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.

On Your Mark...

Hello All,
Let me start out by giving a brief introduction of myself. My name is DesJohnna Gray, I am a 22 year old student at the University of MN. I have never created, responded to or even read a blog before (I know I'm a little behind the times). Nevertheless, I am excited to make this blog as interesting as possible despite the fact it centers around politics...yuck! While I may not like politics I understand that education is super important and something that effects all of us. The future of our country depends on nurturing and growing strong minds. We do not need another Bush running this country...scary thought...anyway lets get into this Racing To The Top topic and create some good discussions!

P.S. My next post will address an article I found on WhiteHouse.Gov To get to the article just click on the title of this post above; On Your Mark, and it will take you to it. Check it out!

Racing in Circles

Hello Bloggers, ready to Race to the Top? I'd recommend reading the heading or other articles if you don't already know what that means. I am conflicted over how to interpret Race to the Top. On one hand, money to education is a wonderful idea...though I would much prefer it to be aimed at higher education. Now on the other hand, the way the program is being utilized is not fair. Each state had to apply for the money and then the government starts weeding out ones that don't fit their criterion. I am going to have a lot of have diving into this topic and weaving my knife of criticism through the gut of this program. Prepare for the worst to come.

Andrew Neiss

Why Racing to the Top....

where my bloggers at?
Hello everyone this is Hassan blogging, and let me say first I never blog before so
this is experience for me. To start with our topic for this is Racing to the Top Funding, we selected this topic because we felt it was a issue that we related to and it affects us as students. So I wanted to write and tell my blogger little about what Racing to the Top fund is and why it is important that people understand about this issue. My opinion of why racing to the top is important is that racing to the Top brings ideas of how to improve education in American and I am big believer of having higher education. I think Racing to the Top gives schools a chance to show that they do care and are willing create change if it means having student improve education and able to compete again third world countries. This government funding is design for states to compete against each other because the funding is limited. The top seven states that show promising reform in their school system will receive the funding; also this funding has two rounds. Those states who applied and did not get to participate in the first round will get a second chance in the second round to participate in the Racing to the Top Fund. Being a American student I think it’s sad to see American education below other countries that we should not be for example I read research that was done by PISA within 32 countries the research was base on three areas such Mathematic, sciences, reading. The research involves testing students that are 15 years of age in three subjects: Mathematics, Science and Reading. The PISA research included 30 countries including United States, Canada, Mexico, and Spain. All these countries, besides Mexico, were shown to be outperforming American students. After reading and understanding that results from the research I start to think it’s time for America to challenge their education system and create something that will increase the education level, but in this blog I want to hear what others think of and how can this problem be fixed?
My group members and I were interesting finding out what others thoughts were on this issue and if this step is a step toward new form of American education. Do you guys think it’s great idea that the government decided to spend $4.35 billion on idea like this (Racing to the Top)?

Link to Race tot the Top

here is the link that explains what race to top is in government terms and what the government expect each states that plan to apply for the Race to the Top Fund.

(http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/minnesota.pdf)

The Blog Assignment

Here's the blog...Time to start the arguments.