Education in America
Education in the United States is a very crucial part of a person’s life. Going to school opens doors and facilitates the pathway for future individual achievement and economic success. Formal education is a conscious effort by human society to convey the skills and modes of thought considered essential for social functioning.
According to the census 2000, the total number of people in school between nursery and high school is approximately 57 million. Out of those 57 million, roughly 49 million are in public school. In students 15 – 17 years old, 30.8 % are below the modal grade. Furthermore, between 10 through 12 graders the annual dropout rate is 4.7%. Continuing education to the college level is a very
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Today, however, it seems as if the public has lost track of the importance of a great educational system. The main issue today’s public schools faces are funding problems. There is not enough money allocated to support the growing needs of school across the nation.
Most of the other problems the schools face are directly related to the funding issue. Buildings are run down and sometimes mobile because of the lack of finances. No child wants to go to school in a dreary building that smells bad. It makes it hard to concentrate and hard to study in buildings such as this. Every school has some type of sport being played by the students. For some, sports are the only reason they do not drop out of school. However, if finances are not available then the school should focus mostly on the education of all of its students as a whole, not just a few who think they cannot make it without sports. Without the financial issues, schools have even more problems. School violence is becoming more and more common. School should be a place where children come to learn and be with their peers, in a very good environment. It should not be a place where children are afraid to go because of the anger or hurt of other children. This is probably the major issue of the public today.
No matter what the issue, schools have important issues that they have to work around and with everyday to
Public education has faced many extreme challenges and obstacles historically. Based on the films I’ve viewed I think the top issues were segregation and poverty. Segregation in schools started in the 1800s and continued until the 1960s. I learned mostly about the problems with segregation in the film A Struggle for Education Equality. In the film, it explains facts and statistics about children and how their lives were like. From around the time period of 1950-1980 schools were very much segregated and only ⅗ of students graduated and 50% of them went to college. The fight for equality in schools began in Topeka Kansas where high schools became integrated. Elementary schools, however, were not integrated and still segregated. The NAACP tried to have 13 parents try to enroll their kids into white school but of course, it failed because of segregation. Linda Brown was one of the children in the experiment and that’s when the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka of 1954 was created which banned the inequality in schools. The southern states still had segregation problems, unfortunately, but the Elementary and Secondary Education Act gave 4 billion dollars of aid to disadvantaged children and around 9 years after that, 91% of southern black children attended integrated schools. Segregation had clearly gotten so much better but was a major problem for a long time in terms of public education. Poverty, in my opinion, is another major problem facing public education today. In
Today, education enables us to enlarge our knowledge and open doors for opportunities to the path of having a good future. In the five readings, each written by a different author, there was a lesson learned and something to take away from each one. Reading through the passages by Mann, Moore, Malcolm X, Gatto, Rose, and Anyon, each author contributed his or her point of view on general public education. This topic can be very argumentative depending on the quality of education people receive. Education today is the single most important mean for individuals to achieve their personal goals in the workforce.
The American public educational system is filled with an assortment of problems. Most students are graduating with less knowledge and capability than similar students in other industrialized countries. Classroom disruptions are surprisingly common, and in some classrooms, nearly continuous. The public education system is having difficulty adjusting to the no child left behind act. The No Child Left Behind(NCLB) is a landmark in education reform designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of American’s schools.
Nowadays the United States is not known for their educational system. Countries like South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have surpassed the United States buy large margins, in terms of educational success. While other countries are constantly revolutionising their education system, the United States’ education system has not changed in decades, leaving the U.S. unsuccessful. The U.S. continues to fall behind these same countries that are thriving. Due to the fact that the U.S. education system not developing as time went on, leaving them now with a multitude of flaws. The gap between the educated and non-educated, along with the length of how long students are in elementary and high school, are two consequential problems in the United States’ educational system that need to be addressed.
Since 1983 public education has been an issue in America. The system has been constantly changing every year with reforms. This constant change has been driven by the American people’s perception that education has declined and something should be done about it. First there was an increased emphasis on basic skills, making school years longer and more graduation requirements. Second, many began focusing on increasing teachers professionalism. Third, they began restructuring many things such as how the schools were organized and how the school day was structured etc. Now today the most of the American people believe that not enough money is given to public schooling. They associate academic improvement with the money the school is funded.
For each successful school system, one could identify multiple systems that have failed or are currently failing. Challenging or underperformed school systems can be found at the continental, country or state level. Additional challenges are found both in developed and underdeveloped regions. Nonetheless, there are a myriad of reasons that contribute to school system failures, regardless of locations. Social, economical, cultural or pragmatic aspects are common reasons cited for ineffective or unsustainable school systems.
People tend to blame the government for the Educational systems budget cuts. Throughout the years there simply is not enough money to go around to meet the demand of the school system. The ones that are suffering the most are the staff and the students. The government has been trying to figure out ways each year to support the educational budget. Budget cuts are not only affecting teachers but it is also affecting class sizes, school supplies, and after-school programs.
The most glaring impact of school funding is that of the major goal of the public school system: equal opportunity to a quality education for all people. How does school funding impact equal opportunity? Nobody is turned away from public school because of money. Public school is free for all and even required for certain ages. Everyone has an equal opportunity for an education. These are comments that one might make that doesn’t understand the concept of separate/different being inherently unequal. The biggest point made in the major goal mentioned above is the key word “quality”. The opportunity for an education may be offered to everyone, but the opportunity for the same quality education is greatly affected by school funding.
Something that is also of alarm is the financial burden the schools must carry. It is no secret that schools barely have enough money to get by and yet schools are spending millions of dollars a year on
Education is the process of acquiring knowledge and information, usually within schools and academies in order to prepare students for employment and everyday life. Education is a major issue. They do not teach a whole lot on critical thinking and/or problem solving, speaking, written communication, curiosity, or data analysis. These are a lot of the skills employers are looking for, and that schools are lacking. That’s only the beginning of the issues. Another example being if your family moves to a new district, then the children of the family must start a new school, and in some cases they have to begin in the middle of the semester. If this is the case, the child (ren) have the chance of being much too far ahead, or way too far behind (education.com (hardcopy)). Another educational issue is sexual abuse. According to edsource.org almost 1 in 10 students are sexually abused or harassed by staff members, bus drivers, coaches, and others involved with schools. “The U.S. Government Accountability Office said
Problems facing the public schools. The general satisfaction with the public schools should not cause one to lose sight of the fact that the public wants those schools improved. It would be logical for such improvement to focus on areas in which problems exist. Down through the years, the public has been consistent in the area which shows lack of discipline. Other points of either drug abuse, lack of financial support, or lack of discipline has topped the list. This year, lack of discipline is identified as the top problem. Fighting/violence/gangs follows at high on the list and lack of financial support/funding/money is also an issue. Teachers and classroom sizes are recognized as a ongoing problem in public education.
Funding is always going to be an issue till they change the policy in the United States. Every school and program must be funded in some way or another. The US needs to make a change the school funding making sure it is going to all the right causes. The United States has seen funding and budget cuts year after year with no steady amount of funding for the programs. Leaving a serious situation to deal with when trying to progress as a country.
There are a very large number of possibilities for improving the school system in a meaningful way. They are all possible if we exclude the two factors that keeps most of these things from happening: money and the government. We have all heard on the news how long government officials take to make decisions. Add on the schools’ very small budget, and we get a very slowly evolving system.
Education is fundamental in today’s modern society and is the subject of endless debates across the United States. Recently, it has risen to the top of both state and national agendas (Finn, 2002).
the stories of how our ancestors used to have to walk to school 5 miles in the