Education
The educational community is clearly unsettled by the President's "NoChild Left behind Act" (NCLB) of 2001. Even though one of the strongestplanks of the president's platform was his promise to address the falteringperformance of the US educational system, the resulting bill had sentshivers of nervous tension up and down the collective educational spine.Nationally the country looked forward to a president who would do more forthe educational progress of the country than just throw more money at thesystem. Nationally, the president's record of reviving faltering educationin his own state gave parents hope that their students would once again be However, the NCLB act is not written in the fuzzy language, which hasbecome typical of the educational professionals. It contains objectivestandards for academic progress and tangible fiscal consequences forfailure to improve. Schools that do not reach objective educationalstandards by the 2008 school year risk loosing federal funds. Thepresident, in his straight forward Texas style, identified the feelings ofthe nation's parents well when he said that educators have been given atrust. The wellbeing of the nation's child
Builtto supply a mass- production economy with a docile workforce, they ask toolittle of children, and thereby drain youngsters of curiosity and autonomy. As consumers, we would not purchase producefrom a grocer who continually offered over ripe bananas, bruised fruits,and unripened vegetables. Encourage schools to pursue, or return to, proven education methods 4. Better products were available from other producers. or will she not know how todecode the words due to a lack of phonetic education' John Gatto, a public school teacher in New York, says that it is timefor significant change in the public school system, and he lists a numberof points which are strikingly similar to the NCLB. create an environment for stronger accountability for results from schools 2. Educators also are entrusted with a significant amount of federal funding,and the two resources, children and funds, are given to the publiceducation system with the expectation that the community will receive backwell educated children who are ready to move into the community as welleducated adults. The authors claim that their standardsare rigorous, and that the educational community "defines success in termsof what the student can do, such as: * Apply reflective thinking and decision making * Develop abilities that characterize science as inquiry * Investigate and make sense of, and construct meanings from new situations * Apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate and appreciate written text * Use English language to communicate in social settings. However,educators are not yet committed to the change needed to return theeducational performance of the US to the level of global leadership it onceheld. org, online) The article by Anderson-Steeves, Hodgson, and Peterson takes asimilar approach as it questions the validity of the NCLB. Give parents more choices in seeking educational opportunities for their children by allowing them to transfer their students from poor performing public schools to well performing schools, regardless of district lines. He suggests, as the NCLB act demands, tougher discipline, more standardizedtests, longer days, and the renovation / removal of other more conventionalsolutions which consistently fall laughably short of the mark. He says teachers starttheir careers with a sincere desire to build into the lives of students,but when their hands are tied by multi-cultural disconnectedness and asocialist teaching culture. The president called this a 'reasonable return on ourinvestment.
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Acceptance Essays
