Edward A.

Negru

Reflection 1

Federal Role Reagan to Obama

This topic of government involvement in the school system has been a topic that I have always enjoyed debating on. Though my knowledge of it all is not enough to officially debate I do enjoy hearing peoples arguments on why and why not on this specific subject. For most part of my undergrad, my professors all complained about the NCLB act. For instance this is where government stepped in and was trying to enforce the successfulness of its funding of school system. The problem is in how those funds were being distributed amongst the schools and so forth. There were four main things that I always heard about NCLB and those were, assessment-driven reform; standards-based assessment; assessmentcentered accountability; and high-stakes consequences. These were always things that were in our class discussions. To me it seems that the government involvement in the school system is trying to create citizens to benefit the nation. A nation cannot prosper if its citizens are incapable of running it, there fore they are trying to implement strategies to help educate our citizens. I have always been a big fan of testing and assessment, even though when I was a student I dreadfully hated taking exams not because I did not know the information but because the stress that was on me to perform at top notch all the time. The thing that stood out most for me in this article was the adoption of the excellence reforms without governmental push. This meant that people realized the correlation between education of the economy, or political policies, or anything that has to do with government. The risk of a nation written an 1983 was a wake up call for America, but yet drastic measures have yet to be out in place. You can probably put me in the extremesit side because I always felt that there should be a national curriculum, and once everyone was on board and

performing to the national level they will be given leeway to do their own curriculum. I figured that if you can perform to my (government) expectations and exceed them, then you should be rewarded with the option of bettering the curriculum. Although NCLB has put stress on schools to perform, and some schools at impossible standards, I feel that its a start for keeping schools accountable for their progress. Many have a problem with NCLB because it disregards the reason for why students are performing poorly. I taught in a low SES school area, and I saw what it meant for students to perform poorly. The school for the most part had enough funding to provide for the students needs educationally. I have not taught in a school where funds are very scarce, but from my own experience the reason for poor performance is the lack of discipline on students. My students did not care if they passed or failed, because they new they will not be held accountable for their actions. We have given them an escape route, if I dont o anything, I can still fall on federal aid. The business model to keeping schools accountable I feel is a good attitude toward the school system, because the same applies in the business world, if you dont succeed you will not have a place to work. The US government has to take a strong stance and say we will no longer carry the lazy along for the ride. Everyone has been dealt their cards, if you live in a poor neighborhood, it is your responsibility to get yourself out of there, and I believe that is what NCLB tried to do. Now, where I find a problem with all of this, is how funding is split amongst schools. For education to thrive each school must be given its portion to be able to succeed, and that is why I feel NCLB should have enacted a more important role in the school system and create a national curriculum for the nation. That way, each school can get the funding needed to be able to fulfill the expectations of the government.