Keeping Teachers Happy
In education, students are the focus. Their learning must come first, and there is much debate as to how to assist them in achieving the high standards of the modern public education model. In the United States, students perform poorly in the key areas of math and reading when compared with students in other countries around the world. This is a national concern and there are no easy answers. During the Bush administration, a sweeping collection of laws were passed, collectively known as No Child Left Behind, that tied federal funding for education spending for the states to performance — despite the absence of any unified, national standards for achievement. This has resulted in states competing for federal funding through programs such as Obama’s Race to the Top, and Title 1 funding cuts due to poor performance — but another fatality of NCLB is the exodus of highly trained teachers from the profession in the face of insurmountable obstacles and a punitive evaluation system that directly ties their continued employment and compensation to the success of the nation’s most at risk student populations.
Parents’ Expectations about College
In a recent poll, is was discovered that a vast majority of college-bound students’ parents play a significant role in helping students to decide on a college to go to. Not only are they arranging tours of campuses and steering their children towards colleges of their choice, but they are increasingly involved in the entire admissions process, from securing financial aid packages to selecting a suitable room mate for their daughters and sons. You might think this level of involvement amounts to hovering, or being what is coined a “helicopter parent,” but according to many students, that isn’t the case.
College a Scam?
That American education is in desperate need of critical reform is no secret; the public education system in the United States is in the worst shape it has ever been in. Thanks to over-regulation and the proposal of extremely cavalier ideas about educators’ abilities to “move” every student up to irrationally placed bars set by the federal government in the No Child Left Behind laws, our students have never been so far behind the rest of the civilized world in science and mathematics education standards and achievement. The video you are about to see posits some serious allegations against “the system” and seeks to expose US education as a racket feeding into a college education scam that does little more than put young people in debt at an early age.
