Making a change...

After this class the inevitable question remains what are going to do about unequal resources, inequity in curriculum, censorship and all the other problems that are detrimental to our educational system. We have discussed these issues ad nauseum however it is important to take the next step and actually take action instead of going about our daily lives with our newly gained knowledge just floating around in our heads. Although I don't plan on going into teaching to pass on the messages I've learned throughout this class I feel I can still enlighten other people with the things I've learned. My mom is a teaching assistant at our high school and my brothers are just starting their high schools careers so I think that they could learn something from the topics discussed in class. My mom actually agrees that there are a lot of problems in our educational system and actively discusses things with our principal, as she is now a teaching assistant representative. I think the best way to spread a message is through word of mouth. Truthfully right now I'm worried about getting into law school and doing well in school (i know we could talk about this for a whole class), however I believe through daily discourse I can talk to my friends and other people I know about these topics as we do in our class discussion. I think the best thing we can do for the time being is to talk to people and see what their experiences were like and tell them about ours in conjunction with this class so we can broaden their views and engage them to think critically about our educational system. We should encourage people to question the system, just have been "conditioned" not to. As England states I believe we should, "make a pan to take one step on your journey. Write it down, tell a friend, and then being to march." I believe if we all vow to continue passing along the messages we've learned, that alone can do so much. If people want to do more that's great, however I don't think everything can promise to "march."

How do we prepare our children to live in a "democratic society"?

I think it was interesting that the group this week asked the question, what does democracy mean to us? Usually we sit in the class where the teacher rambles on about how lucky we are to be in a democratic nation and how we have all these freedoms and how everyone comes in America because it's so wonderful. But is it so wonderful? One of our duties/rights as a United States citizen is to vote. A right that many minority groups fought relentlously for, however do we actually take advantage of the so-called power our voices have? It's ironic to me since for the past few years I would get upset with my mom for not voting in county and smaller scale elections. I tell her how women fought so hard for this right and that it was disappointing to me that should wouldn't vote because she was tired, lazy or "too busy." However now being a student I find I have some of the same apathetic attitudes toward voting. Even though I fill out all the absentee ballot information I find I never seem to mail it on time. Although I kind of get angry with myself for this I know that I will definately make it a point to vote in the presidential election since I follow it more closely and have always wanted to vote. The way our democracy is set up many people feel that even if they do vote that their vote doesn't really make a difference. For instance, New York will always be a democratic state, therefore I'm sure many Republicans don't even bother and some Democrats feel that everyone else will vote so why should they? However that exact attitude could actually change the outcome, so in essense their voting or lack of voting does make a difference on a larger scale.

I think in regards to the question what can be done to encourage active democratic participation within schools that will motivate students to be more democratically active within the larger society that we need to stop "supporting theological truths or unquestioned truths so as to legitimate the institutional role schools play in a system of control and coercion" as is mentioned in the Chomsky article. The article brings up another crucial point that our society is not equal but we pretend it to be with things such as the pledge of allegiance. I believe we need to teach what democracy is, how it is applied and compare it to what America is. Instead of being afraid to question it should be encouraged, and we need to stop pretending we live in a Utopian society because we don't.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qf0OqS6fDNo I thought this woman (who is a parent) had an interesting take how schools and how they are undemocratic by nature.

Assessment...how do we make it equal?

The topic of assessment in education is a hard topic to discuss since we all want to criticize the system but don't seem to have any solutions we like. Assessment is the way we evaluate students on how well they've learned and retained the information taught to them and how well they can apply it, however we have discussed that there are so many different learning styles. This makes it hard to teach to individual learning styles and to evaluate them based on these as well. The question was brought up if we should teach to individual learning styles and provide accomodations. I think it's important to incorporate different learning styles because as previously discussed we all don't learn the same way and it wouldn't be fair to the kid who's a visual learner to be lectured to all day, it would give someone else an unfair advantage. However by the same token it must be hard to accomodate all styles of learning (this is why I will not be a teacher). I think there are definitely ways to experiement and try different techniques to see what works the best. I think in our class having the blogs, papers, participation, reading and powerpoints gives a variety of ways for us to learn the information. I believe we should accomodate for those with learning disabilities and possible language barriers. English as a second language becomes an issue with some subjects, such as language arts. Is it fair to give a non-native english speaker a dictionary to help them write an essay in class or with a vocabulary test?

The assessment issue is also difficult because we tend to put so much pressure on tests, whether they be standardized tests or not. I know my brother comes home so upset when he gets a 99 on a test, which seems ridiculous. Personally I remember taking a test in 7th grade that my teacher told me was only to evaluate how the teachers were doing. Little did I know that that test decided whether I was able to get into Math A and Earth Science a year early. Since they recognized that my score on that one test was significantly lower from my other tests (probably because I didn't care about my answers as much) they gave me the opportunity to take another test, however it was around finals time and I opted not to. This just goes to show how heavily weighted a single test can be on the future of our education.

There have been some proposed solutions such as assessing based on performance, creating a portfolio and/or exibitions, however I feel like these are so subjective and hard to grade. As we discussed in class, what makes someone's artwork better than someone's essay? I think the option of creating different projects is a good one but it's the application and evauluation that we need to be weary of.

This is an article introducing PLATO Assessment and the need for formative assessment which England discusses in our education system.
http://www.plato.com/media/Technical-White%20Papers/2/The%20Need%20for%20Formative%20Assessment%20in%20Education.pdf

I agree with England that we need to institute individualized teaching and assessment into our education system. She says, "Rather then trying to force square pegs into round holes, find a puzzle board that will allow for the unique traits of all." (pg. 50) I think this is a great analogy; the only problem is I think it's easier said than done.

Is school choice better?

I didn't realize how the choice of school could be so crucial to one's educational future. This is mainly because I never had a choice of school. When I was younger I went to a Jewish private school, but when my brothers were born we moved into another district since the public school where we lived wasn't known to be a "good school." From then on, however, I went to elementary school, middle school and high school all with the same people. Now that I think about it though having so many choices in schools, to me, seems like its only furthering segregation amongst economic and racial classes. Information about the different kinds of schools, one of many unequal resources is not made widely accessible to parents, whose decision it is to choose where their students attend. The role of parents, then, in my mind is to obtain information about their children's potential schools in order to make an educated decision.

Another role we looked at is the role of our schools to affect other educational decisions we have later on in life. As I discussed in class, my guidance counselor was a huge influence on some of my decisions about colleges and she gave me information that I learned in class maybe every student wasn't given, kind of the inside scoop. I really believe it is a problem that some people are getting this inside information, because it's obviously providing for an unfair advantage for those people.

On the topic of the different kinds of schools; public, private, magnet and charter, I had never heard of magnet schools before. I wonder why that is? I wonder why all these choices are available yet no one really knows of them. Here is a website about magnet schools in NY, there's one in Albany where I live that I've never heard of
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/state_magnets/stateid/NY

So how do we fix this. Surely I don't have the answer, but I believe that government officials and people in high positions deciding educational policies should. They were elected or chosen for these positions because they had a plan, or were supposed to at least. I'm not saying its easy, but many political platforms are about educational reform, but where is the reform?

This might sound silly but I was thinking in class that there should be a Extreme Makeover School Edition show. That show spends so much money fixing houses, which I understand are sometimes in need of fixing (even though I think sometimes they go over the top) I think the money could be spent wisely on a larger scale helping schools obtain at least the material and structural resources they need. It would help the students like the one's that Kozol describes not see the dirty boards and papers all over the floor and holes in the wall and writings all over the desks. Although he says that the physical detriment of schools might not be the biggest problem for schools anymore, I think it is still critical to fix these issues because it affects the students' attitudes and that fixing the structure of the schools is the first step in creating a positive learning environment for the students.

Segregation v. Desegregation in our public schools

Throughout Wednesday's discussion there were so many things I wanted to say although it's hard not to offend anyone. I know we shouldn't care but at the same time we've been conditioned throughout the years to "watch what we say." The first thing I want to say is that although I find it important and beneficial for different ethnicities and races to be immersed in the same educational system together, however I believe that's unrealistic. Never in any realistic social setting are you with an Asian, a black person and a Jewish person. I'm not saying this is right but that's just how things are, and as mentioned in class I'm not sure it's just about students physically sitting next to each other in class, but learning about one another's culture and history that's important. For example in our class all the black kids sit together and all the white, which obviously shows that people are uncomfortable with one another. I mean I understand people being friends with one another but how are we supposed to get to know each other if we automatically seclude ourselves to what's comfortable? I tell my friends this when they're dealing with boys but I think it applies here; you have to put yourself in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation in order to potentially get what you want. Obviously our public school system is still very much segregated but that has something to do with where people live and who they are comfortable living with not necessarily the fact that schools and their districts are doing it on purpose.

Here's a news broadcast on the anniversary of Little Rock 9 discussing how things really haven't changed...http://youtube.com/watch?v=sxSsxwKZxCI

In relation to solutions to this problem, I find it sad that we would even need to make an amendment saying that education is a fundamental right. If it needs to be in our constitution in order for us to take it seriously and to start making reforms then I think there's an even bigger problem with our society as a whole, and this is what we truly need to be considering.

Solutions to No Child Left Behind

During class we discussed many possible solutions to the No Child Left Behind Act that we've concluded isn't really working. However, before we begin to discuss solutions we must figure out the problems we're trying to solve. I thought it was interesting the different spectrum of views regarding race, class and education inequality. Personally, I think that although class does play a huge role as an unequal resource it is unfortunately the case that race and minority ethnicities are often the ones in a lower class. I think we need to ask ourselves what the bigger picture is and, why is this?

We also, towards the end, began talking about charter schools as a possible solution to No Child Left Behind. I think that charter schools are a good way to experiment however I feel like they could also create their own problems. What if a school's method of teaching really isn't working? It's not fair to those students that attended these schools, and what does it mean for their future? I do, however, believe that student, parent and teacher involvement is crucial to the success of a student's education. As I've said numerous times I think education goes behind the classroom, and is even more important at home. I was interested to find how how many charter schools there are in Albany where I live, because to be honest I had never heard of any. I found a KIPP school, the kind we had discussed towards the end of class. I'm curious to find out whether my parents have ever heard of them and why we never discussed the possibility of me going to one. Was is because the information wasn't out there? Was is because I wasn't having problems in my school? Or could it be because going to a public school in the suburban area where I live was the "normal" thing to do? I wonder if other people in our class ever had that discussion with their parents, was a charter school ever an option?

I understand why there haven't been many political reforms regarding education; it's incredibly difficult to think of solutions, however this doesn't mean that we can't keep trying.

http://www.newyorkcharters.org/proKIPPTechValley.htm

The Power in Education

Many things that were brought up in class were relative to power. First off, we discussed the idea of educators choosing what they want us to know. Although sad, but true, the educational system decides for us what is important to know and understand. They (educators, administrators) choose our textbooks, supplement materials, and homework assignments all reinforcing the same concepts and ideas. For example, in class I was shocked to hear about the real reason behind affirmative action, as I believe were many of my classmates. This just goes to show how things are kept from us to reinforce certain ways of thinking. This idea relates to something I thought a lot about in class, "money is power", although this concept seems obvious when it comes to our discussion about unequal education and resources it seems even more prominent. Whoever has the money has the power to decide curriculum, the policies, the resources and probably more. This is just another example of our capitalist society working at its "best."

Another power relationship in education is between the students and teacher. Teachers must gain respect from their students in order to effectively teach the class. Personally I believe that teachers should be "judged" based on their style of teaching, not necessarily on experience nor credentials. What I mean by this is how well the teachers engage and make the students comfortable in their learning environment. Teachers could have gone to the most prestigious school and still come out horrible teachers based on their personality and teaching methods. Throughout this class I have thought of one of my favorite movies of all time, Freedom Writers; although its the exception it shows how amazing some teachers are and the determination and passion they have for helping others can truly change the lives of the students. Here is the trailer from the movie http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809280899/video/973710/20061013/150/973710-700-wmv-s.29179774-173810,973710-100-wmv-s.29179467-173810,973710-1000-wmv-s.29179642-173810,973710-300-wmv-s.29179553-173810,973710-56.6-wmv-s.29179465-173810 .

I was shocked to hear that some teachers change the answers/scores of some students' tests. Although it seems they have the power to do this undetected, do they think they are really helping the students? If anything, they're only making the system more unequal and putting the students at risk for academic failure later on. I know a girl whose parents were told she wouldn't get into SOM based on her grades and SAT scores. Miraculously after her parents discussed with the School of Management that they both worked for the SUNY system, she got in. It's all about networking and it's all about power.

The roots of our unequal educational system comes down to a few things; money, our attitudes and our unwillingness to change and open ourselves to new ideas. It's even apparent in our class that on a smaller scale these are the things keeping our unequal educational system right where it is.