Sarah Thornberry
Professor Eric Stephenson
English Composition II
June 11, 2015
Education Reform
The American education system may need some drastic changes in order to keep up with the rest of the world and give young people the best future possible. Pete Howard wrote an essay called “Education Reform from the Bottom up,” which discusses the possible ways of how to change the education system. These changes include focuses less on standardized testing, making a more uniform curriculum for students across the nation, and focusing more on reading and writing. Educators need to focus on helping students learn and prepare them for the outside world. The largest changes that need to happen to the education system are changing the grade level system, focusing less on standardized testing, and focusing more on learning. First of all, to reform education, this country needs to look at changing the grade level system. Not every student is the exact same and this being said not every student should be held back by others. Schools need to look at having more advanced classes for students who are not being challenged by basic level work. “An eleventh grade English class I recently taught featured three students reading at a fourth grade level, three others already at college level, and a dozen in
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This testing is almost a waste of time for schools because there is so much time and emphasis put on these tests that it becomes the main focus. These tests are finding out what students are weak at when teachers should already know what their students are weak at. Pete Howard’s essay explains that these tests are causing schools to waste millions of dollars on practice tests, waste crucial time students should be focusing on class work, and students test scores have not changed much over time. The time it takes for students to take these tests could be better spent and money spent on tests could go into enhancing