Education reform in the United States

Education reform in the United States Yasmine Calderon Education Education reform in the United States is a primary goal for Congress to assist students excel and gain knowledge to survive in the growing and competitive work force. As the United States was once the leading example of Education reform, it is now 12th among other developed nations. The need for incentive programs in classrooms to prepare students for the future of higher education is in high demand. Ensuring students the future of a college education and maintaining a successful job is key to rebuilding the economy and securing bright futures for individuals. Suggested policy implementations include reforms of existing school policies, budget analysis, statistics and facts, and current stances toward the public policy. One of President Obama’s bold incentives to improve teaching and learning in the classrooms that instruct policies and strategies to achieve the goal of college readiness. To date, President Obama has opted 4 billion dollars to 19 states that help to address key areas of education reform. States serve 22 million students and employ 1.5 billion teachers in 42,000 schools representing the 45 percent of all K-12 students and 42 percent of all low income students nationwide. Setting a precedent for the future of young Americans through the Race to the Top program will help those who are challenged change policies and laws to create better college and career ready standards. (Source: www.whitehouse.gov/issues) As states begin to move progressively with education reforms the No Child Left Behind Act imposed by former President George W. Bush left five years of reauthorization overdue. States have been lowering their standards in classrooms by punishing failure over success and fitting everyone into a one-size-fits-all deal. While President Obama has issued a blueprint, Reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, for his incentive Congress has yet to act upon it leaving schools flexible with the law. Passing the law would then set a higher standard for high schools to achieve college readiness and careers. For states to receive that flexibility they must reward and recognize those states that make exceptionally well performance and gains while also tending to those who need help in the lowest performing schools. Under the new law states will develop and propose new plans to help improve outcomes for those groups who pose a threat in a large educational gap. Unlike the one-size-fits -all deal left from the NCLB Act states and districts can improve strategies and resources that will meet the need for student performance. Issuing more reforms for education includes the president calling for improvements to help students gain interest in math, science, engineering and technology. The Obama Administration has reached several successful STEM initiatives that includes combining it with Race to the Top and investing into the Innovation Fund while also implementing new STEM educators called Teacher Corps to further progress students in the path of a successful career. The Teacher Corps will start with a basis of 50 teachers among 50 sites and expand to 10,000 teachers over the next four years. The Obama Administration will launch the Teacher Corps with $1 billion allocated from the President’s 2013 budget request currently before Congress. Along with the President’s education reforms, the Education Amendments Act of 1972 authorized the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to improve postsecondary education opportunities that include providing assistance to educational institutions and agencies for a broad range of reforms and innovations. The role of the bureaucracy has been otherwise noted a major debate in shaping educational performance. Proponents argue that large educational bureaucracies have contributed to shortfalls in performance in America’s public schools. Others view it as beneficial because they manage a wide range of problems that make it easier for teachers to focus on the core of teaching. The federal government totaled an amount of $141 billion on education in the 2014 fiscal year. While calculating that number is challenging, federal programs that are administered by the U.S. Department of Education appear in two separate parts of the budget and other agencies have administered large programs as well. Further measuring spending is not a straightforward deal and the government provides subsidies towards higher education in the form of tax benefits. The $141 billion figure includes annual appropriation for the U.S. Dept. of Education, spending for the department’s annual appropriations that are not subject (i.e. mandatory spending), school meal programs, the Head Start program, revenue and spending on education tax benefits for individuals and military and veterans education benefits. Since the federal government spent a total of $3.5 trillion in the 2013 fiscal year which means the $141 billion spent accounts for 4 percent of the entire federal budget. (Sources: New America Foundation; U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Defense, Veterans Afffairs, White House Office of Management and Budget; Congressional Budget Office.) According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy research organization and interest group, a budget presented by House Budget Committee chairmen Paul Ryan (R—Wis.) would provide $74 billion on education spending, training, employment, and social services. The Ryan budget seeks to â€Å"remove regulatory barriers to higher education that act to restrict flexibility and innovative teaching, particularly as it relates to non-traditional models such as online coursework.† Policymakers who support to enable states to have more control over college costs and futures should implement the budget. Just last year Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) and Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) introduced the â€Å"Growth to Excellence Act† that would include rigorous college-and-career ready standards. A bill that would surely receive support from educational advocates. The bill is sure to represent a strong step towards providing students in America with outstanding education that will bring a forefront to the future of these individuals. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States fails to educate students and prepare them for the future to come which leaves critical time for officials to address the situation. Statistics include: A recent report by ACT, a non-profit testing organization, found that only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met â€Å"college ready† standards in all of their core subjects; figures even lower for African Americans and Hispanics. The College Board reported that even among college-bound seniors, only 43 percent met college-ready standards, meaning that more college students need to take remedial courses. While according to U.S. News and World Report, nationwide the number of high school graduates is expected to grow 10 percent in the next 10 years. The northeastern states will experience declines in growth, while high school grads will grow by 24 percent in Texas and Florida. According to the Lawlor Group, trends such as demography, the power of perception, and measurement determine aspects of higher education as seen below: College enrollments will shrink from 38% to 10% over the next 8 years. High school graduates will decrease in all but 18 states in 2019. Mostly in the South you will see an increase. Most students tend to attend a college with less than $11,100 in tuition fees and think it should cost no more than $20,000. (Sources: NCES, College Board, Gallup, Federal Student Aid, Harvard Institute of Politics.) The future of American education is critical to students and individuals who want to maintain a college education. The path of every student along with a sustainable approach would benefit the economy as well. Proposed solutions such as Race to the Top, revisions of the No Child Left Behind act and the STEM program would help to further alleviate the problems posed to higher education. Of course with solutions comes fiscal responsibilities which would introduce a need for a new education budget that would most likely benefit the future of American students. A time for reform is now and policies should be implemented as soon as possible to ensure the livelihood of students and their path to a successful life.

Justifying the Murder in Beloved by Toni Morrison Essay example -- Bel

Justifying the Murder in Beloved by Toni Morrison Beloved is a tale about slavery. The central character is Sethe, who is an escaped slave. Sethe kills her child named Beloved to 'save her'. The book is written so that different peoples points of view are put forward in different chapters. Toni Morrison presents three types of love relationships, parent-child, brotherly love and sexual relationships - within or near the confines of slavery. Slavery weakens the bond between mothers and there children. Three parent- child relationships exhibited in Beloved are the bond between 'maa'm and Sethe', Sethe and Beloved and Sethe and Denver. Their relationships explore the bond between all the characters. There are two ways of interpreting the killing of Beloved, Sethe could be seen as saving her, motivated by true love or selfish pride? By looking at the varying nature of Sethe, it can be said that, she is a women who chooses to love her children but not herself. She kills the baby, because in her mind, her children are the only part of her that has not been soiled by slavery, she refuses to contemplate that by showing this mercy she is committing a murder. Throughout Beloved, Sethes duplistic character is displayed in the nature of her actions. Shortly after her re-union with Paul D she describes her reaction to schoolteachers arrival as 'Oh no, I wasn't going back there. I went to jail instead' (P42) These words could be seen that Sethe was portraying a moral stand by refusing to allow herself and her children to be dragged back into the evil word of slavery. Clearly, Sethe believes that her actions were justified from the beginning. . Wh... ...remember is how she loved the bottom of bread. Can you beat that eight children that's all I remember'. Like Paul D she adopts the practice of 'loving only a little', accepting that she has no control over her children's lives. Sethe's act of violence is in her not compromising a right to love her own children. When Paul D criticises her for her large claims, saying her love is 'too thick. She responds that 'Love is or ain't. Thin love ain't love at all'. For Sethe love has no bounds. Her ideas of right and wrong are confused. What we have is a bizarre version of love - mother, daughter, and vengeful ghost, and the book confirms that it is a prehistoric society which has caused all this inhumane view of life. This leads to Sethe to her killing her daughter. Bibliography: Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987

An I.T. for a peography vepartment Essay

he geography department need to give out letters about a field trip to the Peak District but they need to personalise the letters to make more appealing to parents. Ms Keeley, the Geography teacher organising the trip, currently starts the letter with ‘Dear Parent’ instead of a personalised start like ‘Dear Ms Mir’ or something like that. The Improved System An improved way of doing it would be using mail merge to personalise the letter by using people’s names, addresses, job occupations, etc. I will use word processor to solve her problem. Why use IT? We use IT because you can edit and delete, be more presentable (therefore easier to read), and print multiple copies. You can also put in logos. Justification of Hardware and Software Hardware Specification Benefit of choice Home PC Intel Pentium 3 processor running at 866 MHz E. g. Mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, etc Good value for money, easy to get hold of. Easy to get programs for it. I can use a floppy disk to transfer from home to school. Printer Laser HP 2100 6-9 prints per min as against 2-3 for an inkjet. 30 copies printed to a laser equals 5 minutes. To an inkjet it equals to 15 minutes. A cartridge on a laser is i 20 that does 600 copies. But on an inkjet it is i 60 and does 6000 copies. Therefore a printout will cost 10 times more. So, a Laser printer is good quality, cheaper and easier to run. Software Specification Benefit of choice Word processor Microsoft Word-   Mail merge – form letters, envelopes, mailing labels   Formatting- font, margins   Editing- spelling and grammar checking Choosing Word rather than Publisher or WordPad is better because:   You don’t have to draw text boxes   It will look professional   The Word lay out is perfect for a letter   Word has more accessories Database SIMS. You don’t have to transfer it to anywhere else e. g. Excell Quantitative Objectives The Geography Department want me to make personalised letters to pupils wanting to go on the trip. The letters need to:   It needs to look professional It needs to have neat presentation   It needs a logo It needs to be personalized   It needs to have the pupils name, addresses What Next? I will need to talk to Ms Keeley and find out what she needs to have on the letters. I will produce a number of solutions for her to choose which one she prefers. I will then implement the chosen solution and test it. I will finally ask her to evaluate the letter.

Finding Text Complexity in a Three-Word Poem

Finding Text Complexity in a Three-Word Poem The length of a poem does not define its text complexity. Take, for example, the world’s shortest poem: FleasAdamhadem Thats it. Three words, actually two if you consider the contraction hadem as one word. The poem’s attribution is generally given to Ogden Nash (1902-1971) although there are some who credit Shel Silverstein (1931-1999). An article by Eric Shackle, however, found the originator of the poem was Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954). The article notes: At last, after searching dozens of websites, we discovered the identity of the mystery poet. It was revealed on a US National Park Service website describing Mount Rainier National Park. The Mt Rainier Nature News Notes of July 1, 1927, contained this brief item:THE SHORTEST POEM: We like poetry but we cannot stand it in too large doses. The following, which according to its author, Strickland Gillilan, is the shortest poem existing, deals with the antiquity of bugs.It runs thus: Adam had em! This short poem would meet the three standards for measuring text complexity according to the Common Core: 1. Qualitative Evaluation of the Text: This measure refers to the levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands. Teachers can review three poetic terms in this three word poem by pointing out that despite its brevity, the structure is a rhyming couplet of iambic meter. There is even an internal rhyme with the â€Å"am† and â€Å"em† sounds. There are even more figurative devices in the poem beginning with the name Adam in the first line. This is a literary allusion from the Bible as Adam is the proper name given to the first man created by God in Genesis. His companion Eve, the first woman, is not mentioned, it’s not â€Å"Adam and Eve/ had’em.† That could place the setting of the poem earlier in the Bible than her appearance in Genesis 2:20. Despite the allusion to a religious text, the tone of the poem is casual because of the contraction, â€Å"had’em.†   The title â€Å"Fleas† associated with the character Adam is comical since it implies a certain level of uncleanliness. There is even a bit of ownership since Adam had fleas, the fleas dont â€Å"have Adam,† and the use of the past tense â€Å"had† infers that he might now be cleaner. 2. Quantitative Evaluation of the Text: This measure refers to readability measures and other scores of text complexity. Using an online readability calculator, the three word poem’s average grade level is a 0.1.    3. Matching Reader to Text and Task: This measure refers to reader variables (such as motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and task variables (the complexity generated by the task assigned and the questions posed) In reading this three word poem, students would have to activate their background knowledge about fleas, and some of them might know that that scientists   recently concluded that fleas probably fed on dinosaurs as they need to feed on warm vertebrates blood. Many students will know the role of fleas in history as the transmitters of plagues and diseases. A few students may know that they are wingless insects that jump as high and as wide as an 8.5† X 11†. Explained in the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section of The Common Core State Standards is the description that they were built to â€Å"create a staircase of increasing text complexity, so that students are expected to both develop their skills and apply them to more and more complex texts.† The three word poem â€Å"Fleas† may be a little step on the text complexity staircase, but it can provide a workout of critical thinking even for the upper grade students.

How To Write a Diversity Essay

How To Write a Diversity Essay How to write a diversity essay and show your uniqueness We all have something special about us which distinguishes our personalities from others. It is no wonder that often students are given an assignment of writing a diversity essay in order to figure out what makes them stand out in a social environment. Here are some reflections on how to convey your message successfully. How to write a diversity essay and show your uniqueness What is a diversity essay? A diversity essay is aimed to show what is special about you and what value you can bring to the society. Writing a diversity essay, you can tell about yourself and share your personal experience. You can also tell what other person had to deal with when he or she did not fit into the surrounding. Think of how diverse you are We all have something to share with the world which surrounds us. On the one hand, we can be proud of some of our achievements. On the other hand, we can be quite uncomfortable with revealing something that might seem to be unacceptable for our social environment. Perhaps, you moved to another country which has rules that are different from those which you got used to in your previous surrounding. You can simply have unique skills and talents which make you stand out among other students. If you struggle to find something that is special about you, consider the following factors: Race Religion Culture Work experience Socio-economic status Health issues or disability Sexual orientation Hobbies Talents Life and work experience The above factors are just a very limited list of things which make us different from other people, so choose the one which is the most applicable to you. Make sure you remain respectful of other people’s feelings though, especially if your topic concerns political or religious points of view. Questions to ask yourself Here are some questions which you can ask yourself in order to start writing a diversity essay: How your ethnical background enriched you? Did you get a valuable perspective on what happened to you? How a certain illness changed your life? What makes you stand out from the crowd? How you dealt with moving to a different country? What important event changed your life outlook for the better? From the first sight, writing a diversity essay might seem to be a complicated task because you might need to share your fears with others. However, working on this task gives you a unique opportunity to reflect on your background, your personality, your gained skills and natural talents. You do not have to write about things which are too uncomfortable for you. However, showing how you overcome your struggles can demonstrate how capable you are to get over difficulties which, in the end, we all face, regardless of the society dogmas. If you are not sure what to write about, contact us now in order to get advice from our professional essay writer.

United States vs. Afghanistan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

United States vs. Afghanistan - Essay Example A potential expansion location in for US Airways in a third world country is Afghanistan. This paper provides an economic analysis of Afghanistan comparing it with the United States. Afghanistan is located in the Middle East near the border of Pakistan. The country has a population of 29.12 million people. The population of Afghanistan is roughly 10% the size of the US population. The real gross domestic product per capita of the country is $900. This metric makes Afghanistan one of the poorest countries in the world. The United States with a real gross domestic product per capita of $46,000 has one of the highest standards of living in the world (CultureGrams, 2011). Afghanistan suffers from a number of social problems that are hurting the economic development of the region. For starters the adult literacy rate of the population is low. The adult literacy rate of males is 43% and in females it is even lower at 13% (CultureGrams, 2011). When a population has low illiteracy rates the working class of the country lacks a college education which hurts the ability of the nation to compete in the knowledge economy. In contrast the illiteracy rate of the United States is above 99% which means that most Americans know how to write and read. The overall social and economic conditions of these two countries are very different. The US due to its wealth has abundance of shelter, food, and medicine for its people in a country that has a very stable political condition.

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY & ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS Essay

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY & ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS - Essay Example If a new technology was introduced, it was known all over the world. Each technology had a great impact on the society. The development in the engineering field has taken over the world. It has lead to a drastic improvement on the functioning of the world. Engineering was used in almost all the fields, which reduced the burden of humans. One by one technology developed which helped in the easy way of achieving things. Technologies were introduced for agriculture, cultivation and other areas. Before many years, people were struggling to do a specific task, as everything had to be done by them without machines. For their livelihood, they had to go in search of food and shelter. They had to keep changing the places they lived, due to the seasonal and climatic changes. They did not have any method to cook their food, which made them to eat it raw. This urged them to create some tools that can be used in their daily life. Then came the time when they required storing facilities. Tools for storing water and food were invented. As people started inventing these systems, they passed it to the people in other parts. (Samari 2005). This in turn lead to the improvement in the people’s living. The development in technologies mostly took place in countries like India, countries in the Middle East and Europe. Some of these inventions and developments seemed to be difficult for the people in the countries to implement in their daily life. After some time people started recognizing the importance of these technologies and most of the countries began to use them. There has been a tremendous improvement in the field of science that taught the importance of the world and the environment. Many new inventions and discoveries were proposed and it was a great boon to the people. Education and its facilities were improved by the use of technologies. Industrial revolution resulted in the development and establishments of