Government Rulings

Taking To The Next Level: AP Classes

No Child Left Behind ended up leaving some children behind-especially the more advanced students. Many of the secondary schools across the nation answered this glaring problem by instituting a more formal advanced placement schedule. This program gives advanced students access to college level material while they are still working on their high school diploma.

In order to successfully complete an advanced placement course, students must take an advanced placement test. These test are administered once a year to all students wishing to receive college credit for their advanced placement coursework. In most cases the classes are offered to eleventh and twelfth graders; however, in some cases students in the 8th grade may take the classes as well.

Many students do not realize that Advanced Placement, or AP classes, are often carefully reviewed by colleges and universities during their admissions process. Instead of only helping the student in college by giving them college credits, AP classes can actually help some students get into school or to qualify for scholarships. Still, the most obvious benefit of AP classes and successful AP test scores is allowing students to opt out of beginning level college classes.

In school districts where there is not a well-developed AP program, students are often offered the opportunity to take classes at local community colleges in place of AP classes. This offers high school students another opportunity to advance their education while still at the high school level.

Advanced placement classes are available in 22 different classes. Math, English, science, history, languages and more are all available to students with a special aptitude in these areas. To determine if your student is a good candidate for advanced placement classes, speak with their guidance counselor or teacher. Remember that it isn’t enough to take the class, to be successful a student must take and pass the advanced placement test.

Filed Under: Government Rulings Tagged With: Advanced Placement, High school, Student

Problems and Issues with the No Child Left Behind Act

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In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act was championed as the solution for the many failures of the American school system. With its basis on standardized methods of learning for all students, the hope was that a uniform comprehension of essential concepts could be achieved by all students, regardless of economic situation, race, or ethnicity.

However, No Child Left Behind was eventually shown to have several shortcomings that ultimately thwarted the process of true learning in favor of “teaching to the test” in an effort to ensure that students could master the concepts that they’d be quizzed about in a test environment, with no promise that they’d actually retained any skills that would help them succeed in life.

It was soon discovered that the implementation of the Act would require large amounts of funding that many school districts simply were not able to access. An endless cycle began when already under-funded schools had their state funding cut, but were warned that they must continue to comply with all federal mandated standards, or risk losing federal funding. To compensate, many schools were forced to cut back on their funding to subjects that were not tested through No Child Left Behind, such as music, art and foreign language studies.

Additionally, each state can write its own standardized version of the No Child Left Behind tests, enabling them to cater to areas of known weakness. In a constant effort to achieve satisfactory test scores and receive a steady flow of federal funding, schools have focused on adjusting the curriculum subjects in ways that will produce high test scores, rather than fostering the constant learning of essential concepts.

Educational reform will be a long process that takes patience and hard work to achieve, but advocates are hopeful that a system can be put in place that emphasizes genuine learning over standardized test scores.

Filed Under: Government Rulings Tagged With: Education, Education reform, No Child Left Behind Act, Standardized test

What Is the No Child Left Behind Act?

The No Child Left Behind Act is a bill that was signed into law in 2001 under then President George W. Bush. The bill addressed issues surrounding eduction, specifically K-12 education in the United States.
Senator Ted Kennedy, now deceased, was a co-author of the bill. It was a noted bill because not only did it propose and implement wide sweeping educational reforms, but was also a non-partisan bill that received much support on both sides of the congressional aisle.
President Bush’s staff proposed the bill shortly after he took office in January, 2001. It was passed by the house in May, 2001 and the senate in June, 2001.
The bill supported standards based education reform. This means gauging performance by standardized testing and creating standards to which every child in every school should be live up to. These goals are measurable through performance of both individual students and entire schools on standardized tests. The standards are set by each individual state for students in that state.
In 2007, Congress increased funding of No Child Left Behind, often abbreviated NCLB to $54.4 billion a year.
Proponents of the bill claim it increases teacher accountability. All students in their classrooms are expected to meet the standards. If some of their students don’t, a teacher faces punishment including and up to firing from his or her position. This makes a teacher work harder to make sure that every student learns the curriculum covered on the test.
Another advantage is the attention to minority populations such as disabled persons, and racial minorities. Every student regardless of their background is expected to perform well on the testing so teachers have an incentive to make sure students from minority populations don’t fall behind.
The No Child Left Behind Act set forth standards for all students and accountability for teachers.

Filed Under: Government Rulings Tagged With: Education, George W. Bush, No Child Left Behind Act, Standardized test, Student

Two problems with the American educational system

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The American educational system isn’t perfect. In fact, several problems with the education system in this country threaten the American future. It’s important to know about these problems and work on solutions so that the next generation of American children is educated and can compete with in a global market.
The attrition rate of teachers is a huge problem facing the American educational system. Being a teacher is a high demand, stressful job, and in the current system, teachers are becoming burned out and leaving their careers. Up to half of all teachers quit within five years of starting teaching. This high turnover greatly affects the quality of education students receive. A more experienced teacher is much more able to reach problem students and knows techniques for getting the most of their students. They are also more effective at teaching. They know how to present the material so their students get it because of years of trial and error.
The burden of teachers must be lessened to fix one of the largest problems with the education system. Teachers must be given support in the classroom like an aide, and tools to handle stress in the classroom.
Another of the problems with the education system in this country is lack of parental involvement. Parents aren’t keeping tabs on their children. If a child’s parent doesn’t make the child do their homework, more than likely the student will not do their homework, leaving them behind in school. Also if a parent isn’t involved, a student is more likely to skip school. Obviously, if a student isn’t in class to learn, their chance of succeeding at school is slim. They must be there to learn.
Problems with the education system can be fixed with due diligence. Hopefully these and other problems will improve with time and effort.

Filed Under: Government Rulings Tagged With: Education, Education in the United States, Teacher, United States

The Problem of Block Scheduling Within the Education System

Ideally, the goal of any educational system is to equip students with real-life skills and critical thinking ability so that they can not only succeed throughout their life, but also in the workforce. However, many students and parents assert that one of the major problems with the education system a shift from the true accomplishment of learning, to the goal of simply keeping students busy throughout the day.

Many school districts are turning to the idea of “block scheduling”, which means that students attend fewer classes per day, but that each class is a longer length of time. So, students are still attending school for the same amount of time per day, but spending more time studying a smaller number of subjects. On its face, this seems like a worthy concept, but a closer look reveals why many people strongly believe that block scheduling is one of the problems with the education system that deserves a closer look.

By nature, many children have a short attention span, and this trait is only increased among children who are considered to be learning disabled. Just because a class occurs over a longer time span does not necessarily mean that more learning material is being taught. In a struggle to retain their students’ attention, many teachers turn to activities that are fun, but may be short on educational merit. Although this does fill the class time with a diversion that helps to capture a student’s attention, there are many who argue that the time would be better spent by reverting back to a schedule where the classes are shorter and encompass a wider variety of subjects.

Since block scheduling is a relatively new concept, its true benefits cannot be examined for quite some time. Therefore, teachers must continue to teach in this way until they are mandated by superiors to alter their methods.

Filed Under: Government Rulings Tagged With: Block scheduling, Education, Student, Teacher

Can Holistic Education Concepts Boost School Reform Efforts?

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Although education reform is a deeply divided subject, the majority of people who have an opinion on the matter can agree on the simple fact that problems with the education system must be fixed. The disagreement occurs during discussions about how that objective should be achieved.

Recently, there has been some curiosity about holistic educational systems. These methods bring an emphasis on a multi-faceted approach that attends to not only a student’s physical self, but also their mental and spiritual sides. Although many holistic approaches are tied to specific religions, there are others not affiliated with religious denominations. So, this does not demonstrate that a school curriculum must include a religious aspect, but rather provides a suggestion that perhaps a closer look should be taken at the benefits of fostering the learning process by focusing on the student as a whole, rather than focusing on specific segments and ignoring others.

In addition to focusing on proven educational standards, holistic schools also nurture the spiritual and mental aspects, which ultimately leads to an interconnected attitude that is absent in many traditional schooling methods. Polls have indicated that some of the factors which help to determine a child’s success in school are a strong relationship with parents, a bright attitude towards the future, and the motivation to take care of oneself for a lifetime. These are all aspects which can be developed through a holistic education curriculum.

Although there is no guaranteed way to solve all problems with the education system, the method of holistic education deserves a close examination. Religion does not have to play a role in encouraging students to pay attention to the needs of their whole self, without conforming to requirements that force them to rely on rote repetition to ultimately achieve high test scores or the approval of their parents and teachers.

Filed Under: Government Rulings Tagged With: Curriculum, Education, Learning, Michael Gove