Monday Matters #16

     For the past three weeks three articles have been summarized. The articles all dealt with complications in education. Very similar in the topic but varying in the problems. These three problems can conjure a conversation between the authors because these are all problems that can and should be fixed because they are closely related to one another. One article talks about how students need to be taken out of the "safe zone" with books, another talks about the problem with test's and how many disagree with the Common Core State Standards, and the last article talks about how "America's education system is unequal and unfair." The first two articles are in correlation with each other more than the third because these are minor problems compared to the major problem stated by the last article. However, they could be brought up all together because the first two problems could cause the last problem. There is a dilemma in the middle of this and it all surrounds the problems with education and how people should reform it.

Monday Matters #15

       "America's education system is unequal and unfair." Very straightforward and to the point right? These words come from Peter Dreier the author of this article called "America's Classist Education System." He discusses the differences on education systems between wealthy communities and communities not so fortunate. The wealthy communities have it so much better and a bigger advantage because they have more trained teachers, smaller classrooms to get more time one-on-one with teachers if needed, the students of these wealthy neighborhood schools have the technology that is in the world now so they are up to date, and also have the better environments like libraries and even sports facilities. It's easy to assume that theses students who attend these schools do better than the students in the poor communities. The students have a higher chance of graduating getting and getting into prestigious colleges.
     On the other hand, many students from less prosperous neighborhoods aren't so lucky. Because of lower paying jobs due to no education for the parents themselves, they cannot afford to send their children to a more prestigious school for grammar school, high school, or college. The problem of how helping other families that are poor is even discussed because its not possible to help when the families of that community are poor as well. These families are stuck between a rock and a hard place with no way out. The way the schools are set up makes the education system "unequal and unfair" there are no fair chances for everyone because of this gap between prosperous and not prosperous.

Monday Matters #14

      There are a variety of test's students take throughout their student lives. For example, tests like the ACT, SAT, and even other test's like a test for history class that we get certain grades for the number correct we score. Some might consider those test to be easy and not as challenging. However, many disagree with Common Core State Standards, which is a set of quality academic standards in math and english language arts. One author, Grant Wiggins, took the time to look over eight graders math results specifically and found something that "appalled" him. He found that the hardest questions on those test's were "picayune, isolated, and needlessly complex calculations of numbers using scientific notation." In the article, there are examples that show how  poorly the students did. For example, there were five questions that the students faced but only 36% of all of New York 8th graders got them correct. The introduction to the tests that are about how items will be discussed were also criticized because the author also says that it "gets worse."Not only was the introduction criticized, but so was the "rationale" to the correct answers saying that all the other choices are "plausible" but they are incorrect in the decision made saying that thats when it "gets worse." He points out how in the rationale, the same sentences appear and the only changes made are the letter choices. There is no evidence shown and that all we learn is nothing about student understanding. "New York State teachers deserve better"