Final Project

It is not about the money, it is about the results and achievements. America ranks last in educational effectiveness-despite spending the most. In Camden, NJ they did not know their alphabet by the 9^th grade, and only knew math up to 4X4. This is unacceptable, children should know their alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten. America is spending $17,500, but what are they doing with the money if the kids still cannot read? People think we should spend more on education but they actually have no idea what we are actually spending that money on. It is obvious that throwing more money into our educations system is not doing anything to improve a child’s education. So what can we do to fix it? There are six different types of schools-magnet, charter, private, religious, voucher, and public. What can each of these schools do that the others cannot? Are there better types of schools than others? What can we really do to fix America’s public education?

First we will look at charter schools. Some say they are not necessarily better than public schools, while others say they are. The issue that bothers me the most is that there are so many people that want to get into, but then do not get in that it ruins the hope for so many other people. Charter schools were originally meant to serve the poorest of the low-income students, but really they only accept a small percentage of low-income kids, but they generally do not admit extremely high risk, high need, or challenging students. Instead of having charter schools we can focus our money and ideas into rebuilding our public schools instead. At the same time though charter schools are run better than public schools so we could just build more charter schools if the government would let us. Students who come from low-income families and/or are ELL, revealed higher success and performance rates in Charter schools than their public-school counterparts. Based off of the documentary “The Cartel” children in charter schools feel more comfortable and safe. They have a better opportunity to learn in charter schools without worrying about their own safety. Just a few more charter schools would make a difference; even if they do not allow every child into their school just a few more would make a huge difference.

Next we will look at vouchers. Education voucher is a certificate issued by the government, which parents can apply toward tuition at a private school (or, by extension, to reimburse home-schooling expenses), rather than at the state schools. Voucher programs are programs that let kids go to the schools they want to go to with the government’s money. Private vouchers for low-income inner-city schools should be used because they allow parents to pay for private schools. Vouchers are intended to allow students and families to choose the school that best fits their needs. Proponents assert that voucher and tax credit systems promote free market competition among schools of all types, which provides schools incentives to improve and greater accountability than any political bureaucracy via voluntary dollar voting (for which public schools are immune.) Controversy surrounds whether allowing families the option of both public and private schools undermines the public education system through threatening its funding and enrollment, but to me vouchers seem like a very good idea. Children who are not able to afford to go to the school that they want to should be able to go to that school.

In the movie “Waiting for Superman” they talk about four different parts that would make America’s education the best it could possibly be and these four different parts are great teachers, prepared students, excellent schools, increased literacy. We cannot produce world-class students if we do not train and support world-class teachers. We need to recruit the best and brightest teachers, and provide these teachers with proven tools, training, and coaching. They should be fairly evaluated using a variety of measurements so outstanding teachers are justly rewarded. We need to set a high standard curriculum and help all kids meet the high standards. Common Core State Standards Initiative is a set of standards which would ensure all students from K-12 are taught using a world-class curriculum. We can help students reach these standards by volunteering at your local school, or being a mentor. All students should have access to excellent schools, but more importantly, EVERY school should be excellent. People need to invest in what they know works, remove other barriers to choice, including charter school caps, so parents can have more options. Reading to a child three times a week makes them twice as likely to score in the top 25% or their class in reading. Tutoring, giving books, or simply reading to children fights illiteracy…one book, one student at a time. Literacy is the number one predictor of a child’s ability to succeed in school.

Stand For Children is an organization that’s mission is to ensure that all children, regardless of their background, graduate from high school prepared for, and with access to, a college education. To make that happen the want to educate and empower parents, teachers, and community members to demand excellent public schools, advocate for effective local, state and national education policies and investments, ensure the policies and funding we advocate for reach classrooms and help students, and elect courageous leaders who will stand up for our priorities. The only thing is that Stand For Children is only in nine different states. What we need is more organizations like Stand For Children in every state in America. We need people that want change.

The most powerful teacher unions, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, continue to block reforms needed to improve our nation’s schools by putting their focus on teachers rather than on the students they teach. We need to stop teacher unions from doing this. Great Teachers and Leaders Law (Senate Bill 191) requires teachers to demonstrate effectiveness three years in a row to earn tenure, 50% of their evaluation would be based on student academic growth. This bill was issued in Colorado, and is a very good start to evaluating teachers and making sure they are the absolute best they can be. There are so many teachers who have tenure that do not deserve to have it. Tenure protects that bad teachers from getting fired then seems to do nothing for the good teachers. If every teacher receives tenure how do you even know the good teachers from the bad? I believe we need to eliminate the bad teachers and start to train the good ones

Some other ways that teachers could improve would be different way teaching styles like making songs as lessons to learn the material. We could also use a method called whole brain teaching, which is another encryption method that the brain uses to encode what is happening. It is a way to make teaching and learning fun again. You are able to engage different parts of your brain so you are not overusing that one part of your brain. Teaching children thinking critically at a young age is important. We are growing into a technological would, why not use that to our advantage? Create learning games and such on the computer. Kids like playing on computers, why not create games so they can actually be learning when they are on the computer?

Based on all the information provided above we can conclude that Charter schools are a very viable option and provide good learning opportunities, but only provide those good learning opportunities to a handful of children each year. Teacher unions only care about what is best for the teachers and not the students they are teaching. Voucher programs are helpful to many parents who cannot pay for a child’s education if that child chooses to go to a private school. But there are still a handful of people who are still against vouchers even though they help out many low-income children. Everyone needs to be on board and help out. There are so many different organizations and programs across America, yet are only in a handful of different states. How about we use these organizations and programs in every state? It is not terrorism that is going to kill America it is urban public education if people do not fix this problem.

Work Cited

The Cartel

http://www.thecartelmovie.com/cgi-local/content.cgi?g=23

The Documentary Film “The Lottery”

Waiting for Superman

http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/people-page/what-you-can-do

Stand for Children

http://www.stand.org/Page.aspx?pid=1268

Common Core State Standards Initiative

http://www.corestandards.org/

School Vouchers

http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/vouchers.htm