Last year when I graduated high school, only four kids in my senior class did not meet the requirements to graduate. I didn't really think much of their situation and I assumed that the small statistic would be similar for most schools. After watching the Lewis Black video on the education crisis in America I realized that I was totally clueless. Black’s video stated that our children in America rank 25th in math and 21st in science out of 30 developed countries, an alarming statistic. My lack of knowledge on this very important issue prompted me to do some research on my own. A report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation showed from a 2009 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) that one third of the fourth graders in the US scored ‘below basic’ on the test. The NAEP also showed that only 32% of 8th graders and 38% of high school seniors are at or above their grade level. (studentsfirst.org) How is our lack of education going to impact us in the future? I think that if our education system doesn’t get better in the future our country’s standard of living and quality of life will be challenged. Unforeseen problems will come up in the future and without a population taught math, science and problem solving skills these problems could go unsolved.
If you flip on the television, open a magazine or get on the internet it is pretty clear that our American culture values sports and celebrities pretty much above everything else. If younger students looked up to great thinkers and scientists like Neil deGrasse-Tyson or Stephen Hawking instead of talent-less celebrities like Justin Beiber and Snooki, kids would be inspired to expand their learning instead of just shooting for the bare minimum. One way to help motivate children would be to sponsor celebrities to promote education, it would be easier to get across the point of education to younger kids if their idols told them rather than their teachers. Would this idea alone help solve the problem? Absolutely not, but if it even inspired a small amount of children to further and better their education than it would be worth it. Another way to improve test scores in my opinion would be to get rid of tenure in middle and high schools. Tenure is the practice of guaranteeing a teacher their job and is usually given after a certain number of years. Tenure originally was to ensure that the administration couldn’t fire teachers without due cause. Once a teacher gets tenure it is almost impossible for them to get fired. (Alan Greenblatt, NPR) I believe that tenure is keeping awful teachers in our Nation’s school system. In high school I could personally name off half a dozen teachers who didn’t work to help kids or even want to help them succeed. They were just there because they couldn’t be fired and had steady paycheck. Getting rid of tenure might be unfair to the decent teachers that actually want to be in schools helping kids, but if they are decent teachers they wouldn’t have much to worry about.
Its about time as a country we start looking at better ways to keep educating our children. The future of our country relies on the students in school now and depriving them of a good education will effect all of us.
If you flip on the television, open a magazine or get on the internet it is pretty clear that our American culture values sports and celebrities pretty much above everything else. If younger students looked up to great thinkers and scientists like Neil deGrasse-Tyson or Stephen Hawking instead of talent-less celebrities like Justin Beiber and Snooki, kids would be inspired to expand their learning instead of just shooting for the bare minimum. One way to help motivate children would be to sponsor celebrities to promote education, it would be easier to get across the point of education to younger kids if their idols told them rather than their teachers. Would this idea alone help solve the problem? Absolutely not, but if it even inspired a small amount of children to further and better their education than it would be worth it. Another way to improve test scores in my opinion would be to get rid of tenure in middle and high schools. Tenure is the practice of guaranteeing a teacher their job and is usually given after a certain number of years. Tenure originally was to ensure that the administration couldn’t fire teachers without due cause. Once a teacher gets tenure it is almost impossible for them to get fired. (Alan Greenblatt, NPR) I believe that tenure is keeping awful teachers in our Nation’s school system. In high school I could personally name off half a dozen teachers who didn’t work to help kids or even want to help them succeed. They were just there because they couldn’t be fired and had steady paycheck. Getting rid of tenure might be unfair to the decent teachers that actually want to be in schools helping kids, but if they are decent teachers they wouldn’t have much to worry about.
Its about time as a country we start looking at better ways to keep educating our children. The future of our country relies on the students in school now and depriving them of a good education will effect all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment