The Problem Of Urban School

For decades now, there have been educational problems in the inner city schools in the United States. The schools inability to teach some students relates to the poor conditions in the public schools. Some of the conditions are the lack of funds that give students with the proper supplies, inexperienced teachers, inadequate resources, low testing scores and the crime-infested neighborhoods. These conditions have been an issue for centuries, but there is nothing being done about it. Yet, state and local governments focus on other priorities, including schools with better academics. It is fair to say that some schools need more attention than other does. However, when schools have no academic problems then the attention should be focused

There are various reasons people continue to move from urban areas to the suburbs. These reasons include the fact that rural areas have better education, lower crime rates, better infrastructure, and inequality in the public services offered. Also, with the recent rise the population growth, cities have become more crowded and continue to grow beyond capacity, which contributes to people relocating to less population dense rural areas, such as the suburbs.

The gap between the nation’s best and worst public schools continues to grow. Our country is based on freedom and equality for all, yet in practice and in the spectrum of education this is rarely the case. We do not even have to step further than our own city and its public school system, which many media outlets have labeled “dysfunctional” and “in shambles.” At the same time, Montgomery County, located just northwest of the District in suburban Maryland, stands as one of the top school systems in the country. Within each of these systems, there are schools that excel and there are schools that consistently measure below average. Money alone can not erase this gap. While

In 1983, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform was released. Regarded as a landmark event in American educational history, the report was scathing in its critique of America’s public education system. For many, it was proof of an already growing sentiment – America’s public education system was failing its people. In the aftermath of the report, a movement emerged. The concept of school choice, of returning the decision as to how and where a child was to be educated to the parent, burst onto the national scene. While school choice had a number of vocal supporters, a sizeable contingent arose in opposition. Over time, the topic became contentious and the battle moved to the courtroom. As lawyer Clint Bolick, a veteran of school

In ‘The One Best System A History of American Urban Education,’ David B. Tyack discusses how education has changed from the 1800 's to the 1900 's. He talks about the history of urban public education, as well as the progression of the one best system over the years. In part I of the text, Tyack discusses the increase the number of government in the rural education system and the issues that the education system faced such as lack of space in classrooms because of overpopulation, poor facilities and undertrained teachers who were not receiving adequate pay. The National Education Association (NEA) attempted to urbanize the rural education system. With this change, children would be taught values and skills by trained teachers, who would follow a more structured curriculum which deviates from curriculum they were used to. The rural community opposed this new system of education, perhaps because they felt they would lose control of how they taught their lessons because with the new system, they would have to follow the State Course of Study. Today, we still see this happening in schools where at the beginning of a school year, teachers are given a curriculum that they must follow in teaching their lessons as opposed to teaching what they want whenever they want to.

Politics have made up a large part of public education in the United States of America since Anglo-Saxons came over from Europe. The effects that politics and governmental policies have had on public education have been evident throughout the history of the United States and are still apparent today. Beginning with assimilation and acculturation in the 17th century and continuing on to programs such as President George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Mississippi Healthy Students Act of 2007, it is clear that governmental policies have and will always affect public education in the United States.

1. Public school districts in urban areas face unreasonable obstacles to providing a quality education for low-income students. A funding mix of federal, state, and local funds can lead to many urban districts receiving less funding per student than suburban districts. Students in urban districts need more resources due to significantly lower household incomes and household education levels. Many cities face an increasing number of for profit charter schools that reduce student population without providing a higher quality education. State funding in Ohio severely penalizes districts with shrinking populations, so the rising number of charter schools hurts public districts. The best way to tackle this issue is to change state education funding to help districts that need it the most. Basing state funding more on average house pricing or family income instead of population growth and standardized testing could help equalize education quality. Changing funding metrics and

Urban school districts have the odds stacked against them. Often times the families attending urban schools live in poverty. Poverty creates many social-emotional, mental, physical, economic and educational issues. People regularly blame the students or their families as a reason why students in urban settings are receiving unequal education when compared to their suburban counterparts. What is not considered is “educational outcomes for students of color are much more a function of their unequal access to key educational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race” (Darling-Hammond, 2007, p. 320). This shows that although poverty is an important issue to tackle, focusing on better preparing teachers and staff to deal with the special circumstances in urban situations is a higher priority when thinking about

All of this had nothing to do with the socioeconomic status of the residents of the school district. This had everything to do with taking extreme and often ridiculous measures in an attempt to put on a façade of fiscal responsibility. Oftentimes the harebrained ideas backfired, and caused taxpayer dollars to be wasted.

The case study of the Branden Smith and his first year in the Parkland School District is a prime example of what can happen when there is a lack a control and guidance in the educational setting from an administrative perspective. Branden’s mentality is soon completely altered and jarred from optimism to pessimism within a matter of months after working in the Parkland district. He has formed a common mentality amongst many teachers that teach in an urban setting develop which I like to refer to as “Urban Fatigue”. Urban Fatigue is a mental, physical, and emotional state that you often find teachers in the urban school settings develop over time. This state seems to be far more progressive amongst teachers in the urban school setting than teachers in the suburban school settings. I attribute this fatigue to the fact that many teachers in the urban settings often are challenged with more disciplinary and behavioral issues, lack of parent support, lack of departmental and district funding, and overall structural issues within the learning environment and community. These factors attribute to the concept of “Urban Fatigue”. The case study of Branden Smith is an example of what can happen when the factors of “Urban Fatigue” set in due to a lack of school cultural, climate, and structural framework are not fully implemented by the administrative parties.

Reformers like D. C. Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, and educator and charter school founder, Geoffrey Canada refuse to accept the status quo. Rhee drew fire in her efforts to make changes in the D. C. school system. Under her administration resources were diverted from administrative budgets and redirected into the schools. Rhee watched test scores rise as a result. She was able to make sure each school was equipped with art, music and P.E. teachers, along with a nurse and librarian. What the Chancellor wasn’t able to do was extend school days, measure the effectiveness of her teachers or change the terms of tenure.

Is the current structure of the America’s educational system holding us back from making progress? This topic is a current debate within educational and political circles, yet a solution to America’s educational crisis has not been established. One party feels that schools should be nationally controlled or moved to the private sector and only through aggressive reform can real progress be made. The opposite side of the argument feels we should hold onto America’s traditions, and the constant inconsistencies and reforms have caused the educational crisis. Unfortunately the U.S political climate controls our system and treats students as another campaign point. The U.S. educational system needs some aspects of educational control under a standardized, national system while other aspects of education should remain in the hands of local communities to uphold the diverse cultural needs of America’s students.

Local control of school districts has proven to have mixed results. Local control allows districts to experiment and keeps problems from one district affecting another. At the same time however, local control keeps good ideas from spreading quickly. Local districts have produced a diverse range of possible solutions to the problems that public schools face. Unfortunately, the huge amount of diversity that is present from district to district has also made progress harder to measure.

The essential question I will focus on for this CREQ is “What kinds of changes need to be made in schools to better serve and reflect our multicultural communities related to curricula, policy, and engagement and collaboration with the families that schools serve?” The most prevalent idea that I took away from Chapter 4, 5, and 6 of Emdin’s text about how to better serve multicultural students was for teachers to rethink their role in the classroom, along with their students’ roles. In order to challenge the traditional urban education paradigm, Emdin instructs that educators make use of tactics that shift the teaching into the hands of the students, including: cogenerative dialogues, co-teaching, and cosmopolitan classrooms. Using these methods, students become responsible for

The purpose of decision making is to improve the overall educational performance of all learners in any school. In order to make decisions, a leader must, whether it is a teacher or administrator, make effective decisions that promote successful performance of everyone involved. With the intention of successful performance, society continues to mandate schools deliver a high quality, multi-disciplinary education to all students, while seeking a guarantee that promises successful learning and adulthood employment for each of our children. To complicate this matter, schools are searching for ways to effectively meet the needs of all children. This is the case with John F. Kennedy School.