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She elaborated on how the government used business tactics to try and improve the school system. They felt they could “fix” education by applying principles of business, organization, management, law, and marketing. In poor neighborhoods, if the teachers and students weren’t performing at their best abilities the schools will be shut down and the teacher will be fired. Similar to the business industry, if your business isn’t prospering it will eventually be closed. In middle school I attended a school not far from home. The teachers were great and I learned a lot. My eight-grade year they knocked the school down. Many students, like myself, didn’t have transportation to far off school nor money to ride the buses every day. Tearing down schools in poor neighborhoods is something I will never agree with. I feel like we should build the poor schools up and not tear them down. She also felt as if testing has become a major part in the educational culture. Teachers are teaching how to pass a test rather than focusing on the essentials of education. She feels schools should focus less on tests and more on liberal arts, science, history,…
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Throughout the United States, there are many regular disparities among our education system. First, there is an alarming disparity in education especially in the United States. Students from lower socioeconomic statuses do not always receive the same education as those from higher socioeconomic statuses for many reasons. In areas with lack of resources there tends to be poorer school institutions in comparison to wealthier neighborhoods. In addition, public schools are funded by taxes and therefore, the quality of teachers and amount of resources depends on the quantity of taxes individuals pay. Within these areas, families…
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The book, Ain’t No Makin’ It, allows us to enter the world of two distinct peer groups in a low income housing project in America. Jay MacLeod takes us on a journey to explain why the attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and aspirations of these two groups of teenagers differ so greatly despite their similarities. One of the primary focuses is on education and the Hallway Hangers and Brothers experiences within Lincoln High School. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are important documents whose intention is to guarantee basic rights to all people, including children, regardless of where they live in the world. Both documents unequivocally state that education is an important and fundamental right for all. After reading this book, it is my belief that the United States falls short in fulfilling the educational rights set forth in these important declarations. The Brothers and Hallway Hangers were not granted an education that promoted tolerance, encouraged attendance, or provided equity in their education.…
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Civil Rights heroes such as Ruby Bridges and Linda Brown should not be just admired from afar, but serve as an example to emulate (610). Students should be able to see and speak about their present-day situation where only “1 or 2 percent of the enrollment” (611) is white and the rest of the students are black. Kozol makes a funny observation where the few white children he has seen in majority black schools have only been there by mistake; they were new foreign immigrants and were usually transferred out when the mistake was realized. He then goes on to mention some example schools when modern-day segregation is in effect. Most inner-city schools do not even abide by the rulings of court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education or Plessy v.…
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Most parents in working class schools don’t have the best jobs, they don’t have the best income, and they don’t have the best school systems to send their children to. Anyon found that kids in the working class schools, some programs were different than others. One school would go into depth about a certain topic, and another would barely touch on the topic and the teacher would make no effort to try and help the students. The teachers wouldn’t let the children out when the bell rang, keeping them after class to continue the work so the teachers could socialize. In working class schools, Anyon says that the teachers care more about themselves than their students.…
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Grounds: In Alabama 18% of 8th graders are proficient in math, 14% in Mississippi, 40% in New Jersey, 35% in Connecticut, 40% in New York, 26% in Arizona, and 24% in California. These statistics further prove the claim that many schools in America are doing well below average work in teaching and preparing students to get jobs and be well educated citizens. Sometimes it isn’t the parent’s choice to send their son or daughter to these failing schools. Why should they be even more penalized, especially penalizing a young child? Some of the parents are very involved and it’s the teachers who are not doing well and making the learning environment nonexistent. We now have really good, time-tested knowledge of what works in education. We know that good teachers accelerate student learning and poor ones significantly impede it. Parent engagement makes an enormous difference. And with every step down the economic scale, good teachers and parent engagement matters more. We’ve also learned that this knowledge has seldom affected the assignment of teachers, whose own preferences and protective work rules lead them to the schools whose students need them least – but whose political clout is greatest. Failing schools don’t usually attract the best teachers. And the system doesn’t place them there. Skip to next paragraphWe’ve learned that, for teachers, greater experience and more college credits are a weak indicator of teacher quality measured by the all-important question of a teacher’s consistent ability in improving her student’s learning. For school leaders – principals and superintendents – experience does matter. More experienced leaders tend to be better at their jobs. Most important, we have learned – and are still learning – just how important leadership is to the whole reform effort. We know that strong…
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The Shame of the Nation was written in 2005 by author Jonathan Kozol. In this book he discusses how underprivileged children in lower-income school districts are treated differently than the children in middle-class school districts. The middle-class children have easy access to pre-school but very few children in the lower-classes have access to pre-school. As a result, when lower-classes are finally able to attend school, they are below the grade level set by government, they are forced to deal with overfilled class rooms, unskilled teachers and inadequate resources. The children in financially restricted school districts must take and pass the same exams as the children who have had access to better schooling since they were a toddlers. He notes how tough it is for kids to do well under these circumstances and that those who do well are considered to have courageous talents. Kozol uses comparison and description to persuade the readers something needs to be done about the issues.…
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This article shows just how many students are dropping out of schools all across the nation, from small rural schools to big suburban schools. They focus on a town called Shelbyville, IN to show us about students who dropout and why it happens. They also talk about how America is very oblivious to the dropout rates because many schools cover up the actual dropout rate using the GED trick. They talk about how at this high school in Shelbyville they had what they call “push-out” students rather than dropout students, as they do in many other schools. They say how the school used to have the tendency to focus more on the needs of the rich kids, even though the poor students were the ones who really needed the attention and help. They say how the…
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In Fremont, students are forced to deal with squalor conditions and absurd rules. The staff, students, and even Kozol see no reason as to why it should be this way. The reason is brought to light with a discussion between students, which Kozol instigated. Mireya, a bright young girl at Fremont, confessed to Kozol that she did not want to go to the factory to sew like her mother but wants to go to college. A student named Fortino chimed in telling Mireya that the factory needs people to sew. He tells her that because she's "ghetto" she is already destined to sew at the factory. His words are crude but truthful. Fremont has twenty fewer school days than other schools and sometimes students need to take on part-time jobs just because they need the school credits. The school has more substitute teachers than actual teachers one substitute even saying “Just yesterday I was subbing [for] a substitute who was subbing for a teacher who never shows up,” (721). Many teachers want to teach interesting classes, such as women's studies, but can't because of the classroom shortage. Kozol shows a school that is not designed to help these children learn it's made to make them serve. The inequality in Fremont is appalling. Kozol is not showing the reader a school but an X-Acto knife designed to cut away at a child's passion until they conform and…
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As Senator Barack Obama verbalized that the late fifties and early sixties were [….] “a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted” (Obama, 2008). Racial inequality within school facilities has always been a major problem; Plessy v. Ferguson was the case to establish this type of inequality within the school system, resulting the separation of facilities for education. Blacks and whites attended at different schools, hoping to get the same education, which in most cases was unlikely to transpire (Greenberg 2003, 532-533). As Senator Barack Obama stated, “ Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students”(Obama, 2008). As a result, there is now a big gap between black and white students in the board of education, affecting a community of people economically; the Brown’s case was a very unforgettable part of black history (Greenberg 2003, 535). “A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families -…
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Jonathan Kozol illustrates a grim reality about the unequal attention given to urban and suburban schools. The legendary Supreme Court case Brown v Board of Education ended segregation in public schools in America because the Court determined that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.” Over a half century after that landmark case, Kozol shows everyone involved in the education system that public schools are still separate and, therefore, still unequal. Suburban schools, which are primarily made up of white students, are given a far superior education than urban schools, which are primarily made up of Hispanics and African Americans. In “Still Separate and Still Unequal”, Kozol, through logos, pathos, and vivid imagery, effectively reveals to people that, even though the law prohibits discrimination in public schools, several American schools are still segregated and treated differently in reality.…
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In her skillfully written narrative, Eaton delves into the complex reasons hindering equal access to a quality education for the nation's children, a problem with a long and messy history. Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the U.S. courts were, for a few decades at least, a place where civil rights made noteworthy gains. But in many places the attempts at desegregation were never really established, and by the '80s, what had been accomplished was quickly being lost. The reasons for today's education faults are, for many, almost undetectable. The author presents a fascinating group of kids from an inner-city school in Hartford, Connecticut, who struggle to learn in a characteristically disheartened and under-funded urban public school.…
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He says that parents need to except that fairness doesn’t mean that everyone gets the same. Parents along with teachers need to realize that they can treat each child differently. Fairness is what the student needs not what everyone needs. Parents on today’s society always feel that if one child gets more than the other that they aren’t being fair. Parents struggle with fairness just as much as teachers do it might be in different ways but they still struggle. Children always look at why did one child get something but the other one did not, as parents they need to help their children understand that one child might need something where the other one did…
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Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools is an intense expose of unjust conditions in educating America’s children. Today’s society of living conditions, poverty, income, desegregation and political issues have forced inadequate education to many children across the country. Kozol discusses major reasons for discrepancies in schools: disparities of property taxes, racism and the conflict between state and local control. Kozol traveled to public schools researching conditions and the level of education in each school. He spoke with teachers, students, principals, superintendents and government officials to portray a clear picture of the inequalities in the American school systems.…
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Every individual in the United States deserves equal access to education but unfortunately this is not the case. “Despite major progress in some areas, many students, especially students of color, continue to lack the opportunity of a quality education” (U.S Department of Education, 2014). Many years ago the Brown v. Board of Education revealed the racial gap that existed in the early 1960’s and with Brown’s victory we can now have equal opportunity on a racial level. That was a big achievement for the education system as children of any color, culture, or ethnic group received the same quality of education as white children in America. In many poor communities educational opportunities are not as equal as in other sectors where well off Americans live. In this paper I will discuss whether every individual has the right to equal education, who is responsible for the provision of education, and I will suggest an improvement that I believe can help our educational system.…
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