Stan Karp did a good job on correlating external and internal factors that give off the disparities that have driven the inequalities within schools. Karp expanded in the areas of school vouchers, cutting off the arts, and money being spent wastefully on collecting data. There are core needs and priorities that are being ignored. We have children living in extreme poverty, but we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on education research whiles we can be bring big social change in communities.
Often you hear about prospective programs in education you know it wouldn’t work and you think who would think of initiating such an effort. To our dismay these programs are started and fail putting us further behind in reforming our schools. No child left behind is actually doing the adverse and further crippling our school system as Kohn mentioned in chapter 5.
School curriculums are not meeting the demands of the standardized exams. Those students who do well are given a voucher to go to a private school. By supporting private schools a message is being sent we don’t believe enough in public schools, how damaging. Where the focus and monies should be instead of paying private tuition is in bringing unemployment down in areas where it is highest. Giving children good health intervention, so they don’t have to miss school because of asthma. Get rid of lead poison in building so the kids can actually focus in school. Stop mandating Adequate Yearly Progress because there is no real progress until we face these core problems.
In beginning we learned the fundamentals of why public schools were started. It was geared towards patriotism and helping the poor rise up against poverty. Today that cause is lost according to Meier. Schools are busy, but not producing. The government needs to foster collectiveness and stop encouraging separation. Separation is being encourage through the many school alternatives presented to families when things do not work out in their schools. In order to fix these problem we need to bring zone schools together by holding the whole district accountable for individual school failures.
