Alyssa Reed

Mr. Hawkins
American Government
21 September 2015
Semester Long Research Paper:
How should the educational system be modified?
There are a lot of issues when it comes to the educational systems. there are issues that
are well known and then there are some issues that seemed to be pushed under the rug. But there
needs to be some type of change to the problems in this system, if we try to find answers to
helping all these issues i believe we could have a better educational system for the next
generation.
-Are subjects in the schooling system gone over too fast?
https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-done-to-improve-our-education-system
In this article, Terrie was a homeschooling teacher and focused on several things shed always
wanted the schools she went to, to do. She believed that teaching a subject until her student
understood it was the way it should be even in public schools. in school now we are taught one
thing one day, and a completely different thing another and we are expected to have it fully
mastered after just a day of instruction. i believe we should slow down on our curriculum and
actually make sure our students understand what is being taught at that very moment. Terrie
stated in her article that, Instead of the usual shallow survey courses, we dug deep into our
history and science. We usually spent three months on each topic. While we covered fewer
topics, we learned more about them--the good stuff doesn't come up until after the basics. Many
of our schools spent too short of a time on a subject so we as students dont learn as much on a
certain topic as we could. If we spend more time on the education of the children and make sure

they are understanding what they are being taught, they can flourish more in their ability to
obtain knowledge about certain subjects.
we need an educational system that excites children
http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/revolution-education-system.htm
Andy Powell, CEO of independent education foundation Edge, sets out his vision for the future
of education.I believe students should be excited when it comes to learning and to have fun while
doing it, while also still providing them with the learning they need. Andy stated in his article
that, This need for change has never been more pressing. It is not due to the fault of any
individual, any school or even any one political party but due to the simple fact the world has
changed - and our education system has not changed fast enough. The world changes each an
every day and more experiences to learn for students become more available. but, with us
moving along many feel like the educational system is being left be behind. he explained us as
students being, a factory manufacturing model where children are placed on a learning conveyor
belt, then sorted, packaged and labelled according to their so-called intelligence.
The learning system is mostly based off of how good our grades are, not how intelligent
each one of us can be. Students are so worried about their grades and tests, that they dont even
really stop to really learn a subject, they just get the basics down for their test so their grades will
not drop, which in my opinion is very sad. If kids didnt have to worry so much about how they'd
be portrayed because of test or how good their grades were, i think we could raise a more
intelligent generation because they actually took the time to learn about a certain subject instead
of just skipping through it. We need to teach our students to have fun with their education and
not be so reliable on tests, quizzes, and grades to determine who they are or even how smart they
are. your grades determine how good you can take a test, not how intelligent you may be.
Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/WhyStandardized-Tests-Don't-Measure-Educational-Quality.aspx
James Proham wrote this article about how standardized tests do not measure the education
quality of a student in many different ways. he explained that, These days, if a school's
standardized test scores are high, people think the school's staff is effective. If a school's
standardized test scores are low, they see the school's staff as ineffective. In either case, because
educational quality is being measured by the wrong yardstick, those evaluations are apt to be in
error. (James Porham) This explains that, if the students do not do well on their tests, it goes
back and effects the school and the teachers. Students might not do well on these tests for many
reasons. The questions are sometimes very confusing to comprehend, the student can know how
to answer it but not quite know what the question is asking.
A student's capability of getting a good grade on these tests should not determine how
smart he or she is. James Popham also believed that, But there's an enormous amount of
knowledge and/or skills that children at any grade level are likely to know. The substantial size
of the content domain that a standardized achievement test is supposed to represent poses
genuine difficulties for the developers of such tests. If a test actually covered all the knowledge
and skills in the domain, it would be far too long.Saying that many students in the same grade
can have different amounts of knowledge, but still be smart. These tests only covers small
amounts of knowledge, and the students that contain these do the best. The students that do not
yet contain the type of knowledge on the test do poorly, but these students might be brilliant in
different kinds of knowledge that was not gone over on these tests, therefore they are not
classified as smart.

To best work out this issue of standardized testing not being able to measure a student's
intelligence, i believe that they should either take away the tests for good. Or another option
could be that they could make different kinds of tests, that are capable of being able to
demonstrate different types of knowledge.
Whats Wrong with Standardized Tests?
http://www.fairtest.org/whats-wrong-standardized-tests
One of the questions from this article was, Do tests reflect current knowledge about how
students learn? and the response to this question i really like, it explains to why these
standardized tests can not determine if a student is smart or not compared to these tests. The
response was, Not at all. While our understanding of the brain and how people learn and think
has progressed enormously, standardized tests have remained the same. Test makers still assume
that knowledge can be broken into separate bits and that people learn by absorbing these
individual parts. Today, cognitive and developmental psychologists understand that knowledge is
not separable bits and that people (including children) learn by connecting what they already
know with what they are trying to learn. If they cannot actively make meaning out of what they
are doing, they do not learn or remember. another question from this article is, Are there better
ways to evaluate student achievement or ability? and the answer was, Yes. Good teacher
observation, documentation of student work, and performance-based assessment, all of which
involve the direct evaluation of real learning tasks, provide useful material for teachers, parents,
and the public. Many nations that do the best in international comparisons, like Finland, use
these techniques instead of large-scale standardized testing.
Too many children in one classroom?
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/07/too-many-kids/397451/

I remember when i was in elementary school and the most students i would have in my class
would be 15-20 . I believed it was a good size because there wasnt too many of us, and my
teachers always had teachers aids so no student was left behind when it came to learning. Now,
because of Educational cuts, classes are expanding into a large size of 32-35 students with only
one teacher. With having this many students in a classroom and only one teacher to teach them,
many students get left behind. Or students act out and become the bad kids because they dont
get the concepts, or any help and they dont want to be labeled as the dumb kid or put in a
dumb group. in this article i found it explained that, The massive layoffs mean that classrooms
will likely become even more crowded, and Oliver and others fear that could take a toll on
student learning, in part because children will receive less individualized attention and have to
work fewer school supplies. If more children are put into classrooms i believe a little less than
half of them will not get the help and support from the teacher that they need, because the
teacher is busy will all of the other students.
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/10-major-challenges-facing-public-schools
On this article, the number one problem was infact the classroom size. the person who wrote the
article believe that in a larger classroom it is nearly impossible for the children to benefit from it.
a study showed that more students both benefit from a small class from 15-20 students in the
long term and short term. Also the minority children (homeless, living in poverty) seemed to
benefit way more in a setting of less students and they appeared to benefit from the smaller class
sizes the most because they can get the help and attention they need from the teacher.
Another thing i found interesting about this article was that a really big problem in our education
system is poverty. At first i didnt think it was a big deal and i wasnt going to include it in my
research. But from now reading more into it, it turns out to be one of the worst problems of our

educational system and something that needs to be looked at more. These are some of the causes
of children living in poverty when it comes to education; 1 in 10 kindergarten and 1st grade
students miss more than a month of school each year, over half of those students live in poverty.
1 in every 4 children in america go without enough food to live a healthy lifestyle, 21 million
children in the Us qualify for free or reduced lunch, only 68% of of seniors in high poverty
schools.
Many of the students that live in poverty have very low supervision at home due to their
parents being at work, so therefore they have trouble doing their homework, they dont get
enough food or sleep, and school to most children living in poverty is isnt their main focus. to
help these children and to focus on fixing the problem of children not graduating when they live
in poverty should start when they are young. Teachers can be available before and after school to
help with anything theyre having a hard time with, to help with homework, etc. Be good role
models for the students, these people would help encourage the students educational wise.
provide a safe a comfortable environment for the kids, an environment that they like coming
into when they are having troubles at home. Making sure that there is breakfast and lunch
available for these students, trying to form good relationships with the parents so they can
discuss what is best for the child.
I also came across another article about children living in poverty and how it affected
their education. By living in poverty it affects their brain development and their emotional well
being. it affects their brain development in the way that poverty has effects on the psycological
and an emotional state of children contribute to both students interest in school and their overall
happiness. According to a recent study by the connecticut commissioner for children, twice as
many low income parents suffer from depression as other parents. By the parents dealing with

depression it usually shows out through their kids. By their parents dealing with bad depression it
affects the child in the way they portray school and the relationships that are vital to build while
in school. Additionally, 16.4 percent of parents of low-income children reported behavior
problems that lasted longer than three months, a factor that was reported by 12.7 percent of nonlow-income parents in a study published by The Future of Our Children in 1997.
(education.seattlepi)
In the same article there was another study on how the brain development of a child
living in poverty also is in risk. The home life has a very high influence on the on a childs
educational growth, including their vocabulary and language skills. Additionally, delays in brain
development are 1.3 times more common in children who live below the poverty line nationally
Overall, 5 percent of low-income children experience delays in brain development and 8.3
percent have learning disabilities, according to a study by Princeton University published in The
Future of Our Children. basically the children that live in poverty need a lot more help when it
comes to school. but how do teachers know if a child is infact living in poverty? i believe this
should be something the education system pays more attention too. a lot more students that live
in poverty could graduate and get the help they need if we would just recognize that this is a
serious problem and that these children need help.
Another thing i found very important when it comes to bringing changes to our
educational systems in more geared to the ones in high school. 80 percent of students are
graduating high school, but most are not prepared for what is to come next. Even though the
graduation right in the United States is at an all time high, ever. Many students graduate high
school not being able to proficiently read or complete certain math problems. according to this
article by Matthew Lynch he believed that, The problem is that students are being passed on to

the next grade when they should be held back, and then they are unable to complete grade-level
work and keep up with their classmates. many students in high school are happy with just
passing the class so they can move on even if they did not get the material as well as they could
have. all they were really worried about is passing. The NAEP (national assessment of
educational process) this is the largest standardized test administered in the US, had reported that
fewer than 40 percent of the graduating seniors have mastered reading and math and they are
poorly ready and equipped for college and the real world life. If a student shows struggles in
many areas in a certain grade they should not be moved onto the next grade until they are
prepared for it. they shouldnt be passed just for the sake of passing.
in a lot of ways my research paper started out one way and ended a completely different
way, but i learned a lot. There are very many things that are wrong with the educational system,
too many to count. I chose six problem with the system based on how much attention needed to
be brought to them, and how important i felt that things needed to be changed. The six things i
chose were; subjects in school are being gone over too quickly, so students dont have the chance
to really grasp them. second, we need a new education system that excites children about
learning. third, standardized tests do not determines someone's intelligence based on their score.
forth, there are too many children in one classroom. fifth, a lot of children live in poverty and it
takes a tole on their education. Lastly, Many high school seniors by the time they graduate are
actually not ready for the real life, or for college. I really enjoyed researching all through the
problems of the educational system it was all super interesting to me and i learned a lot more
than i had planned.