Why Students Fail In America

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Recommended: Standardized testing

Olivo 5

Julian Olivo
Mr. Wiglesworth
ELA Block 1
3-7-2016
Critical Issues of Failing Students in America How many students are reported to be failing in America? According to the U.S Department of Education (2015), there are about 50 million students across America and 7,000 of them drop out of school each day as a result of academic lag. Moreover, students all over America are failing thanks to the current federal, state, and local systems. In their high school years, many students begin or continue to fail their classes, and the United States Department of Education needs to do something about it. The nation needs to rebuild the federal, state, and local support systems for failing students. Reasons why the current support systems may
Williams quoted Rudolph and Kleiner saying, ?motivation can be separated into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is performing an action or behavior because you enjoy the activity? (Rudolph and Kleiner). ?Extrinsic motivation is performing an action or behavior for external or outside rewards? (Cherry). A vivid example of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and overcoming obstacles such as discrimination and LEP is the case of Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago. These slurs and stereotypes that Santiago encountered motivated her to work even harder not only to prove others wrong, but to prove that she was capable of greater things to herself (Iyer, Mazer and Navarro, 2008). Another brilliant example of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is the Mexican author Gary Soto. Through a very difficult childhood, he was always extrinsically motivated by his mother to become involved in his academics to overcome poverty (Iyer, Mazer and
Some say that standardized tests are inclusive and non-discriminatory because they ensure content is equivalent for all students (ProCon.org).In addition, standardized tests are unfair because the same exam is given to immigrants who barely know English and students with special needs. This leads to an incorrect picture of the quantity of students that are considered to be failing in the United States due to the results of these special need and LEP students being added to the overall national academic results. There are no significant findings in research or studies sufficiently connecting class size and student academic success together (Chingos and Whitehurst, 2011). Nevertheless, in the article Why Class Size Matters Today, years of research prove that class size reduction is a major factor in a student?s academic success (National Council of Teachers of English). In a PISA data collected by Tom Loveless, research shows that in many countries, students that lack motivation scored higher on standardized tests (Zinshteyn,

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