Movers and Shakers in Education free essay sample

While navigating through the virtual timeline, I found so many interest ting articles to write about, I have chosen the following four events that had an impact on education that affected my life while I was in school and also have helped shape the educational systems during my children’s education in America today. The four articles that I found are: Engle vs. Vitale: 1962; I. D. E. A. : 1990; No Child Left Behind: 2002; and Common Core State Standards: 2009. The first event, Engle vs. Vitale, was about the separation of church from state, this lead to prayer being taken out of schools. People were outraged that official prayers were no longer permitted in schools. Rev. Billy Graham opposes the church and state separation. This was the first case which prohibited the government from sponsoring or endorsing official prayers in school. http://atheism. about. com/od/churchstatedecisions/a/EngleVitale. htm. The second event is I. We will write a custom essay sample on Movers and Shakers in Education or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page D. E. A. What is I. D. E. A? I. D. E. A. stands for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act also known as P. L. 108-446 is a Federal program which provides funds to states and local education agencies (school districts) to support education for children with disabilities age 3 to 21, this is part B and Part C which provide`s funds for states to support Early Intervention service for children birth to age 3years. IDEA has very strict guidelines and protections for children to make sure they get the appropriate public education they deserve. They also make sure that students get the same education as students without disabilities. Special education is a service that helps students achieves their individual goals plan. Special education is not like it was 20 years ago; now the students are placed in the mainstream classroom and they don’t pull them out of class to give them special attention. So for the student, and there is a specialist that comes into the class and assist the teacher with their learning process so the students don’t have self esteem problems. This has made a big difference in their grades. My daughter was in special education for the first two years of elementary school and having her evaluated was the best thing I could have done for her in the early years; she had an IEP and this really made a big difference in her performance in speech and with her socialization skills. Today she is nineteen years old she graduated from high school and was the Valedictorian of her class in 2012, now she is studying to become a phlebotomist. This is how her IEP, helped find out what her problems were. What is an IEP; it’s an Individualized Education Program to help diagnose the student’s problems and to see what testing is needs to be done to diagnose her problems. IDEA: 1990 http://www. kidstogether. org/IDEA. htm My third event addresses No Child Left Behind. President George W. Bush signed the bill into law in 2002. People thought that this bill would get us better ratings in school but that didn’t happen. Teachers and parents thought that this law would help future schools in poor neighborhoods and they would be controlled by the state and not by the federal government. I think that our government doesn’t think about where the money comes from when they increase funding for programs and end up closing schools after a few months in operation. There is a catch to receiving governmental funding; they always are seeking something in return for their services in some form or fashion. The government wants new testing or longer school days for students and faculty. Whenever the government is involved, you no longer have your privacy because they have the right to all information in your school files. When you have to close a failing school, this only means that the school system will be transferring student to another school , which would cause over populating other schools and this will create a huge problem in the classrooms. I believe this will create unnecessary stress for the students because they will have to transfer to another school and having to make new friends and get new teachers in the middle of the school year and that would have a huge impact on them to perform to the best of their abilities with so many adjustment to handle in the middle of a school year. My final event is the Common Core State Standards. According to the website http://www. azed. gov/azcommoncore/ , The Arizona Common Core Standards were adopted on June 28, 2010 by The Arizona State Board of Education and will be implemented for the school year 2014-2015. The standards were developed by teachers, education leaders, and experts in their field. According to the website (Achieve,Inc. ,2012), simply put , â€Å"College and career readiness† is the umbrella under which many education and workforce policies, programs and initiatives thrive. † According to an article in the Denver Post September 2011, in Colorado we have the CSAP Testing Program that began in 1997 with the intention to get better results on standardized test that was to improve student’s test scores but that failed. Teachers are teaching how to take test and that results in students falling short on their other required studies. More and more schools are failing because the government believes that if something is worth a try and if what they have already tried has failed, then let us try something new and improved. This is what they should do, get two school districts to do a trial for two years and then compare the results with the other school districts to see how well the two districts did, then if they had failing test scores see which district did better and make your adjustments on those findings. I believe that parent, teachers, and the school boards will be happy with the progress of finding a solution to their problem with standardized testing in the end and everyone will be happy with the outcome and get rid of standardized testing once and for all. COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS: 2009; Movers and Shakers in Education free essay sample Trailblazers in American Education There have been several individuals throughout America’s history who have helped develop, shape, advance, balance, and reform education to what it is today. America’s educational system has a rich background from its roots of one room school houses to our current system of education which offers an array of opportunities for students to obtain a public education. John Dewey John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is known as the founder of the progressive education movement. He argued that it was the job of education to encourage individuals to develop their full potential as human beings. Deweys educational theories were presented in a variety of books he authored. Several continuous themes ring true in most of Dewey’s books. They include his frequent argument that education and learning are social and interactive processes, thus school should be considered a social institution where social reform can and ought to take place. We will write a custom essay sample on Movers and Shakers in Education or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In addition, he believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum so all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning. He was especially critical of forms of memorization learning where repetition of facts and information was exercised. He argued that children should learn by experience. Rather than just gaining knowledge, Dewey believed that students should develop skills, habits and attitudes necessary for them to solve a wide variety of problems. Dewey’s legacy of the importance of experiential learning remains to this day. There are a number of schools across the United States that follow his theories and methods of teaching. [pic] Alvarez vs. The Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District. The history of school desegregation legislation in the United States did not begin with the 1954 Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Brown vs. he Topeka school board, but rather in a rural community called Lemon Grove located in Southern California. It has recently been discovered that the earliest court cases concerning school desegregation occurred in the American Southwest in the 1930s. In these cases, Mexican immigrants and their communities were the targeted groups of segregation by school officials. A significant case during this era was the 1930 decision in Roberto Alvarez vs. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District. This was the first successful school desegregation court decision in the history of the United States. It represents an instance when community members took court action and won their case, despite negative sentiment towards them, to ensure the rights of their children to receive an equal education, making it an important event in both San Diego and U. S. history. The case stands as a credit to the activism of San Diego’s Mexican community who used the public system of justice to ensure that not only Mexican-American children in California, but the rest of the United States had access to a quality education (Alvarez, Jr. , 1984). [pic] Science and Math Education Movement With the launching of Sputnik in October 1957, Americans became extremely fearful that the United States was falling behind in the areas of technology, science, and mathematics. Citizens of the United States feared that their country could see a shortage of trained teachers, engineers, and highly educated students in the near future if something was not done. In response to public pressure, the federal government passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958. The act supported efforts of academic specialists to revise curriculum according to the latest theories and methods. Improvements were made in all subject areas and institutes were held to train teachers in the use of new materials and methods (Webb, Metha, Jordan, 2010). In addition to enhancing the curriculum, the NDEA also funded programs that provided guidance, counseling, and testing programs for students. According to authors Webb, Metha, Jordan, the NDEA set the stage for the federal government’s increased involvement in education (2010). [pic] Out of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) of 1975 came the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990. These pieces of legislation were a result of the earlier Civil Rights Movement in Education during the 1960s where marginalized groups were fighting for justice and equality within the education system. The federal law, IDEA, was established in 1990. It applies to all children with disabilities from birth to age twenty-one. The statue defines â€Å"disabled children† as those with mental retardation, hearing impairments, emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, multiple disabilities, or specific learning disabilities. To receive services under the IDEA, a student must not only have a disability, but the condition also must affect the student’s education. The major principles included in the IDEA are: the right to a free and appropriate education, identification and nondiscriminatory evaluation, an individualized education program (IEP), least restrictive environment, and procedural due process (Webb, et al. , 2010). While the law has transformed and grown over the years, it remains evident in the classroom to this day. It has promoted research and technology development, details on transition programs for post high school students, and programs that educate children in their neighborhood schools instead of separate schools.