Steve Goniprow<\/p>\n
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Education 300<\/p>\n
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Research Project Proposal<\/p>\n
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As the widening gap between America\u2019s haves and have-nots continues to cast an ominous cloud over a nation that allegedly provides it\u2019s members with hopes and dreams, how can education be utilized as a tool capable of eradicating income inequality?\u00a0\u00a0 More specifically, how has the Obama administration elected to reform the American educational system, a system that is plagued by an achievement gap that directly helps to perpetuate the nation\u2019s grotesque rates of income inequality?\u00a0 How the Obama administration aims to narrow the achievement gap, and how their plan differs from previous reform efforts, is the question that I wish to explore and hopefully answer with my research project.\u00a0 I believe that a thorough exploration of the Obama administration\u2019s reform efforts is not only worthy of my research pursuits, but it deserves to be examined because of the rising income gap between working-class and upper-class Americans over the last thirty years. \u00a0\u00a0It is my belief that we can narrow this gap by providing every American with a fair shake at getting a good education, and in doing so, we\u2019ll become a more humane society that other nation\u2019s can learn from in our interconnected world.\u00a0 In 1848, prominent American education reformer Horace Mann said, \u201cWhen we have spread competence through all the abodes of poverty, when we have substituted knowledge for ignorance in the minds of the whole people, when we have reformed the vicious and reclaimed the criminal, then may we invite all neighboring nations to behold the spectacle, and say to them, in the conscious elation of virtue, \u2018Rejoice with me,\u2019 for I have found that which was lost\u201d (Mann 666).\u00a0 With Mann\u2019s poignant words in mind, I wish to explore what the Obama administration is doing through educational reform to discover what is lost in this country.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Before Obama took over office in 2008, the Bush administration\u2019s polarizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act dominated the educational reform efforts of the early 2000\u2019s.\u00a0 NCLB expanded the federal government\u2019s role in public education by creating standards with which it would hold schools accountable.\u00a0 In describing NCLB, writers from edweek.org said, \u201cAt the core of the No Child Left Behind Act were a number of measures designed to drive broad gains in student achievement and to hold states and schools more accountable for student progress\u201d (edweek.org).\u00a0 These measures included annual testing for grade-school students in mathematics, reading, and science, while states were also required to bring one hundred percent of it\u2019s student to federally defined proficiency levels by 2013-2014 (edweek.org).\u00a0 If an individual school failed to make \u201cadequate yearly progress\u201d towards the overarching goal of one hundred percent student proficiency in back-to-back years, students would be offered with the opportunity to attend another public school. If a school continued to fail to make federally defined progress, the school would possibly be faced with \u201cgovernance changes.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Furthermore, states were required to develop report cards that charted student-achievement progress while qualifications for teachers in core content areas were also raised.\u00a0 Lastly, NCLB established a competitive grant program called Reading First that focused on bolstering state\u2019s reading programs for grades K-3 (edweek.org).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While many supporters of NCLB praised the bill for placing a greater degree of accountability on states to improve test scores and make \u201cadequate yearly progress,\u201d many critics of the bill protested it\u2019s unrealistic expectation of one hundred percent proficiency by 2013-2014. \u00a0NCLB was developed with the intention of helping underprivileged American youths get a better education and a better life, but former U.S. assistant secretary of education Diane Ravitch believes that NCLB has done just the opposite.\u00a0 In a 2012 interview, she said, \u201cAfter 10 years of NCLB, we should have seen dramatic progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but we have not. By now, we should be able to point to sharp reductions of the achievement gaps between children of different racial and ethnic groups and children from different income groups, but we cannot\u2026many children continue to be left behind, and we know who those children are: They are the same children who were left behind 10 years ago\u201d (washingpost.com).\u00a0\u00a0 So if NCLB has not worked towards eliminating poverty and closing the achievement gap that perpetuates income inequality, what has the Obama administration done to address this very serious issue?<\/p>\n
The Obama administration\u2019s educational reform efforts have in large part been defined by the Race to the Top program (RTTT).\u00a0 In describing the goals of the program in a 2009 speech, President Obama said, \u201cWe’re going to raise the bar for all our students and take bigger steps towards closing the achievement gap that denies so many students, especially black and Latino students, a fair shot at their dreams.\u201d (whitehouse.gov).\u00a0\u00a0 But how would the President do this?\u00a0 For starters, while NCLB federally mandated that schools make changes, RTTT simply provides schools with the incentive to make changes (cga.ct.gov).\u00a0 \u00a0Under RTTT, Congress set aside over four billion dollars for states that are willing to \u201ccreate robust plans that address the four key areas of K-12 education reform\u201d (whitehouse.gov).\u00a0 The four key areas of reform that RTTT focuses on involves developing better standards and assessments, adopting better data systems to track student progress, developing support for teachers and school leaders to become more effective, and increasing the amount resources that the lowest-performing schools need to improve (whitehouse.gov).\u00a0 In conducting research on NCLB and RTTT, I found that educationweek.org and various other websites were most helpful in the research process.\u00a0 I did not look at any books in the research process although Diane Ravitch\u2019s text that was assigned for Ed 300 would probably have been a valuable source to draw information from for this proposal.<\/p>\n
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Bibliography<\/p>\n
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Mann, Horace, 1796-1859. Life And Works of Horace Mann. [Boston: Walker, Fuller and co., 186568.<\/p>\n
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Strauss, Valerie. “Ravitch: No Child Left Behind and the Damage Done.” Washington<\/p>\n
Post. The Washington Post, 10 Jan. 2012. Web. 06 Apr. 2013.<\/p>\n
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“COMPARING NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AND RACE TO THE TOP.” N.p., n.d.<\/p>\n
Web. 06 Apr. 2013.<\/p>\n
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“Race to the Top.” The White House<\/em>. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2013.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “The White House Blog.” Speeding Up the Race to the Top. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2013.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “No Child Left Behind.” Research Center:. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve Goniprow Education 300 Research Project Proposal As the widening gap between America\u2019s haves and have-nots continues to cast an ominous cloud over a nation that allegedly provides it\u2019s members with hopes and dreams, how can education be utilized as a tool capable of eradicating income inequality?\u00a0\u00a0 More specifically, how has … Continue reading Proposal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4566,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions\/4566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}