Keep calm and inspire on

Education is like a machine. It has a million tiny parts that need to all be working in order to be successful as an institution. Poverty, segregation, gender, and federal policies and can all help or hurt education. There needs to be a happy medium with all aspects. Schools have made many large strides, but there is always room for improvement.

This relates to the discussion about education policy because it puts emphasis on an effective way teachers can be evaluated. If a teacher is evaluated by multiple peers, the evaluations would be more accurate than if a random superintendent came in and did it. It might be more biased, but if school districts used multiple peers then that might balance things out.

I like this quote because it goes along with exactly what is wrong in today’s schooling. The goal should be to create lifelong learners and to ignite a fire in a child for your subject. Unfortunately, the goal is to teach students how to test, which does not cause passion. 

This quote relates to the shift that began an emphasis on standardized testing. Classroom skills were being less evaluated than test scores after the 1960s, and that is a problem because the way a classroom is conducted should be more important than how students do on some test. Teachers should be evaluated on effectiveness in connecting with their students as well as their student performance. 

This is a great story that shows how kid’s outside lives can affect how they do in school. Teachers sometimes do not know when kids are coming from a difficult home life. They don’t know when the last time their student ate was. If a student doesn’t have their basic needs taken care of, then they will not be able to do well in school.

This podcast relates to chapter 7 of The Teacher Wars because it addresses one of the true problems of segregation: the parents. Parents are constantly trying to control school districts, and many white parents let their racism hinder integration of their children’s schools. Parents are making their kids racist and are causing their children to be closed minded. 

This article addresses the things that society blames teachers for when really they should be looking at themselves. Teachers are an easy group to blame when things go wrong in education, but there are other factors to take in to account.

This article tackles the idea that it may not be the quality of teachers that are the problem. No one ever looks at quality of education and technology in the classroom, and so many are quick to blame teacher incompetence. It is important to take all factors into consideration, not just teacher inadequacy.

This idea from Johnson serves as a “passport from poverty” because, even when downtrodden and poverty stricken, children are inherently hopeful for their futures. The progression of life and constantly being torn down is what shapes and hardens them. That is what closes their minds to the idea of improvement. Education is hope to these students, and they know that it is the key to a better life. 

While this is not an opinion piece, DoSomething.org is an organization that focuses on social change for young people. The facts on this page show how ridiculously large the education gap is between races. There are more than 30 million children living below the poverty line, and in their schools there is roughly one book per 300 students. Another statistic says that, of poverty stricken students, only 30% enroll in a university and only half of those students graduate from university. This article encourages people to take action and help the less fortunate schools. Only then will the gap begin to close, and only then will equality in American education prevail. 

Even though our generation is considered a “post racial society”, there are many signs pointing to the fact that it is not. Groups that were discriminated against in the past continue to be, and poverty has also become a point of discrimination. Whites continue to have the least exposure to other races, meaning the segregation that is supposedly happening in schools is between minority groups. Schools that are actually integrated have higher rates of graduation for every race.

While I do think that some standardized testing is necessary, forcing students to test excessively is not helping cultivate young minds. As a student, I have had my personal battles with teachers who put too much emphasis on testing and I have developed test anxiety over the years. This overemphasis hinders what students think and want to learn and changes attitudes about learning from positive to negative. Being forced to learn something so that a student can then be tested on it does not make a student want to learn it. 

One of the arguments going around about Common Core is that teachers don’t want to teach because of unreasonable standards for evaluations. While this is true to some extent, it is not a real problem that Common Core presents. Teachers have always been evaluated and Common Core evaluates them in a very similar way. 

Businesses along with the rest of the world tend to believe that teaching is a profession for unskilled people. They believe that anyone and everyone can teach, which causes a sort of pity for schools and students. Businesses need to take teaching more seriously when they give to schools, and they shouldn’t just do it to appear as martyrs to society. 

This TED Talk is important for people to watch because it demonstrates the real effect teachers have on their students. It talks about little things that can be done to make the student feel more confident in his or her own work, especially in poverty-stricken areas. If a teacher cares for their students, then that is when the student will be able and willing to learn. 

Rita Pierson, “Every Kid Deserves a Champion”

This link is important because it provides an update to some controversial topics that the education system has faced over the past few years. It clears up questions about things like enrollment numbers, common core, standardized tests, and No Child Left Behind for this school year. It will help clear up any misconceptions people may have about the agenda of schools all around the country.