Flaws In Education

The ability of gifted students to achieve meaningful learning in the modern classroom is being significantly slowed due to changes in curriculum to account for the lower tier of students. Since the early 2000’s, the classroom has been changed to meet the academic expectations of colleges and employers, of which many high school students were not able to meet. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, along with the widespread acceptance and utilization of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, unfair generalizations of students have been made in order to create an even playing field. Specifically, the students who perform the worst in classes and on standardized tests have received significant benefit from the implementation

While there is a considerable amount of support behind the idea of the Common Core and ensuring that students will be qualified for their endeavors beyond graduation, the potential of gifted students to become extraordinary in their knowledge, based on their respective desire for knowledge and ability to pace their learning, is essentially lost during high school. For example, I have experienced this problem firsthand in many math classes, which have been converted at Central DeWitt High School to conform to the Common Core Standards Initiative. In order for the class to progress, all students are required to prove their proficiency in a certain skill via short assessments, however it is common for one individual to stall the progress of the class. Given that there is a substantial amount of time that could be spent learning new topics, rather than wait for others to become proficient, it can be reasoned that I am losing valuable time to reach the potential of my academic capabilities. In all, the reason behind the inability of gifted students to truly differentiate themselves from the larger population of peers can be attributed to a necessity of public schools to maintain a consistency between all academic levels of

Firstly, the No Child Left Behind Act emphasizes test scores, rather than focusing on crucial topics for academic advancement. Furthermore, according to the ConnectUS Fund, the job security of many teachers is directly correlated to standardized test scores, therefore resulting in students gaining a knowledge base that only pertains to test-taking skills and general knowledge of test topics. This method of teaching results in a reduced capacity of gifted students to advance their learning through the pursuit of endeavors in their respective areas of interest. Secondly, the establishment of the Common Core in many high schools has resulted in a rigid curriculum that does not easily allow for academic growth and exploration. Specifically, the Common Core provides fairly narrow standards of learning that constrict students who have mastered the predetermined skills deemed necessary for advancement, which typically includes gifted students. Given that this structured learning does not account for academic exploration, gifted students are becoming suppressed under the rigidity of the Common Core. Lastly, the Common Core has been found to operate under the premise that all students learn in the same manner, which is blatantly false. Furthermore, the top-down and centrally controlled presentation of academic topics to students fails to