Well, its been 6 days since Obama's State of the Union address. And he proposed nothing related to nationalized education until yesterday.
In this issue, he said that his administration would be making some overhauls to the No Child Left Behind Act first passed in 2002. This is the act that I myself, dislike greatly for a large amount of reasons. I'm disappointed with both political parties, especially the Republicans, for not doing anything to get rid of the Act that has proven absolutely worthless and ineffective to our school education.
First off, have you ever heard of the saying, "teaching to the test?" Because that is the exact problem with this act. I've learned from Wikipedia and its sources that the act leads to teachers teaching rather a narrow subset of skills you need on standardized testing because of the possibility that they may know all that's required to know for the test, leading to less class time and more failing.
Another issue is the increase of the # of failing students. Since the government now has control to assign which subjects and concepts the schools must recover, the standards may be lower than usual, not higher. According to my AP US history teacher, it violates the constitution because it's the states' power to control the subject curriculum that all school districts in that state must cover. And I mean violation of the 10th Amendment where it clearly stated that powers not given to the National government are granted to the states and the people. And the US constitution never stated that the government has control over the education of the United States. With the lower standards, we can see more and more failing students on standardized tests because these tests include standards that the nationalized education did not require.
Today, I just got news that we had to learn the so-called Mission Statement as a way to measure whether our school (Brighton) is accredited whatsoever. This is caused by the act that I've been opposing the whole time. You know it, the No Child left... whatever it says on the act. If we do not memorize this successfully, our school will not get accredited and it can mean a number of things, notably denied applications to universities due to inadequate education from your high school. I lashed out in fury at the national government for coming up with meaningless regulations such as this statement because everyone is capable of learning, and I mean it.
Personally, I hope someone who is courageous enough, whether it be a regular citizen or a political party, can stand up against this act because of its nearly unrepairable flaws its done to our nation. One day, I would like to form a protest against this act should it affect my children significantly in the future. One day, I hope the national government to realize this violation to the 10th Amendment and repeal this act in the future.
-Kent Yang
First of all, you're contradicting yourself by being greatly disappointed in Obama's move to edit the "No Child Left Behind" program as you state that you oppose the act. You should be commending it rather than bashing it.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, rather it is a source of reliable information located in its bibliography.
Third of all, when schools don't have money, yes they will go to the government, and yes they will have to follow-through with what the government tells it to because they are providing the money. Nationalized Education is for the public because it is the majority. There are such things as private schools.
Fourth of all, stop consuming everything you hear and take it into your own hands.
Fifth of all, the government is the people.
That is all.
I never mentioned this, but the most recent source of when I heard about the overhaul of the act was The New York Times. That's where I was not happy with the Democrats, since I thought they had plans to repeal the act.
ReplyDeleteOMG you had to memorize a Brighton mission statement? That *does* sound like a waste of class time...
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