Essay on What's Wrong With Our Public Education?

Teachers shape the minds of students to realize what their purpose is in life. Lately, because of certain educational reforms, it has been hard for teachers to say what they need to say. “In 40-plus states, the math and English guidelines determine the knowledge students have to master by the end of each grade, what they’ll be tested on this year, and in many cases, how teachers and principals will be rated at their jobs once those test scores are released” (Strauss). Most educational reforms are adopting standardized testing and should be reconsidered. Statistics even show that since we have taken part in reforms like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core State Standards math and reading are declining. These standards tell teachers what to teach and what the students should know by the end of the school year. The reforms also evaluate teacher performance by how well the students learn the information. Some people believe educational reforms should not be telling teachers how to teach their students, and others believe that the reforms are absolutely fine the way they are. However the truth is educational reforms are yet to be perfected.

New York City consists of five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The borough that I reside in is Brooklyn. Brooklyn has approximately 2.592 million people inhabiting this district and approximately 23.4 percent of individuals who reside in Brooklyn, NY come from a low-income household or in other words come from poverty. With catholic and private schools being expensive, people have to rely on the education system to provide their children with a good education. In this paper I will be discussing the public school education system ranging solely up to high school in Brooklyn New York and giving a general idea of the New York education system as well.

Here in America every single child is sent to school starting at the age of five years old for kindergarten, and sometimes as early as two years old for pre-school and continue on to get an education late into their twenties, some even going on to take classes the rest of their lives. Education in America is something that is readily available and even is required by law, but taken for granted by many children. On flip side third world countries often do not have schools or public education mandated by government, and most times it is not even available when most children yearn for it. Education is taken for granted in America, and in third world countries where education is almost completely absent something can be learned from their

With over 200 school closing, it is causing classrooms to be too big and become oversized. Some classrooms are so oversized that students have to sit on the floor. The oversized classrooms affects the behaviors of the teaches. Such an environment brings upon stress the teachers of providing the need for every student and running around doing extra errands that the teachers are not paid to

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.

Since the No Child Left Behind Act, also known as NCLB, has come into effect, it has caused some concerns with teachers and parents alike on how well it is working for the students. There have been issues that have arisen that needed to be addressed and instead been overlooked when a child does not meet with the school’s standardized testing and is pushed onto the next grade level.

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.

    Students and parents always blame the teacher for their failure, when students should be taking responsibility for their own education. In the article “Obama needs to speak honestly about education” by Thomas Friedman claims that teachers are held at an impossible standard while students are not even responsible for their own education. Friedman says “Teachers are held to impossible standards, and students are accountable for hardly any part of their own education and are incapable of failing”(7). Everyone learns at a different pace and there are some really horrible teachers but more than half the

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.

their own school funds, mostly with real estate taxes. The bulk of the rest of

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.

Education is an issue that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another. Whether you are a parent, student, teacher, taxpayer, or employee, the effects of education on society can be seen everyday. For this reason, public schools are a top concern among political leaders. Over the past twenty-five years, confidence in the nation’s public school system has dramatically declined. While the public for the most part seems to support their school district, criticism is not lacking. Recent years especially have shown dissipating support. It appears that the prevailing view is that public education, as a whole, is in bad condition and is in need of a renewed effort to fix it. Private schools seem to fare

After many years in the classroom and several as a facilitator, there were many situations that I have observed and or been a part of that did not make me happy I found myself saying what I would have said or done if I was the principal of the school. My heart began to break for those students that were in classes with teachers that did not seem to really care about whether or not the students actually got it but more so doing the bare minimum to say that the skill had been taught. I saw children struggle. I saw children and parents with hurt feelings and then angered by the way a teacher had treated or talked to them. I even saw some teachers that just did not care. I wanted that to change. For years I put off going back to school. I got my Masters in Education right after I

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

When I think about teachers that I have had in the past, several different ones come to my mind. Each of these educators stands out in my mind for a variety of diverse reasons. Whether it is their sense of humor, their tactfulness, their love of the subject matter, their fanatical and sporadic behavior, or their yearning to be childish themselves, I can still remember at least one quality of every teacher I have ever encountered. Every one of these teachers conveyed subject material to their students just as they were educated and employed to do. However, I trust that every professional in the world has an abundance of opportunity for improvement; teachers could discover and improve themselves merely by having