PG Santiago
AP Government
Ms. Duquette
15 November 2010
Education Reform and Funding
Education reform is slowly moving up the list of political issues that citizens want to be dealt with as soon as possible. Both parties though unsurprisingly, have different ways of approaching the problem. The success of either these problems or perhaps a merging of these solutions could lead to a revitalization of knowledge among kids and teenagers across the United States not known for many decades. The Republican Party’s solution to fix the current education crisis is to raise the standards instead of lowering them or keeping them the same. A common Republican belief is that “if we ask more of American students, they will produce more” (Winston, Para 18). Republican’s think that there is much untapped potential in students and if pushed to a point it can be revealed. The thought process is that if the bar is raised then it will force students and adapt to the change and overall make them better students because of it. Raising the bar would give children the incentive to work harder since human nature has always had the inclination to respond to rewards. Republican’s advocate they don’t need as much money as the Democratic Party says that education needs, it just needs more money put in the right places such as achievement and rigor.
The Democratic Party’s solution to fixing the problem of education ironically comes from a fix of a Republican ideal. The “No Child Left Behind” act passed during the Bush administration was a critical point for the former president. The act put into effect that in order for a district to receive funding, all students must pass assessment tests into basic skills such as reading, math, and writing. Bringing all students to a certain level sounds good for everyone but in reality it was hurting the development of children. Setting a lower standard meant that kids with higher level thinking were not being challenged. The greatest minds in the United States were only able to come into fruition by the rigor of education but if the standards are being lowered, that rigor will not exist.The Democrat solution is to “place more importance on academic growth than the current pass-fail approach to judging schools” (Anderson, Para 2). Right now the benchmark is very strict, if a student does not meet or exceed a certain score on a standardized test for his grade it counts as a failure. However, with this revision if a student makes a certain amount of progress than the previous test it counts as a pass. They did this because there are many students who were below the original benchmark to begin with so right now it is a lot of work for some students to get to that benchmark. But if the government says a student must only go up 300 points for example he passes, 300 points from an original score of 200 or a score from 1000 is still a pass. This will allow more students to pass thus get districts more funding to get the necessary tools to teach more children. Some will argue that this is the same as the former but this revision allows students to progress at their own pace. It will challenge higher level students while also being able to bring up lower students.
Democrat’s and Republican’s have always had the same goal but the solutions have and always will be different. Just as in the Second Continental Congress there were many compromises made in order to make the Constitution. Some must be made here if the United States is ever going to be a center of learning and genius that it used to be known as.
Bibliography
Anderson, Nick. (2010). Obama: Revise No Child Left Behind law. The Washington Post, Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/13/AR2010031301137.html
Winston, David (2008). The Right Republican Strategy. Education Next, Retrieved from http://educationnext.org/the-right-republican-strategy/
