For my final blog, I decided to take a different look at educational policies. I have focused a lot on curriculum-based policies, but this week I decided to look at an issue that does not get much attention: segregation in schools. Not only is racial segregation an issue, but economic segregation can have a huge impact on a students education experience.

Obviously, segregation in schools is not legal; however, de facto segregation is still prevalent in schools, especially in urban schools. Public schools in America began the process of desegregation in 1954 after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Despite this ruling, schools today are still fairly segregated, due to where people live. Many people live in neighborhoods with people of the same race as them: such as African American communities, China Town in New York, Latino neighborhoods, etc. Students from these neighborhoods usually end up at school together, and do not integrate with students of other ethnicities. In most cases, students often go to school with kids in the same economic class as them, which can be problematic as well.

This becomes an issue because when many students from a poor neighborhood are in the same school, they will not have all of the benefits that children will have in a wealthier area.  Taxes in poor neighborhoods and communities are lower than the taxes in wealthy areas, meaning that the schools in poor neighborhoods do not get nearly as much funding as other schools in better off communities. These students will have lesser quality materials and learning facilities, higher teacher turnover and less experienced educators, and will not have as many extracurricular activities, such as clubs, organizations, and athletic teams. Because of this, students in these schools are at a disadvantage before they even enter the classroom.

One way that states have been trying to combat this issue is by creating more charter schools. Obama has promoted for more charter schools through the Race to the Top program, which rewards states that are implementing ambitious and achievable education reform. Charter schools usually take children from lower income families and provide them with a better education then they would be getting at their local public school. The problem is that these kids are being taken from the same areas, so they are still with students of the same ethnicity and financial background as them, which only exacerbates the issue of segregation in schools. For example, in 2010 in New York City, 73% of the Charter schools had a white student population of 1% or less. There have been a lot of studies comparing charter schools to public schools in terms of academic achievement, but many studies do not look at the fact that these charter schools often lead to segregation of students.

Charter schools sometimes target a specific ethnicity of students, or they target students from a specific socioeconomic background. Even with a lottery system for choosing students, many charter schools offer programs that would only appeal to students of a certain background, which insures that their applicants will be very similar. Furthermore, families like to choose schools for the children that are known within the community and have students similar to them. All of these reasons have led to the lack of integration in charter schools.

Despite the fact that segregation in schools has not been legal for decades, it is still very prevalent throughout the country, especially in Urban schools. Although there have been many ways that states have tried to combat this, such as instituting more charter schools, this has actually led to more segregation in most cases. This is not an easy thing to fix, so I am curious to see if any policies will be created to combat this issue.

Earlier in my blog, I discussed the No Child Left Behind Act, and how it has not been effective in improving schools across the country, instead focusing too much on standardized test scores to evaluate student’s intelligence. A majority of states have decided to take a different approach to education, known as the Common Core. However, many people are questioning whether this new program is effective, or if, like NCLB, it focuses to much on testing students rather than teaching them.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was developed in 2009 by Governors and State School Chiefs as a way to develop and recognize the value of consistent, real-world learning goals. The effort was to make sure that students everywhere were graduating high school prepared for college and the workforce. Common Core has been instituted in almost every state across the country, but has not had the positive impact the administrators were hoping that it would.

Although many people supported Common Core at the start, there have been multiple people who have backtracked, and stated the many problems they now have with this program. For example, Carol Burris is the principal of South Side High School in New York, and was also the recipient of the New York State Outstanding Educator award given by the School Administration of New York State. When she first heard about Common Core, she was excited, because she felt that it would teach students the skills, knowledge and habits they would need to succeed in life after high school. She thought that the program would focus on the students and on a rich curriculum. Rather, Burris found that Common Core focused too much on testing students, and she was quick to admit that she had been naive when the program was first introduced.

For example, in a third grade music class, students were given the following question:

Kings and queens COMMISSIONED Mozart to write symphonies for celebrations and ceremonies. What does COMMISSION mean?

1. To force someone to do work against his or her will

2. To divide a piece of music into different movements

3.  To perform a long song accompanied by an orchestra 

4. To pay someone to create a piece of music

Despite the fact that this question is probably a bit advanced for third graders to answer, the real concern here is that during music class, when elementary school students are supposed to be having fun and making music, they are instead getting a vocabulary lesson, which is something they have probably already done multiple times throughout the day. But the Common Core puts so much emphasis on learning real life skills such as vocabulary, they push aside other subjects that they see as less important, even though music is a good time for students to relax and have fun, which is necessary for elementary school kids who cannot focus as long as older students can.

Another example is when students are given a challenging reading excerpt and then tested on what they read. Often times, the students do poorly on the test, because the reading portion was too advanced for them. The students then feel discouraged and disappointed when they see they did badly on the test, when in reality they weren’t being tested on things that they had  actually been taught. This kind of testing isn’t good for the student’s confidence, and it isn’t an accurate representation of what they’ve learned.

The real problem of the Common Core is that it focuses so much on testing students on skills that they will need future, but doesn’t teach them what they need to know to pass these tests. Our education system is so focused on testing students to compare results and students across the country, when in reality, there are many other factors that contribute to a student’s learning. Sooner or later, something else is going to come along to replace Common Core, and hopefully administrators finally realize that this new system shouldn’t involve continuously testing students on information and skills they probably haven’t acquired yet.

It’s no secret that in the past decade, the United States has fallen behind other countries academically. There has been a lot of talk about how this problem can be addressed, but so far, no major policies have been passed that could potentially boost the US academically when compared to the rest of the world. Here are some international policies, specifically from Finland, China, South Korea, Shanghai and Singapore, (all high ranking academic countries/regions) that the US might think of considering.

1. Increase the amount of money that is spent on Education- In the United States, only 2% of our national budget is spent on education, which is far less than the amount of money spent on defense and military. In comparison, Singapore spends nearly 20% of there national spending on education, which places more value on learning and education. Singapore recently scored second highest on math exams internationally, whereas American students usually place somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

2. Shorter Schooldays- In the United States, students are typically in school for about 6 hours a day, which equals about 1,080 hours per school year. Students in Finland, on the other hand, only go to school for about 600 hours a year, significantly less than American students. However, this gives the teachers more time to plan out lessons and decide what would be the most effective way to teach certain subjects. I’m not saying that the US should cut back the amount of hours students are in school by too much, but maybe giving teachers more lesson planning opportunities throughout the day could increase the effectiveness of what is being taught.

3. Having students with one teacher for multiple years- In the United States, students are assigned to a teacher for one grade level, and the next year they move on to a different teacher and different classmates. The idea is that for each grade level, teachers need different background knowledge and skills, therefore they only specialize in teaching one grade. In Finland, students often stay with the same teacher and classmates for multiple years, so that the teacher knows specifically how these particular students learn best, and it creates a family-like atmosphere.

4. Higher Teacher Pay- In the United States, the average starting teacher makes $39,000 a year. In Singapore, Finland, and South Korea, teachers make a much higher salary, which makes jobs more competitive to get and requires more training and skills for teachers. Furthermore, teachers in these countries can receive better compensation than American teachers do, which keeps them motivate and passionate about their jobs and about educating the country’s youth.

5. Help Failing Schools- There is a program in Shanghai where better performing schools pair up with the lower-performing schools to help improve quality. The stronger school sends administrators to help improve the lower-end schools, creating teamwork between the educators across the region. The US might want to consider having administrators from top performing schools help low end schools create better management and improve the quality of education there.

6. Smaller Classes- In the US, there is generally no capping of students in classrooms, and occasionally students are in a class with up to 40 other students. However, in other countries, classrooms are capped at a much lower number of students, usually around 25. This allows for more one-on-one attention for each student, and less distractions than a class of 40 would have.

7. Getting the Parents Involved- In the United States, parents are often more concerned with their child’s ability, and when the child does not do well, they blame it on the school or teachers. Whereas in countries like China, the parents are concerned with their child’s effort, and when they don’t do well, the focus is on how the child can improve academically. In China, the parents expect more out of their children, and are generally more involved in their child’s academics than American parents are.

Obviously there are many other factors and policies to consider while addressing the academic progress of American schools, and it is going to take multiple steps to reinvent the American school system. But what do you think? Could any of these policies potentially work for schools in the United States?

Over the past few years, there have been many concerns that American schools are falling behind their international counterparts. There have been discussions on how to fix this problem, but nothing successful has been put into place. Although considered more of an immigration policy than an educational policy, the DREAM Act could be a motivation for thousands of undocumented students to perform better in school, which could help improve the american education system as a whole.

The DREAM Act is an acronym, and it stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. The act has been brought up many times in Congress, although it has never been officially passed on a Federal level. As of 2013, fourteen states have their own version of the DREAM Act, however. The purpose of the DREAM Act is to help young people who were brought to the United States illegally as young children. Obviously, this makes the Act controversial, because some people believe we shouldn’t help any illegal immigrants, while others argue that these illegal children were brought over when they were so young that they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong, and that virtually they have grown up as Americans. It is estimated that there are 65,000 young people that graduate from American high schools every year that came to the US illegally as young children, who would be greatly benefitted by the DREAM Act. Many of these graduates cannot get a college education or good job because they are illegal, which puts their families into a cycle of poverty, negatively effecting their children’s lives and chance at a good education.

There are many components to the current form of the DREAM Act. In order to qualify, the person would have needed to be 15 or under when they came to the US. Furthermore, they would need to be in the US for five consecutive years before the bill was passed. The person also needed to obtain a high school diploma, or a GED, or be accepted into an institution of higher learning. Finally, they had to be between the ages of 12 and 35 when they applied for documentation, and they could not have a criminal record.

Although the DREAM Act has not been passed, in June 2012 Obama announced he would accept requests for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Under DACA, there would be a temporary suspension of deportations for people living in the US illegally who were brought here as young children. However, they needed to have graduated from a US high school, and have followed many of the other components of the DREAM Act.

I had never thought much about the DREAM Act, however, last semester I took Intro to Sociology, and we read a book called “Just Like Us” by Helen Thorpe. The book was a true story about four Mexican teenage girls living in Denver, Colorado. Two of the girls were documented (one was a citizen and one had a green card) but the other two girls had illegally immigrated to the US when they were young children and lacked proper documentation. The book followed these four girls over the span of 7 years- from their sophomore year of high school until the year after they graduated from college, and showed the struggles that the two illegal girls faced.

One of the main focuses of “Just Like Us” was the difficulty the two illegal girls had in their every day lives due to the fact that they lacked documents. They were both bright students, but because they were illegal, it was almost impossible for them to attend college, because in order to receive financial aid, they would need a social security number. Both undocumented girls did end up attending University of Denver due to scholarships and anonymous donations, but the author discusses how different the girls lives, and the lives of other illegal students in the US, could have been if the DREAM Act had been in place. Most of the other students in the girls’ high school were illegal, therefore they had no motivation to study, because they knew their chances of going to college and getting a good job were very slim. If the DREAM Act were to be put into place, many of these students would have a chance to get papers and would have motivation to work hard in school, which could positively impact the entire American education system.

There are many things that need to be changed in the American education system, but enacting the DREAM Act might be a step in the right direction. Giving students documentation will likely motivate them to work harder in school, because they know they have a chance to get a good job. It will also give future generations a better start, because if their parents have citizenship and a good job, the students can focus more on school and less on struggles in their outside lives. Although the policy is not directly related to Education, in my opinion I think it can have many positive effects on schools and students across the US.

Almost everyone in this country has probably heard of the No Child Left Behind Act, but most  people probably do not know its exact details, and what it means for students and teachers across America. But for people who are aware of the policy, it has become a controversial piece of legislation.

The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President Bush on January 8, 2002. The Act drastically expanded the role of the Federal Government in elementary and secondary education across the country. It aimed at improving the education for disadvantaged students, and focused on holding states and schools more accountable for their student’s progress. In retrospect, NCLB never had the effect that President Bush and Congress intended when they signed it into law.

There were many components to NCLB, but one of the main parts was standardized testing. Students had to test to a certain proficiency on the standardized tests, and the scores had to improve over time to meet the “adequate yearly progress” targets, also known as the AYP.  If a school did not meet the State’s target AYP two years in a row, and it was already receiving Title I funding (money given to schools with disadvantaged children), then the school would be provided with technical assistance, and students would be offered the chance to go to another public school. If students didn’t meet the AYP three years in a row, more education supplements would be offered, such as private tutoring. After multiple years of failing to meet the target AYP, the government had the authority to come in and make changes to the school.

There have been many criticisms of NCLB over the years. One criticism of the act is that it is a “one-size-fits-all” approach to education, with too much emphasis on standardized testing. Standardized testing tests for straight facts and information, but doesn’t always encourage problem solving and critical thinking, which are important for students to learn. But because the teachers need their students to do well on the standardized tests, they teach for the test and not for the sole purpose of educating and improving their students thinking and problem solving. Therefore, the students are not getting the well rounded education they need to be successful. Also, many people think that this system gives the federal government too much power and control over the states and their schools. After failing to meet the AYP after five years, the government can make many changes to a school, but these changes may not be the best things for the students and teachers.

Many of the advocates of the No Child Left Behind policy during its early stages have now backtracked, and stated that there is evidence that this policy has led us in the wrong direction. In 2005, the assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, remarked that “We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act… All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents’ generation.” However, four years later, in 2009, once the policy had time to significantly impact classrooms and students, Ravitch came out and stated that she is passionate about improving public education in America, but she now realizes that the No Child Left Behind Act is not going to help.

The NCLB Act officially expired in 2007, however there was a clause that stated that if Congress did not come up with a new education plan, the act would continue. Congress did not create a new policy, therefore the act has continued to affect students and schools. Obama has tried to rewrite the act, but because of gridlock in Congress, nothing official has passed. States can now apply for a waiver from the NCLB Act, if they comply to Obama’s education priorities. The process of how to acquire a waiver, and what it means for the states education system, is still being worked out, however, there is hope that this will lead to more realistic reforms.

In my opinion, the No Child Left Behind Act is not an effective form of legislation in terms of improving our schools and helping disadvantaged children. I am an education major, and from what I’ve learned and studied, standardized testing is not the best way to asses a child’s intelligence and what they have learned. Furthermore, as a teacher, I would not want to be forced to teach for a test rather than teach the students because I wanted them to truly learn and improve on their own. Hopefully in the future, a better education policy will be put into place, but for now, students and teachers are still being effected by No Child Left Behind.