The New York City Department Of Education

When imagining a well-rounded school, one might think of a school filled with discussion based English classes, interactive Math classes, exciting labs, and rich History classes; one may also think of an endless list of extracurricular activities and athletic teams. Sadly, many public schools across the country do not have these opportunities. The Diane Ravitch book: Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, focuses upon Ravitch’s opinion on this important issue. Since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, schools have focused on math and reading scores; because of this, schools have disregarded and cut back on other subjects that they are not being tested on such as

(Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Education reform scholars argue that racial segregation, funding, inequity and educational inequality go hand in hand. In the 1990s courts began to examine whether the achievement gap between minorities’ and whites was a vestige also known as the former segregated school system. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Today education analyst contributes this to the achievement gap. Although state courts have held that the quality of education should be fair, the struggle to close the achievement gap still continues. For instance, children coming from a household making over $90,000 have a better chance graduating from college by the age of twenty-four. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Children coming from families making less than $35,000 have a one in seventeen chance from graduating from college. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The No Child left behind Act (NCLB), was intended to be the revalidation of the ESEA in 2001. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The purpose of the NCLB was to close the achievement gap within the races, but ended up failing to drive the educational improvement where it was needed most. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The NCLB mandated higher scores, but failed to provide low-income schools with resources to make the achievement possible. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) As a result wealthier

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University. She makes a very compelling, but extremely one-sided argument that educational reforms such as “No Child Left Behind” are causing students to have lesser opportunities in schools. Her argument is directed towards school boards, parents, and lawmakers who have the ability to change school and state policies on education. She wants those people to believe that the current school system is not effective in giving students a quality education and preparing them for life. Diane Ravitch’s argument brings up a question for readers: Is it beneficial for students when schools cut funding to non-tested subjects? According to Ravitch, most of the schools in the country, except for the ones in the most affluent communities base their

Not only has the increased amount of testing placed enormous pressure on teachers to perform, but on students as well; the pressure to do well on these assessments is causes young students to suffer from anxiety and stress. Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Conn., was just one of the thousands of American public schools classified as failing during the 2010-2011 school year, according to their standardized test scores (Berger). In "Raising the Curve: A Year Inside One of America’s 45,000 Failing Public Schools”, Ron Berler, a journalist who has written for The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, documents the year he spent observing students and educators at Brookside as they struggled to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind. “The

“Shrinking state and local education budgets matched with the added pressure of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which sets rigid standards in reading and math that schools must achieve in order to receive federal funding, have created a new challenge for districts” (Van Harken).

In 1965, Lyndon B Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in an attempt to achieve more equity among minority groups within the education system. Along with the numerous attempts to close the achievement gap came America’s first federally funded state assessments, created with the intention of holding the nation’s schools accountable for providing a quality education for every student. This legislation was revisited in 2001 by the Bush administration with the No Child Left Behind Act, which saw the achievement gap that still existed among ethnic minority groups, but also recognised a prominent gap within poverty- stricken communities. With this came state tests that were more difficult and more frequent in an attempt to further

The author's main point in this article was focusing on the problems of standardized testing in the school system. Ronald Roach states how in the past decade since the no child left behind program was established that there was no sufficient gains in the overall student math and reading scores. The author then goes on to explain how the Obama administration has been criticized over the issues of no child left behind program and how they are not effectively improving the program.

“Unintended Educational and Social Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 311. EBSCOhost. In this peer-reviewed academic journal article, Liz Hollingworth, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, explores the history of school reform in the United States, and the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hollingworth states that the great promise of NCLB is that schools will focus on the education of low-achieving students, reducing the gap in student academic achievement between White students and African-American, Hispanic, and Native American student populations. Hollingworth states that an unintended consequence of NCLB was that teachers and school administrators had to shift curriculum focus in an effort to raise test scores, but in some cases, they had to also abandoned thoughtful, research-based classroom practices in exchange for test preparation. NCLB also affected teachers, highly qualified teachers left high-poverty schools, with low performance rates especially those schools where teacher salaries are tied to student academic performance. Hollingworth concludes her article by stating “we need to be wary of policy innovations that amount to simply rearranging the deck chairs on the

Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal policy. Both Clinton and Bush administrations regulated freedom of choice within their educational policies. Clinton’s Goals 2000 increased standards for student scores within core subjects. Legislation targeting Title I, required States and school districts to “turn-around” low-performing schools, and in 1993, public charter schools increased to over 2, 000 (www.clinton5.nara.gov). Bush’s No Child Left Behind’s structure demanded high-stakes testing and created provision for privatization of public education, as well as “school choice .” No Child Left Behind not only increased the Clinton’s strong accountability disposition, but it also superimposed a new set of accountability rules that would adversely affect public schools (Porter, Linn, & Trimble, 2005). One significant requirement of NCLB is that each state must adopt challenging academic content standards and challenging student achievement standards. Additionally, states must establish Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals for each year from 2002 to 2014—that would culminate in the 2014 goal that all American students would be at or above the proficient student academic achievement standard (P.L. 107–110, 2001). When local educational agencies (LEA) failed to meet their state’s AYP goals, in addition to other criteria, they [LEA] faced the inevitability of losing their accredited status and eventually face school

The Board of Education dates back to 1842. According to the New York City Department of Records, the Board of Education was known as the Board of Education of the City of Brooklyn from 1853 – 1897 (www.nyc.gov). During that time period, records documented educational policy, and school system administration. The Board of Education underwent several transformations. Although the school system as stated by the Department of Records (www.nyc.gov) was known as the Board of Education of the city of Brooklyn, there were also boards in the borough of Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and Richmond.

As part of the 2009 Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama Administration secured $4.35 billion to encourage state-led education reforms known as the Blueprint for Reform. The Blueprint for Reform was a proposal to change the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was first established in 1965 (Rochefort and Donnelly, 2011, p4). In 2002, President George W. Bush‘s made changes to the Act by introducing his education reform plan, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Obama‘s Blueprint for Reform proposal involves changing NCLB as well as encourage the adoption of college and career-ready student education standards (Rochefort and Donnelly, 2011, p4). One of the educational programs of the Blueprint of Reform is the Race to the Top program.

The New Jersey State Department of Education received government, state, and local funding for youths ages 5-17, as part of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program. The question is; how can the states revise and disperse the amount of funding allocated for after-school programs for the current number of children enrolled? How can we raise awareness about the higher enrollment after-school programs offered for children of all ages? The current data shows the ratio of children enrolled versus the number of children not enrolled, offset the amount of dispersed funds, and varies state to state. The New Jersey Department of education allocates the funded money towards after-school programs housed at public schools with a high enrollment rate while other states do not. This leaves a huge gap in society with not enough funds creatively used towards youth programs. Children of all ages should have access to an after- school educational program and support from within their community. Common motivational goals set forth in the evaluation for this program are, for children to receive the enhancement of moral values, equality, and diversity through after-school educational programs within their local school districts. This evaluation is based on the logic model format and designed to meet the needs and demands assessment criteria. Weighing the outcome of an economical developed society in which graduation rates will increase. While, in past the government started

It is fairly common knowledge among people in education and especially the medical field that nursing is a massively growing profession. This fact is seen on the New York State Education Department Office of Professions website where there is data that shows the increase of licenses distributed by the state from 2010-2014. While it is known that there are higher numbers of people flocking to nursing as a profession, it is not always clear why people are beginning to choose this path. From what I can think, changes in the national and state economies, changing gender roles in the profession, and a changing need for types of nurses could be reasons for the changes in data.

As of a 2012 report on annual spending for K-12 standardized exams, the states were spending a combined 1.7 billion dollars on the administering of standardized tests (Chingos, 2012). Many, including myself and likely Jefferson, would argue that it is not the place of the national government to make a judgement on the job of state educators from such a vicarious position. Some would even go as far as to label the policy coercive and destructive to public education because of the penalties imposed for schools which failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals. These penalties started lightly, but schools which were labeled as “needing improvement” for more than three or four years were mandated to provide additional aid in the form of tutoring programs and remedial classes to students which did not improve. In severe cases, schools could be totally restructured by the government, privatized as a charter school, or have the majority of their faculty replaced (FairTest). Many of these penalties like tutoring programs were branded unfunded mandates, since their cost in addition to that of administering annual testing was not covered by federal grants allocated to the states. The result was a conflict between the states and federal governments which resulted in a

Public education in the United States is perhaps one of the most critical issues we face as a nation. Once pronouncing the United States as a “nation at risk”, the educational institution began to implement one reform strategy after another. In efforts to improve schooling for K-12 students, education reform has fiddled with class size, revised graduation requirements, and created standardized testing just to name a few. Unfortunately, traditional public schools are still failing to provide students with a quality education. This is disheartening as we learn that the United States lags behind in math and science compared to our international counterparts. It is safe to say that educational reform has spent billions of dollars over the