Reforming America's Schools: Focus Questions

1. What are the goals of America's schools?

One of the overarching goals of the American school system is to create active and participating members of society. This requires that these future citizens be well-versed in discourse, reasoning, and thinking outside of the box. This is one of the reasons that a large emphasis is placed on exposing students to several different subject areas such as social studies, math, English, and science, so that students are well-rounded and able to handle any situation they might encounter once they leave school. It is a competitive world out there, and whether students are preparing to enter college, train for a vocation, or enter the workforce, students will have a much higher chance of attaining success if they are well-rounded and experienced in many areas.

2. What school goals are important to you?

One of the school goals that is most important to me is that each and every student has an opportunity to have their voice heard. Students oftentimes feel like they do not, or should not, play an active role in their education. Instead, the decisions about what they are suppose to learn, how they are going to learn it, and why it should matter to them are all made for them. Instead, I believe that student interest should be taken into account when determining what students are going to be learn and how they are going to be learning it, so that students will remain interested in school but still be learning all the information they need to know.

3. What is a reform? Change? Factors of change? What prevents change?

Reform is the voluntary and deliberate changing of a system from operating one way to operating another, usually in the hopes of making that system better or more efficient. Change is the process of making or becoming something different, either on purpose or unintentionally, and either for the good or the bad. There are several different factors that affect change. For example, the thing you are trying to change can be acted upon directly in order to change, or its surrounding can be acted upon, which in turn can change the desired target. What prevents change is the holding on of beliefs that the way things already are or have been in the past is the way they should remain now and in the future, whether because the people who hold these beliefs truly think that it is already the best it can be, or because they are afraid of what might happen if it were to actually change.

4. Why has school reform become a top national priority?

School reform has become a top priority because many believe that the U.S. is behind other nations in educating our children. This is because the U.S. is always ranked lower than many other countries on standardized tests and other common measures of assessment. For this reason, a movement to reform schools has begun, aimed at raising the standards we hold our administrators, teachers, and students to in the hopes of raising scores and helping our youth stay competitive in a modernized world.

5. What new school options are replacing the traditional neighborhood public school?

There are now several alternatives to the traditional public school option. For example, many parents opt to home school their children. This involves parents taking on the role of the teacher and personally taking charge of their child's education. The parents must ensure that all the necessary information is being covered so that their children will be prepared to take college entrance exams if desired. Another alternative is private schools. This type of school is often selective, many times requiring that potential students take an entrance exam in order to be considered for enrollment. Because these schools are private and do not receive funding from the state, tuition is often high, thus excluding potential applicants who cannot afford to pay it. Another alternative is charter schools. This type of school is still public and receives funding from the state, but does not require any type of tuition and is prohibited from selecting potential students by means of an entrance exam. Charter schools often have a little more freedom to implement alternative ways of teaching or learning. No matter what type of schooling a parent selects for their child, it is important to ensure that they are receiving all of the knowledge and skills they need to succeed.

6. What is the role of teachers and students in reforming our schools?

When schools are being reformed, what that often comes down to is how information is taught and received in the classroom. This means that teachers might be given new requirements on what they should be teaching or how they should be teaching it. In order to test the effectiveness of these reforms, students are often required to take standardized tests, with their scores believed to be correlated with the effectiveness of the reforms made. This means that both teachers and students are directly affected by the reforms that are made by legislators or politicians, whether they agree to their terms or not.

7. What are the characteristics of effective schools?

While high test scores are somewhat indicative of how well a school is educating their students, they do not tell the entire story of the overall effectiveness of the schools. A good school cares about each and every one of its students, making sure that they are reaching their own personal fullest potential. This means that students that may have entered the school relatively behind their classmates academically is not forgotten about or given up on, but instead worked with as much as possible to get them back on track. Some skills that students are taught and learn, such as physical skills in the lab or public speaking skills in debates cannot be measured on a standardized test, so it is important to keep that in mind when judging how well students are progressing in school. This also means that alternative forms of assessment would be better to implement and use as a measure of student progress, as many effective schools already do.