How can you argue with better education for American students? Why would you NOT want more money invested in our education system?
Race to the Top is designed to do both of these things. They are the social needs that people have been pushing for for so long. It is a program designed to promote proactiveness in schools. I like that, why throw away money to unfruitful resources? No, make it a challenge. If you want the resources prove that you are going to put them to good use.
So let’s look at the reform ideas in Race to the Top:
1. Designing and implementing rigorous standards and high-quality assessments.
2. Attracting and keeping great teachers and leaders in America’s classrooms.
3. Supporting data systems that inform decisions and improve instruction.
4. Using innovation and effective approaches to turn-around struggling schools
5. Demonstrating and sustaining education reform.
Seems straight forward to me; the government is saying they will create and put into action tests and measurements of those tests in order to keep teachers, students and schools from slacking, instead, they will keep improving and deter them from mediocrity.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Read me
There are four specific areas of reform that Race to the Top wants to make:
• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around our lowest-achieving schools. (ed.gov)
Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy
Preparing students to succeed in college and the workplace huh? College is becoming a less viable option for many students because of the continually increasing cost of it. Due to decreased state funding at the federal government the U of M has a $100 million cutback. The primary way that U will pay for this will be with increasing tuition again. I’m not sure if building towards a new future in college is effective if there is not a manageable way to pay for college.
Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction
The idea is good and all but it sounds so hard to actually implement. From what I understand about learning each student is different and requires slightly different things to maximize their learning potential. In this way the prospect of creating a system that measure students and then formulates some plan on how to improve instruction seems like a pipe dream.
Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most
Not every classroom can have a teacher like Jamie Escalante to teach troubled youth (watch Stand and Deliver). Also from how I see it, to develop better teachers we would need to improve the conditions in which they obtain their teaching ability. A teacher needs to get a college degree, which is becoming increasingly expensive. Financially speaking teaching is not a good career course.
Turning around our lowest-achieving schools
That is a legitimate concern. Show me a plan on how you’re going to do this. I have yet to see an actual good, proven plan of action. Show me that plan and maybe we can warrant the $500 million Tennessee got.
• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around our lowest-achieving schools. (ed.gov)
Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy
Preparing students to succeed in college and the workplace huh? College is becoming a less viable option for many students because of the continually increasing cost of it. Due to decreased state funding at the federal government the U of M has a $100 million cutback. The primary way that U will pay for this will be with increasing tuition again. I’m not sure if building towards a new future in college is effective if there is not a manageable way to pay for college.
Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction
The idea is good and all but it sounds so hard to actually implement. From what I understand about learning each student is different and requires slightly different things to maximize their learning potential. In this way the prospect of creating a system that measure students and then formulates some plan on how to improve instruction seems like a pipe dream.
Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most
Not every classroom can have a teacher like Jamie Escalante to teach troubled youth (watch Stand and Deliver). Also from how I see it, to develop better teachers we would need to improve the conditions in which they obtain their teaching ability. A teacher needs to get a college degree, which is becoming increasingly expensive. Financially speaking teaching is not a good career course.
Turning around our lowest-achieving schools
That is a legitimate concern. Show me a plan on how you’re going to do this. I have yet to see an actual good, proven plan of action. Show me that plan and maybe we can warrant the $500 million Tennessee got.
Mur links
1. a. Programme for International Student Assessment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment
b. Anybody at all
c. This source is just an overall of what PISA is and the study results that they found. Wikipedia is useful in general as a collaboration of information about it all in one spot to be convenient to the reader. In particular though it lends us information as to why our education is being viewed as inferior to some countries through these tests.
d. This source is useful because it visually shows the ranking of United States children compared to other countries. In seeing that the US ranks significantly behind other countries I can now frame arguments around this fact. Even the actual terms of the test are never discussed it doesn’t really matter because most American’s would typically be awed by ever being behind any country that they view as even partially lower than themselves, and with the relatively low ranking US it’s pretty safe to say that there is at least one country that does this.
2. a. Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html
b. Amanda Ripley
c. This source overviews a study conducted by Roland Fryer on ways to improve student results in a few different areas.
d. The use of this article was to show how to allocate the $500 million that Tennessee was given. The results of the study did show that progress was made through a cash reward system. The outlook on this is generally unpopular but it still worked. It was a very cynical way to support Race to the top.
3. a.Want a Higher GPA? Go to a Private College
http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/109339/want-a-higher-gpa-go-to-a-private-college?mod=edu-collegeprep
b. Catherine Rampell
c. This article, at least to being, shows that there has been a study rise in GPA over the last 80 years. The article also touches on many more topics that I didn’t delve into.
d. This source was useful in the factual information that I could take from it. It also leads into many more interesting topics of discussion for the reader, only is if they read it though. The topic could easily expand into more blog posts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment
b. Anybody at all
c. This source is just an overall of what PISA is and the study results that they found. Wikipedia is useful in general as a collaboration of information about it all in one spot to be convenient to the reader. In particular though it lends us information as to why our education is being viewed as inferior to some countries through these tests.
d. This source is useful because it visually shows the ranking of United States children compared to other countries. In seeing that the US ranks significantly behind other countries I can now frame arguments around this fact. Even the actual terms of the test are never discussed it doesn’t really matter because most American’s would typically be awed by ever being behind any country that they view as even partially lower than themselves, and with the relatively low ranking US it’s pretty safe to say that there is at least one country that does this.
2. a. Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html
b. Amanda Ripley
c. This source overviews a study conducted by Roland Fryer on ways to improve student results in a few different areas.
d. The use of this article was to show how to allocate the $500 million that Tennessee was given. The results of the study did show that progress was made through a cash reward system. The outlook on this is generally unpopular but it still worked. It was a very cynical way to support Race to the top.
3. a.Want a Higher GPA? Go to a Private College
http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/109339/want-a-higher-gpa-go-to-a-private-college?mod=edu-collegeprep
b. Catherine Rampell
c. This article, at least to being, shows that there has been a study rise in GPA over the last 80 years. The article also touches on many more topics that I didn’t delve into.
d. This source was useful in the factual information that I could take from it. It also leads into many more interesting topics of discussion for the reader, only is if they read it though. The topic could easily expand into more blog posts.
Monday, April 19, 2010
I completely agree with the urgency of the educational crisis we are all in right now. Our children are lagging behind in so many vitally important areas compared to the rest of the world. The grandparents and great(^nth) grandparents would be so ashamed of our lack of intellectual prowess. Why we have hardly made any progress with education over the past few decades and if anything we are only falling more behind. If you haven’t yet, you should all watch the movie Idiocracy. It foretells of a world in our not too distant future where all of the intellectually lacking individuals continuously reproduce until America is reduced to a society of Neanderthals.
I would like to see information to the contrary. It’s not like the average GPA has been rising over the years. Or even that the average IQ has risen over the years, cough Flynn effect cough. Well racing to the top wants to make sure that we raise the smartest kids in the world gosh darn it. Stagnation is just not a word we believe in with education. We’re falling behind world wide standards on success. Damn you PISA assessment, we’re trying to get smarter but we just can’t find the motivation. We just need those few extra spots and that will solve all our problems in this country, if our 15 year old children only score higher in mathematics and science we can fix health care, social security and all the violent issues in the world.
The $4.35 billion is just not enough to combat this issue. We need to fund this program more to make sure that we show the world that we have the smartest kids with the highest graduation rate in the world. Only after spending billions more on fixing these test scores can we find a way to fix the economy and pay for health care. The children are our only hope for the future.
I would like to see information to the contrary. It’s not like the average GPA has been rising over the years. Or even that the average IQ has risen over the years, cough Flynn effect cough. Well racing to the top wants to make sure that we raise the smartest kids in the world gosh darn it. Stagnation is just not a word we believe in with education. We’re falling behind world wide standards on success. Damn you PISA assessment, we’re trying to get smarter but we just can’t find the motivation. We just need those few extra spots and that will solve all our problems in this country, if our 15 year old children only score higher in mathematics and science we can fix health care, social security and all the violent issues in the world.
The $4.35 billion is just not enough to combat this issue. We need to fund this program more to make sure that we show the world that we have the smartest kids with the highest graduation rate in the world. Only after spending billions more on fixing these test scores can we find a way to fix the economy and pay for health care. The children are our only hope for the future.
Paying the Future
Re-re-refutation time. I feel that I may be too hard on the idea of putting billions of dollars into education. Even if I have never seen a specific plan for what the money is to be used for except ‘reform’. The first and largest recipient of money is Tennessee at $500 million. I wonder if they have a plan for how to allocate all that money because after reading this time article I believe I may have found a way to improve kids reading skills at the least. To read up on the evidence I’m citing I recommend reading the article Is Cash The Answer? Bear with me on the title here.
Long story short this Harvard educated guy paid $6.3 million to 18,000 kids to see how it worked in different contexts. The experiments that showed the best results were paying second graders to read books at $2 a pop and paying sixth, seventh and eighth graders for five different things like attendance and behavior. Who would have ever guessed that you just had to pay kids to get them to read! According to Wikipedia Tennessee has about 6 million residents and I’m just going throw out another number saying that there are about 2 million children that Race to the top is trying to effect. That $500 million could easily go to just simply paying the children to do what we want. Why should we waste money on reforming a system at the prospect of possibly making change rather than just throwing the money at the children? Hell, $500 million could easily pay for every kid in the United States to at least read one book. Reading is shown to help improve reading comprehension. I think we found our reformation, paying them. It is just so simple that it can’t possibly be misinterpreted.
Long story short this Harvard educated guy paid $6.3 million to 18,000 kids to see how it worked in different contexts. The experiments that showed the best results were paying second graders to read books at $2 a pop and paying sixth, seventh and eighth graders for five different things like attendance and behavior. Who would have ever guessed that you just had to pay kids to get them to read! According to Wikipedia Tennessee has about 6 million residents and I’m just going throw out another number saying that there are about 2 million children that Race to the top is trying to effect. That $500 million could easily go to just simply paying the children to do what we want. Why should we waste money on reforming a system at the prospect of possibly making change rather than just throwing the money at the children? Hell, $500 million could easily pay for every kid in the United States to at least read one book. Reading is shown to help improve reading comprehension. I think we found our reformation, paying them. It is just so simple that it can’t possibly be misinterpreted.
Edumacation
These PISA reports are starting to get on my nerves. If you don’t know what the PISA reports are I recommend going over to the Wikipedia page, Programme for International Student Assessment. No, I don’t just hate it because it makes people interpret American education as this giant machine that devours money and spits out mediocre results, it’s because it makes people interpret American education as a giant money guzzling machine that doesn’t produce results. Wait…I guess that is pretty much the same thing. If you actually checked the link you would see that the United States is ranked 15th in reading literacy, 24th in mathematics and 21st in Science of the 29ish countries ranked on the list. Now let’s break this PISA thing down:
First of all, I mentioned that it is a hungry wolf ready to devour all money that comes within 100 feet of it. That actually isn’t too far off. America spends more on each student than anywhere in the world. We spend over $11,000 per student here and Switzerland is the only other country in the same ballpark we are and they rank 17th, 7th and 11th respectively in the above mentioned categories. So, there doesn’t seem to be a correlation to spending and getting the test results that the public seems to ache for. What is race to the top doing again? Oh right throw billions of dollars at the problem at some outside chance that something meaningful is found.
The next issue I am putting my sights on is the results section of this assessment. There are over 203 sovereign states in the world and this assessment only includes 30. Oh, so you think that we should really only judge ourselves versus the upper echelon educators, fine be like that. I find it hard to believe that the United States is lacking behind in most of those areas too overall. At the extremes, the United States still produces/d the greatest mathematic and scientific minds in the world. I hope I will not have to qualify that statement later…come on.
All right, there is one last part of this assessment that isn’t really ever mentioned and that is the goal of American education or rather ideas. If you’ve grown up in America and have been educated here, assuming that you’re reading this that is pretty likely, you know how our classrooms are structured. What I mean is that there is an open forum for questions to be asked and creativity to be formed. The open forum type of teaching is in sharp contrast with cultures like the Japanese who are silent during class. The Japanese also rank higher in every category. I understand that correlation doesn’t prove causation but it is a factor still. In America there has and will always be a stress on the creative side of everyone. I will again assert that America has nurtured some of the greatest entertainers in the world. Should we sacrifice creativity for gaining a few spots on this test so we can stick it to the world? Or maybe Race to the top will unearth some magical line that perfectly incorporates all of it. I won’t hold my breath though.
First of all, I mentioned that it is a hungry wolf ready to devour all money that comes within 100 feet of it. That actually isn’t too far off. America spends more on each student than anywhere in the world. We spend over $11,000 per student here and Switzerland is the only other country in the same ballpark we are and they rank 17th, 7th and 11th respectively in the above mentioned categories. So, there doesn’t seem to be a correlation to spending and getting the test results that the public seems to ache for. What is race to the top doing again? Oh right throw billions of dollars at the problem at some outside chance that something meaningful is found.
The next issue I am putting my sights on is the results section of this assessment. There are over 203 sovereign states in the world and this assessment only includes 30. Oh, so you think that we should really only judge ourselves versus the upper echelon educators, fine be like that. I find it hard to believe that the United States is lacking behind in most of those areas too overall. At the extremes, the United States still produces/d the greatest mathematic and scientific minds in the world. I hope I will not have to qualify that statement later…come on.
All right, there is one last part of this assessment that isn’t really ever mentioned and that is the goal of American education or rather ideas. If you’ve grown up in America and have been educated here, assuming that you’re reading this that is pretty likely, you know how our classrooms are structured. What I mean is that there is an open forum for questions to be asked and creativity to be formed. The open forum type of teaching is in sharp contrast with cultures like the Japanese who are silent during class. The Japanese also rank higher in every category. I understand that correlation doesn’t prove causation but it is a factor still. In America there has and will always be a stress on the creative side of everyone. I will again assert that America has nurtured some of the greatest entertainers in the world. Should we sacrifice creativity for gaining a few spots on this test so we can stick it to the world? Or maybe Race to the top will unearth some magical line that perfectly incorporates all of it. I won’t hold my breath though.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Top to the race
Reformation in schools. That is the primary reason that we are here today, well reason why I’m writing and that you’re reading this. Our school system that is in place right now is failing to prepare the children of these states for the outside world. Everyone can cite their own reasons and statistics to point at something that is wrong in the system. Like say the lagging test scores behind different countries in the world or the lagging graduation rates in some cities. Behind all of it we can all still agree on one unifying claim…that we need change in our schools.
Though there is one problem, I am a product of those schooling systems. I went through them all and came out the other side. Right now I am a junior at the
I just don’t get it. Nobody tried to get me to study hard or prepare for tests. I had to find my own reasons to make sure I got grades. This new race to the top fund is throwing billions of dollars at states to try and reform their system of education. I am curious to see what they have in store. How do you motivate people to want to study and do well on tests? It surely isn’t an issue of money, unless you literally hand money over to students for studying and doing well on tests. Motivation is not something that just happens with reform, it is found in each person in every walk of life. If you want to make it there are avenues and steps to take no matter where you live.
I did exceptionally well in high school like so many of my peers here at college but I never could say that I tried back then. That may be my most exceptional trait. I could breeze through high school without reading or studying and still pass with good enough grades to get into college. But when I read about all these new initiatives that people want to pass all I hear about is how we need to try and force these kids to do well on standardized tests and make sure they get to college.
What I hear about in my situation is that I was privileged with my upbringing and had all of these wonderful opportunities to succeed. I’m not sure when the last time those people went to high school was. There was nothing put in place to keep me or my fellow students in line. There was not the constant reminder that we need this diploma to do things in the world. All that was ever around me was the feeling of want. I wanted to get my diploma so I could move onto college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life but I knew that college was a step in the right direction. No amount of money will sustain change if it isn’t made from within first.
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