Author Archives: heathergil1

Time and time again multiple studies and my years of experience with children have shown that parental involvement is a detrimental factor in a child’s development, especially when dealing with their academic achievement and behavior. One of the greatest benefits of having an adequate amount of parental involvement and encouragement is that the child’s self-esteem and their standards on what is expected of them increases. If a child does not have anyone setting up any guidelines, this may put them under the impression that no one is preoccupied over their academic standing. Although this is not the case for every child, this is a notion that runs through the minds of many children. Though some parents, especially in urbanized cities, claim to not have enough “time” to be heavily involved in their child’s academics there are multiple ways in which they can positively contribute to their success. Simply motivating a child after knowing that they have a spelling test or congratulating them after receiving a high test grade or influencing them to work to their best abilities when they perform poorly are small signs that indicate to a child that their parent is aware of their accomplishments.

Undoubtedly, while factors outside of schools such as a family’s economic standing, demographics and culture contribute to a student’s scholastic performance, schools that foster a constructive environment for both children and their parents provoke a sense of reassurance. This school-family relationship allows for teachers to openly speak to parents about ways in which they can become involved to support student learning. Their been cases where schools limit family participation within a school, where parents are not allowed to shadow their child for a day or  the school does not offer enough parent-child workshops; what is a parent to do in this sort of case? Since most children spend up to 70% of their waking hours in school, shouldn’t it be equally important that teachers also motivate children since they are around them more than their own parents?

Since the establishment of the No Child Left Behind program (NCLB) there has been a considerable increase in the evaluation of schools based on standardized test scores. Adequate yearly progress (AYP) are used in order to see how far schools are from their initial goal of having all schools reach 100 percent passing rates on state tests by the  end of the 2014 school year which will conclusively eliminate academic achievement gaps (pg 53). One of the main issues with this goal is that if schools or districts do not meet the required quota after two consecutive years schools will have a loss of federal funds, will be put on a “needs improvement” list and may possibly close. Apart from the fact that many schools are already underfunded, students are asked to meet the different score targets while being in overpopulated schools, having a lack of materials and proper training and professional development of teachers.

The widespread inequality has been allowed and accepted by many politicians because it gives them the opportunity to label schools as failures, giving them and their concept of privatization an upper hand. Those that support NCLB believe that these standardized tests and classes of punishment are going to, once and for all, resolve the score gaps and help bring accountability to schools. Forcing a significant amount of accountability onto teachers should be permitted only if schools didn’t already have many of the critical problems they have. If teachers are supposed to be responsive to the needs of students and provide high-quality instruction while teaching to a test, when are they supposed to take into consideration the variables that also contribute to a successful student performance. Students have different ways of learning which standardized tests do not bear in mind.

While these methods may work well in the business world, they don’t work well in the educational system. Children are not products that can be manipulated and tweaked to perform to the standards others want. There are no shortcuts to improving education so why do people try to simplify education and measure it based on tests that may not appropriately calculate a students academic standing? Teacher accountability is definitely important but shouldn’t it be an accountability that builds capacity on both the student and teacher and not fear?

This article looks at accountability on teachers after NCLB

http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=7814

Theoretically, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was constructed for the overall betterment of public school students and was to serve as a means to raise academic standards, close achievement gaps and encourage more accountability onto parents, teachers and students. In reality, NCLB impairs the quality of teaching by forcing instructors to emphasize on raising test scores by teaching to the test rather than focusing on the individual needs and learning abilities of children and encourage meaningful learning. It also does the complete opposite of its initial goals by widening the gap between socioeconomic classes due to the difficulty of test which has caused many students to subsequently fail.

By definition, standards are a level of quality or excellence that is accepted as the norm or by which actual attainments are judged. According to the Educational Research Newsletter & Webinars, by imposing standards on students’ minds we are, in effect, depriving them of their fundamental intellectual freedom by applying one standard set of knowledge. Standardized tests oversimplify knowledge and do not test higher-order thinking skills. These mandatory assessments cannot work unless teachers understand and accept the philosophical underpinnings of standards. One-size-fits-all standards either dumb down instruction to the lowest common denominator or condemn low-ability students to frequent failure.

The common influx of information ingested by students is usually memorized where the majority of the material retained does not transfer into their long-term memory. Scientists have concluded that the key ingredient that facilitates long-term storage is meaningfulness which refers to the degree to which it can be related to information already stored and learning it in a meaningful context. Students are no longer being allowed to test their curiosity; being forced to recall certain information becomes exhausting and a bore. How does this effect students in the long-term once they’ve reached high school and college? Does this encourage students to continue to cram information rather than truly understanding and appreciating the information retained? How does this method measure intelligence and what does this really say about students and teachers?

http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/edPsybook/Edpsy6/edpsy6_long.htm

Recently, the role of schools have become a shifted agent that has altered from being concerned with the quality of education into putting a great emphasis on taking part in a global economic competition. Increasingly throughout the years, politicians and others in the Untied States have become quantitatively interested with education and less concerned with solving some of the more important problems that have continued to trickled down and affect the final outcomes of an effective educational system. Numbers are definitely important and cannot be ignored because they are useful measurable components yet students are not merely numbers; numbers do not have emotions and feelings, numbers do not suffer and numbers do not die because of the poor choices made by others.
The globalization of American educational goals took place with an increasing socioeconomic and cultural divide between the Democratic and Republican parties (pg 421). While both political parties favored improving the national education with testing and creating standards, both had distinctive goals in mind. As Republicans were concerned with maintaining the traditional American patriotism and values, Democrats were trying to tackle some of the more dynamic problems like narrowing down the poverty rate at a young age and incorporating a diversity of cultures which is what our new education system has become. We can no longer ignore the multiple gaps that divide children from such an early age. Many children don’t have a voice yet they are being threatened by detrimental factors such as their public facilities and environment.
Throughout the readings that we have discussed, one of the ongoing concerns of many educators and citizens are the numerous amounts of problems the educational system has. We have witnessed or have been part of a movement where sometimes children are not the problem. Where the student will be well-rounded and intelligent yet outside factors are the components that continue to affect them. How can we confront this issue without it becoming a money problem? Apparently, “everything” in this world involves money but if people were truly concerned about the education of their children then couldn’t there be an alternative way in which this issue can be solved without it becoming a monetary issue? Communal, scholastic and parental involvement can be some of the key components to undertake this problem.

During the 1960s Boston was a highly segregated state, like many others during that period. Around that same time, Jonathan Kozol witnessed countless events that distinctly showed how, both, adults and children were affected by the extremities of racial and economical segregation. When Kozol began to teach in 1964, he was able to see a clear distinction between the public schools systems in the city and in the suburbs where in the cities children were reading below standard levels due to the fact that they had less access to cultivating forms of literature and had to face the everyday burdens of living under treacherous conditions. Martin Luther King, who was see an influential icon during those years, was quoted time and time again for his “I have a dream” speech yet that dream seemed highly unattainable for anyone who wished for something similar. This vision of black and white children attending school together was unfeasible and seemed to be effaced almost entirely.

This was a time when poor education was a permanent American reality that seemed to be accepted (pg 4). People recognized the flaws attached to segregation but not many did enough to change what was happening. Kozol says that children’s voices were missing from the whole discussion of discrimination yet they were the ones that were mostly affected by death zones and streams of toxicity. There was no sense of life in these places where the state had a business of selling hopes to those who had none.

Further in the book, he discusses his experiences in other states. He sees how many people discuss ways on how the educational system can be improved. Could it be hiring experienced teachers, increasing salaries or a boost of parental influence? Over time, we have discussed in class the numerous factors that affect the education and learning capacities of children. One important element to this puzzle, also discussed in the reading, is the demography of the child, where they live and who else lives around them. There is a great distinction between the quality of education of a poor and rich child where different variables and levels of hindrances can get in the way. To what extent do the demographics change the social and mental characteristics of children? The Department of Education and many state departments of education have begun the process of addressing problems seen in schools with low-achieving students.  Since there many different problems within the educational system how do we figure out which problem to tackle first before approaching another?

Racism in America Today

http://theworldofdavid.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/racism-vs-african-americans-in-america-today-at-a-glance/

A Class Divided: Jane Elliott

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjDxAwfXV0

Names Are A Resume Burden

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/29/national/main575685.shtml

With the increasing growth of globalization and multiculturalism in America, the United States recognized that they had to integrate many different world societies within their education system by making education accessible to all. This global movement intended to put a stop on school segregation against women and immigrants and pushed towards equal education opportunities. While Chapter 14 touches on topics like the civil rights movement, school desegregation, bilingual education and the struggle for equal education among immigrants and women, the incorporation of bilingual education remains a  problem today within the American education system.

In 1960, the Convention against Discrimination in Education banned discrimination based on the language of a student and also declared it a right for national minorities to conduct schools in their own languages and cultural traditions (pg 402). From my understanding, bilingual education involves the use of two languages as mediums of instruction. Two popular program models are one in which the native language is used only as an oral medium until the national language can be learned and another where a full range of skills is developed for both languages. Do cultural and socioeconomic factors play a larger part than their native language in students’ academic success? It must be remembered that a person does not qualify to teach merely because he speaks a particular language.

For many years, I’ve seen unqualified teachers teach Spanish merely because they took a few courses at a beginner’s level. What happens when an incompetent teacher cannot respond to their students’ simple questions or when the student cannot understand a teacher due to the cultural differences in language where in one country a word means one thing but in another country the word means something completely different? Also, what happens if the under-skilled worker’s words get lost in translation due to their poor training? These are issues that commonly occur today yet it seems as though desperate measures aren’t being taken, not only with Spanish speakers, but with other foreign language speakers. Linguists and anthropologists should play a larger role in organizing bilingual education programs, developing materials, and training teachers. Bilingual education is not simply teaching English as a second language, but a more inclusive concept which insures for all of our children the opportunity to participate fully in the benefits of American life without having to sacrifice part of themselves to do it.

One of the major topics that interested me the most in Chapter 13 was the unemployment rate among the youth where, during World War II, President Roosevelt wanted to solve the dilemma by requiring military training for all males in hopes that it would be the cure for many of America’s problems. Congress, then, served as a security blanket by passing the GI Bill of Rights and  providing military trainees with the necessary funds needed to continue their education with benefits helping them with their tuition, books, and living expenses. Although this bill caused an astonishing increase in college enrollment, there were some disadvantages that were brought up in this reading and other documents.

One issue with the GI Bill of Rights was that there was a lack of balance between security and military needs. In other words, there was a higher demand for engineers and scientists which weren’t the initial interests of many who were in the military. It wasn’t until the formation of the National Science Foundation that more students were interested in these courses. My current concern with this bill is that many students put so much dependency on the military in hopes of getting a good education. Since our government uses education as an incentive, not all but many, students join the military because either everything else isn’t working for them, because the experience may serve as a way to correct their disciplinary problems, or because they can‘t afford to pay for school so they serve their time in hopes of getting the economic assistance. How often in the GI Bill modified? How effective is the GI bill after having heard that they are sluggish with their payments to schools? If a University or college is waiting for tuition payments from thousands of veterans who attended school under the GI Bill, then what would kind of effect would this have on veterans who don’t have the money to pay in the mean time? What does this say about our government dependency?

During the twentieth century the rise of technology, media and popular culture grew to affect schools by influencing the minds of children and teenagers where the entertainment industry constantly built a social framework of the workings of the world. There was a large debate during the early 1900’s that discussed whether movie censorship should be approved and whether it should be government controlled censorship or self-regulation. Those advocating self-censorship argued that the content of films should be controlled to teach moral lessons to maintain social order among adolescents. The attitudes of educators were that the media were in competition with schools for children’s minds.

Overall, there are ways in which the media can be used to benefit or damage the minds of children because sometimes exposing children to certain things can have either a negative or positive effect. For example, although during the 1930’s, there were media that were used to instill Utopian ways of living, this doesn’t necessarily mean that this is good because it encourages children to believe that there is no other way of life and that if their lives were any different from that represented in the films, then they are not conceived as being normal. Also, sometimes when there is censorship in the media, it produces a false model of how life really is, almost as though the true problems in life are being ignored. Sometimes exposing children to the realities of life and explaining to them why it is right or wrong is a better way of reinforcing good morals and values. How does the media in our current society affect children? Does this differ from that of the effects of the early 1900’s?