Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Governments to Blame For Public Schools Down Fall


The Governments to Blame for Public Schools Down Fall
When talking about education in the California system one of the main concerns is the budget and how it effects the students and the schools. Education reform is a huge problem here in American and should not be put on the back burner for any reason. Our Children’s future and educational outlook should be our main priority to government funding. Thats why its outraging to read an article that blames the public school teacher for the down fall of the schools while in reality its the government’s guidelines.  The article “Teacher: Step-by-Step guide to how “reform” is harming public schools”, by Valerie Strauss is an eye opening piece to how government wants to handle the education system problems. Rather than taking responsibility for their lack of sense, they would rather take the easy route and blame the hard working teachers who put in long hours for little pay. The problem is when you look at the bigger picture you can see that its not the teachers at all its the government and how they are choosing to spend their funds on charter schools over the public schools.
There are obvious ways to try and fix the failing education system in public schools, if only the government would allow such things to take place.  Elizabeth Walters reports in the New York Times, “All it would take is some new textbooks, better technology and some classroom supplies followed by allowing the teacher to teach how they believe students will learn the best. No more of this we can only allow teachers to teach what is on the STAR test, and prepare students to only succeed on those tests instead of in higher education”. The Government solution to the failing system is to just blame the teachers and start funding charter and private schools because they have a better score report on the STAR test. They think that just because its a charter or private school that the teacher are automatically better and only the best students must be there. “Well thats not it at all, the reason charter school and private schools do so much better is there not stuck to a specific style of teaching that they have to do, or a set of guidelines that they have to follow when they are teaching”, reported by Elizabeth Walters, New York Times. Public schools suffer not because of the teachers, but because of the pressure the government puts on the STAR test.  So instead of blaming the teachers we should consider the reasons they system is failing in terms of the government. 
In fact, it’s not the teachers that make the difference between the charter schools and the public schools at all, and the students even agree.  It has to do with the environment of the schools and the types of children that attend the two different types of schools. Also the charter schools are granted better equipment and have more to offer their students in terms of educational support. The question is why do these charter and private schools get such better support from the government? Larry Miller’s explains in his blog,  “By analyzing the Department of Education databases for the 2007-2008 school year, the researchers calculated that the charter school network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public schools.”  Now if the government put just as much funding into the public schools and allowed the teacher to teach different things and not just the STAR requirement than Public schools could be in just as good condition as the charter and private schools. Its not the teachers to blame for the failing education system it’s the government for giving more support to one community over the other.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Op-Ed Piece


The Governments to Blame
Education reform is a huge problem here in American and should not be put on the back burner. Our Children’s future and educational outlook should be our main priority to fix. Thats why its outraging to read an article that blames the public school teacher for the down fall of the schools while in reality its the government’s guidelines.  The article Teacher: Step-by-Step guide to how “reform” is harming public schools, by Valerie Strauss is an eye opening piece to how government wants to handle the education system problems. Rather than taking responsibility for their lack of sense they would rather take the easy rout and blame the hard working teachers who put in long hours for little pay. In the community of educational programs let that be sports, honor groups, clubs, and even different types of schools like private and charter, there should be no one community that is more valuable then the other. 
There are obvious ways to try and fix the failing education system in public schools, if only the government would allow such things to take place.  All it would take is some new textbooks, better technology and some classroom supplies followed by allowing the teacher to teach how they believe students will learn the best. No more of this we can only teach what is on the STAR test, and prepare students to only succeed on those test instead of higher education. The Government solution to the failing system is to just blame the teacher and start funding charter and private schools because they have a better score report on the STAR test. They think that just because its a charter or private school that the teacher are automatically better and only the best students must be there. Well thats not it at all, the reason charter school and private schools do so much better is there not stuck to a specific style of teaching that they have to do, or a set of guidelines that they have to follow when they are teaching. Public schools suffer not because of the teachers but because of the pressure the government puts on the STAR test.  So instead of blaming the teachers find other reasons for why the public school system is going down the tub and lets try and offer some good solutions. 
In fact its not the teachers that make the difference between the charter schools and the public schools at all, the students even agree.  It has to do with the environment  and the types of kids that attend the different types of schools along with charter schools are granted better equipment and have more to offer their students. The question is why to the charter and private schools get such better support from the government? “By analyzing the Department of Education databases for the 2007-2008 school year, the researchers calculated that the charter school network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public schools”(Larry Miller's Blog). Now if the government put just as much funding into the public schools and allowed them teacher to teach different things and not just the STAR requirement than Public schools could be in just as good condition as the charter and private schools. Its not the teachers to blame for the failing education its the government. 

- Let me know if i am on the right track. the whole idea of writing the op-ed piece kind of confused me. 

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Learning Genre

Pick 2 articles and figure out there Genre. Opposite the Editorial = Op- Ed
First Article Playing the Violence Card
1.The point of this article is to inform and pursued people about the type of violence going on in todays country.
2. it takes the format of an news article, is not to long.
3. This is written from the point a view of one man but backed with lots of statements and seemed to be pretty good facts. Its written from third person point of view. The writer is trying to show that its not fair for people to be playing the race card in violent situation because most of the time its the same race who is causing them the pain.
5. It is an evidence piece, it is using different people to back up the points that he is making. He is not summarizing another article, he using new facts to prove is point.
6. He is trying to inform the public of what is going on in the community involving the different races and the violence that being delt with. Most time people try and blame other races for accident or crimes when in reality most the time its the same race as you.
the writer is using very educated language, larger words and good grammar.

Next Article

Can Privatization Kill?
1. An other informative piece, its purpose is to share its knowledge of the bad things that are going on with immigration and how things could be handle differently when handling people who you are escorting back to a country.
Its laid out in a clear and effective formate that makes it very efficent and easy to understand. He uses facts and a very firm voice to make it clear that he knows what he is talking about. Its an argument piece because he is trying to get his information across to people and make them understand.
Using facts and statistics. Journal piece