Failures at Success
The reason students don’t do well in school is because the system has set them up for failure. With the implementation of programs to reinvigorate the education system, the use of standards has popped up in a much more prominent role in schools. Unfortunately, a lack of communication between those who created them, the federal government, and those that must implement them, the states, has created an environment in which student achievement levels are low. The demand for students to meet federal and local educational criteria has changed the formative years of today’s youth from a time of learning and growth into years of unequal and incomplete education. One could argue that the only ones at fault are those who interact …show more content…
Unfortunately this is not a new trend. While many credit 2001 and the implementation of the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) by the Bush administration as the start of American decline this is not true. The NCLB is merely one of the newest in a long line of programs by the government to have our students compete with other countries in academic achievement. According to Diane Ravitch, a historian of education and a research professor at NYU, NCLB was an unsound program with claims for raising American scores through rigorous use of standardized testing. Through yearly testing of students, the plan hoped to achieve an increase in student scores. Unfortunately standards and testing are not the only tools necessary for success in education. Indeed, to test a standard students must be taught the material and therein lies the problem. To say that any country can achieve high scores by introducing a standard for nationwide success was a rather ambitious notion, especially in a country where the individual states have their own laws alongside those of the federal government. With fifty states that have their own policy making parties there are bound to be various differences in what the educational standard is or should be. In other words, what a sixth grader learns in Florida in preparation for the seventh grade may not translate to advancement in California …show more content…
The standardization of schools has done nothing to improve education. The promotion of student may have increased number of students who manage to advance in K-12 but the test show they aren’t learning at the same pace. Teachers have always been the focus of student failure. They play their own role in education but they are doing what the system says they
The reason students don’t do well in school is because the system has set them up for failure. With the implementation of programs to reinvigorate the education system, the use of standards has popped up in a much more prominent role in schools. Unfortunately, a lack of communication between those who created them, the federal government, and those that must implement them, the states, has created an environment in which student achievement levels are low. The demand for students to meet federal and local educational criteria has changed the formative years of today’s youth from a time of learning and growth into years of unequal and incomplete education. One could argue that the only ones at fault are those who interact …show more content…
Unfortunately this is not a new trend. While many credit 2001 and the implementation of the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) by the Bush administration as the start of American decline this is not true. The NCLB is merely one of the newest in a long line of programs by the government to have our students compete with other countries in academic achievement. According to Diane Ravitch, a historian of education and a research professor at NYU, NCLB was an unsound program with claims for raising American scores through rigorous use of standardized testing. Through yearly testing of students, the plan hoped to achieve an increase in student scores. Unfortunately standards and testing are not the only tools necessary for success in education. Indeed, to test a standard students must be taught the material and therein lies the problem. To say that any country can achieve high scores by introducing a standard for nationwide success was a rather ambitious notion, especially in a country where the individual states have their own laws alongside those of the federal government. With fifty states that have their own policy making parties there are bound to be various differences in what the educational standard is or should be. In other words, what a sixth grader learns in Florida in preparation for the seventh grade may not translate to advancement in California …show more content…
The standardization of schools has done nothing to improve education. The promotion of student may have increased number of students who manage to advance in K-12 but the test show they aren’t learning at the same pace. Teachers have always been the focus of student failure. They play their own role in education but they are doing what the system says they