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 University of Minnesota obtaining a double major in Communications and Psychology. I must have missed that memo about not doing well enough.

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.

WHY WERE FALLING BEHIND???

Why is that American education is falling it’s student? How about the fact that we are spending more many on education then other countries and were still behind and being out perform by those countries that spend less money than us. You can look at any research that has been done about education within the last decades and the results will show that America’s education ranking is decreasing. That is why I thinking plans such as Race to the Top will create changes in the America’s education system and maybe within the next couple decades we are able to find the perfect education system that will allow our future children to compete against other foreign countries.


As I was blogging through other blogs I came across this Democratic website (www.democratics.org) and toward the top of the page there was a short paragraph that discusses how Democratic party’s goals is forth expanding opportunity in education and ways of doing this is providing every child with a world class education, and it went on say that we as democratic party want to meet our responsibilities to America’s children by ensuring that ours school have resources that will allow student to succeed and meet high standards. This is the kind of energy we need in order for education to improve in America.


Just to understand what is that those countries who are ranked at the top do. I did some research and came across couple researches but this research called WHY WERE FALLING BEHIND, got my interest. The researches basically focus on nine nations that outranked American consistently, on the Programmer for International Student Assessment (PISA). The nations included Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, and our neighbor Canada. As I mention earlier blog post the research focus on areas such as reading, math, and science and base on the standard testing this research concluded that American student are far behind in other nations when it comes to performing the three areas Mathematic, Reading and Science. Below is quote from the common core which is the company that did the research WHY WERE FALLING BEHIND.

While American students are spending
endless hours preparing to take tests of their
basic reading and math skills, their peers
in high-performing nations are reading
poetry and novels, conducting experiments
in chemistry and physics, making music, and
studying important historical issues. We are
the only leading industrialized nation that
considers the mastery of basic skills to be the
goal of K–12 education.