure seem like they do not always have to in order to keep their job. It is also surprising to me that student teachers do not receive the same rights as normal teachers in some states. Student teachers are practicing to become a teacher one day, and
Davis Guggenheim, director of the controversial documentary Waiting for “Superman”, brings to light the flaws of the American education system, and more eagerly the practice of tenure. Guggenheim’s purpose is to inform of these flaws and instigate a reform. He creates a pitiful tone in order to denounce tenure and spread this opinion to the viewers of his documentary. These rhetorical appeals work to create a compelling argument on the issue of tenure.
Teacher tenure. What does this word mean? In many's eyes, tenure is seen as an unfair advantage to teachers and a cruel rule to students. However, according to teacherunion.com, “tenure is the practice of guaranteeing a teacher their job.” Typically, all teachers earn this privilege through quantity, and not by quality. Just a few years after starting to teach, they are granted tenure. And because of Teacher’s Union, it is almost impossible to break a teacher (i.e. a bad teacher) from this rule.
An article from the Los Angeles Times showed that the majority of Californians give California schools “a grade of C or below” and half think that the quality of schools will continue to decline (Watanabe). While the economic downturn affected the public school system in a negative way, it was not the sole root of its problems. It just simply exacerbated existing issues. Because of widespread discontent with the public school system, many different solutions to reform the mainstream public school system have been brought up in public discourse.... ...
It was protect them from losing their jobs, which at first is grand for the low paid teachers, but instead of doing good it causes education become impossible to teach. According to New York Times, a well known newspaper, states that “Firing a bad teacher could take anywhere from two to almost 10 years and cost $50,000 to $450,000 or more” (New York Times). This tener law, makes it a time consuming and money spending process that the schools are not worth taking. In the movie, “Waiting For Superman” , by Davis Guggenheim- a well known director who made many other successful non-fiction films-The film claims “That if only the bottom 1/5 of bad teachers in the US were fired and replaced by only average teachers, our national test scores would reach those of Finland, more than a dozen places higher on international exam scores” (Guggenheim). So we just edited the tenure law then we can rid of the ineffective teachers and replace them, so that the students will receive the tutelage need. In recent news on tenure-article by New York Times- a Los Angeles County Judge Rolf M. Treu began to fix tenure law stating, “the practices are unconstitutional, for teachers can receive lifetime tenor. The process of getting rid of teachers is long process and money spending. So it is hard to rid of tenor teachers” ( Treu). Judge says, “Ruling is stayed pending an appeal by unions and
Education is an integral part of society, school helps children learn social norms as well as teach them how to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. These schools have lower test scores and high dropout rates. In Trenton Central High School West, there was an 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often from low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial reasons to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and further teacher education, urban schools can be transformed and be better equipped to prepare their students for the global stage.
The conflict theory in this case discusses the lack of resources that are down to nearly nothing and about how the lower classes are having to constantly compete for them. It shows you how the poor are controlled by the rich. The film “Waiting for Superman” takes a closer look into the public school systems around the United States from the poorest of the poor all the way over to the suburbs. The parents of these students are obviously sending their children to school with the high hopes that they are going to excel academically, but the reality of it is that most of the children that are either born into or somehow end up in a position of poverty end up either dropping out rather than graduating. The upper class will place their children into schools where they are offered quality education. With the way that our nation is growing, I am confident in being able to say that the gap will only expand and the poor will continue to suffer in the educational department as well as others. While the lower class students in public school are failing and dropping out, the upper class students are too busy bettering their future. Our country states that “every child has a dream”, and that “no child will be left behind”. How true is that claim exactly? Yes, it is true that every child has a dream, but how many children are being left behind because they are stuck in poverty? There was one scene in the movie where the charter schools had to draw numbers just to give a child a chance at a better education. That is highly disturbing that a child has to suffer through something as humiliating as that. Our public system does not encourage academic growth, it hampers it. Over the years a lot of money has been put into trying to fix our public schoo...
Because some teachers become lousy after receiving the tenure - Howard Fuller, former superintendent of Milwaukee, said “… I’m going to fire these people…” Phillip Davis Guggenheim said, “He fired them but was forced to rehire them with a years back pay because of a provision in the teachers’ contract which guaranteed their job for life called tenure…” Some teachers become useless after receiving the tenure and no one can do anything about it because they can’t fire them. Therefore, some schools uses the “lemon dance”, which tend to exchange bad teachers with other schools bad teachers and the cycle goes on and on. As Fuller explained, “…but for public school teacher tenure has become automatic you can get tenure basically if you continue to breathe for two years whether or not you help children is irrelevant once you get it, we cannot get rid of you… you are there for life, even if we can prove you are a lousy teacher” Once they get their job secure they forget about providing the students’ a good education. Some argue that it is not the teachers fault for students not learning, but the students themselves not wanting to learn. However, the teachers should motivate the students desire to succeed but they