Parentella

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), education reform legislation passed with bipartisan congressional support in 2001 was designed to improve the quality of education received by students in the public school system nationwide. With an end goal of 100% proficiency in reading and math for all students by 2014 via steady annual increases in student performance, the act mandated that each state devise their own standardized test to measure academic improvement. 10 years later, however, politicians, master’s degree pundits, and educators of NCLB believe the act has failed in its goal of bridging the achievement gap between minority, low-income students and non-minority students.

One of the main causes of failure has been the state-designed standardized test. Comparisons between state test results and that of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a project run in part by the Department of Education that administers nationwide assessments of student knowledge in categories that include math, reading and science, offers evidence supporting claims that states lower the difficulty level of state tests to ensure that their students meet established target performance goals. According to the Commission on No Child Left Behind, as much as 90% of students in some states test as proficient on state NCLB tests while in the same states the proficiency level falls to as low as 25% by NAEP standards. An additional consequence of the constrictive 100% proficiency by 2014 goal is its effect on teaching methods. With test-oriented lesson plans, teachers are forced to compromise the quality of education students receive in order to focus on gearing students towards passing low-standard tests.

The Obama administration has acknowledged these and other flaws with the No Child Left Behind Act. Earlier this year, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, acknowledged before the House education committee that public schools were increasingly failing to meet NCLB requirements. He urged congressional action regarding reforms to both the 2014 proficiency deadline and the general pass/fail grading system for states, in addition to other aspects of the law. Unfortunately, though, the current partisan handicap in Congress has precluded any action on their part. As a result, the Obama administration, via executive orders, has gone ahead with its own reforms.

Duncan has announced that waivers for the 2014 proficiency deadline will be granted to states that have devised and adopted their own reform models that concentrate on “college- and career-ready standards for all students” as well as variegated accountability tests that serve to highlight achievements and isolate failures within the public school system. Additionally, the Obama administration has announced the ESEA flexibility, an avenue of relief for states from NCLB requirements that have served to stifle legitimate more than anything else. States that apply for flexibility will be able to adopt their own models of reform that focus on better academic preparation for students, more accurate measures of performance and reformed teacher and principle evaluations.

Additional measures that should be taken include enforced transparency for accountability reporting as well as increased federal funding for innovative ideas in education reform. With the new goal of reforming education standards to prepare America’s students for higher education and successful careers beyond graduation, the Obama administration is working towards restoring America as the nation with the highest proportion of graduates by 2020, and ESEA Flexibility is the first step.

Paying Students to Drop Out?

It is often accepted that college is the best way to pursue a career and gain financial freedom. Recently, however, many college graduates are finding it harder to find employment in the job market. What is even more troublesome is the fact that these students armed with bachelor’s and master’s degrees are entering the job market with an enormous amount of debt in the form of student loans. Many students feel like they are passing up on great opportunities and putting their career on hold while going to college. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is even paying students to drop out and start their own business.
While people with bachelors degrees still fare much better in the job market than those without, having a college education no longer guarantees a well-paying job. The unemployment rate for those with bachelors degrees is currently 4.4%. The biggest issue with this statistic is that it does not specify what field in which the employees are working or how much money they are making. Most businesses are looking for employees with experience, and those coming out of college are short on it, while high on debt. Many “employed” graduates are working in jobs which highly under-employ their skill sets, rendering their education essentially useless.

For students who have opportunity to succeed immediately in areas that may not require a degree, going to college is not the best option. Enterprises such as Facebook, which is a billion dollar business, were founded by students in college. If they had stayed the course in their college career, and neglected the opportunities in front of them, then they would have been in the job market just like every other graduate, looking for a job. They would likely be contributing to the national student loan debt which will soon be over a trillion dollars.

Peter Thiel has started a 2 million dollar fund to get college students to drop out. He’s giving selected students $100,000 to start businesses instead of finishing their college career. He feels that it is a waste of time and potential for these students to get a degree, when they could be innovating. For those with ideas in the technology industry, time is the most important aspect. Missing out on an opportunity to cash in on great innovations in order to get a college degree could end up costing them millions.

If a student has the opportunity to start a business or cash in on a great invention, then that opportunity far outweighs what they could achieve with a college degree. Those who are seeking careers in industries that do not rely on innovation are much better suited to staying in school. People with college degrees have a much better chance of landing a job, but people with great opportunities should not waste them in a classroom, when they can be making money off of them.

Education is about meeting a child’s learning needs through creative and flexible instruction. That is why Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams developed the flipped classroom model. This is a method designed for those who understand that education cannot be reduced to any one strategy or be restricted to a rigid framework. Initially termed reverse instruction, this method essentially flips the current paradigm by sending kids home to attend lectures and the like in an environment much like an online school, and then spending actual classroom time in interactive review that has previously been reserved for homework.

Normally, students are required to bring hours of schoolwork back home, where it then must compete with all the distractions there such as the television and the computer. The student works on the problems and assignments entirely on his or her own, without peer review, interaction, or teacher feedback and correction. This can become a struggle for students everywhere, with unanswered questions turning into bad habits and malformed ideas.

According to Bergmann and Sams’ The Flipped Class Blog, the reasoning for this innovative new strategy was developed with these observations in mind. The flipped classroom model addresses these problems as a twofold cure. First, instead of a competition pitting homework against the draws of the Internet, the flipped classroom model embraces this common medium of our generation. Students get to “watch TV” for homework by viewing podcast lectures, power-point presentations, content-rich websites, and educational videos, all at their own pace. If they are the interactive type, they can then discuss what they are learning from home through chat rooms, blogs, and vlogs.

Secondly, the classroom environment changes drastically. Suddenly, instead of boring lectures and busywork, the classroom is alive and active. The students are engaged in what would have otherwise been homework. Hands-on and tactile students especially benefit, as they do not have to struggle to sit still and listen for any length of time. As students apply learned material to their work, they have the support of peer discussion and teacher instruction. If students have questions about the material, there is much more time for the teacher to clarify and give examples. David Truss of the acclaimed Connected Principles education blog agrees that when this strategy is well-done, it is a great use of time for collaboration, problem-solving, practice. However, he does warn that quality must not be sacrificed for the convenience of this model, as would be the temptation for some. This does not transform the teacher’s role from teacher to mere facilitator. Instead, production quality has the chance to increase due to the increased accountability as students have the opportunity to put pencil to paper under the direct tutelage of the teacher.

The relationship between a parent and the teacher is changed as well. The question becomes not “how is my child behaving in class?” but rather “is my child learning?” Bergmann and Sam discovered that this type of questioning is more profound, and allows for a much more nuanced treatment of children and their education, rather than focusing on how to discipline them and get them to sit still in class. Parents and teachers can work together to clarify what may be frustrating a child and figure out ways to solve it, both during home instruction and class time.

The flipped classroom is still a new method, and it may yet take time to fully flesh out any problems that there may be with it. But at the current point in time, parents, teachers, and students involved with the program are all giving rave reviews. Now that educational reform is becoming more and more important to everyone, this model may be one we can turn to to revolutionize education.