Education Reform Paper

Education Reform Paper Education in America has evolved over time to become what it is now but students still lack basic skills and content knowledge when leaving school. So the question is.... yes, education has evolved over time, but is it any more effective?

Education in America has changed a great deal since the first public was built in 1635. This school was called the Boston Latin School and, like most public schools from 1635 to the late 1840’s, it only had one room. The ages of the children in the school varied. The way that one room school houses worked was that the older children were taught by the teacher and then those students would teach the younger kids. In the time period that one room school houses were popular, all the students

One reason they are still graduating is the No Child Left Behind law which was put into effect during the 2002/2003 school year. This law is the law that forced schools to have a high enough percentage of students pass standardized testing or lose funding. So acting accordingly, teachers used the Common Core standards to start teaching what was going to be on the tests. Most times if a student was lacking a critical piece of content knowledge about something that wasn't going to be on the test the teacher wouldn't do anything about it. Some specific examples of content students consistently don’t seem to be having are reading comprehension, analytical skills, and writing skills. One reason students lack these skills is because, according to a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education (2006), “61% of high school teachers reported that their students have never written a paper that was more than five pages. As a result, students have not had enough practice to develop a set of sophisticated writing

A recent survey showed that around 15% of college students admitted they called home once a day in their first term with questions like, "Which light bulb do I need?" There are two main reasons that students lack these basic life skills. The first one is that kids are used to their parents doing everything for them and so when they move out, they don’t know how to do anything by themselves. The second reason would be the lack of Home Economics. Home Economics get cut from school easily because it's considered old fashioned now and schools assume that parents can just teach their kids the stuff they would learn in Home Ec. Another reason Home Ec. gets cut is that schools spend their money on subjects that appear on standardized tests. In the beginning I mentioned how students are also lacking the skills of financial responsibility and independence. They lack these skills because they aren't used to having to pay their own bills and having full custody over their bank accounts. To help students develop this skill, some schools are inviting programs like Urban Dove to come and do programing with students. Urban dove describes themselves as “a non profit program that is here to provide young people, regardless of their economic or social background, the critical skills needed to develop into strong, successful