Education Reforms in the United States

Abstract

The public education system continues to present inequalities to many learners. As a result, many students, especially those from low-income families, end up getting locked outside some critical opportunities I the future. This paper looks at inequalities in mathematics instruction in the United States public education system. Unite states has great differences in teaching mathematic and other science subjects thus providing a biased ground for students. The paper ends by proposing a ways through which the federal government needs to take to bring equality in mathematics instruction in United States.

       Education Reforms in the United States

            Many people believe that the main problem with American public education is lack of focus on results. Students aren’t expected to achieve high standards; the assumption goes, and the education process takes precedence over analysis of education outcomes in policy-making processes. This argument remains valid the way it goes. In fact, it needs one further important step.  As people, we fail to hold students accountable for worse performance; while at the same time, we fail to hold government- school system accountable for performance. Public education in itself remains a failure. Why shouldn’t students follow government’s example?

            The greatest test of any educational system is whether the system makes ensures every student, whatever the background, gets exposed to content needed to compete effectively in contemporary society.  Schools in the United States are continuing to fail this basic test, and, as a result,   wasting many talents of American children, who are children from diverse backgrounds. The truth is that, for many students, the education they get is greatly based on chances, creating academic changes into something like lottery with adverse consequences. The key challenge in reforming the America’s education system is to assure equal opportunities to learn essential content, skills, and problem-solving as well as reasoning abilities (Battey, 2013). Unfortunately, educational reformers on left and right continue to be consumed with the aspect of equalizing resources, while missing the core of schooling which is instructing academic content by educators to students. It is exactly in this coverage area of instructional content that large inequalities exist, particularly in mathematics as well as science. What surprises is that these subjects remain determiners of future employment opportunities as well as U.S. economic growth. The federal government has therefore failed to implement common ground in its public schools for such subjects.   Private schools and charter schools seem to be places where student can achieve their desires. Unfortunately, they are few and costly to poor families.  The combined factors, therefore, hinder students from attaining success in such fields.

            A lot gets revealed when key issues related to the extent, as well as the origins of inequalities in mathematics content coverage, is concerned. It remains a no surprise that inequality in the opportunities to learn relates to lower achievement of the underprivileged students. Children from high-poverty districts always get exposed to limited rigorous content. As a matter of fact, weak math instruction remains common in the struggling districts.  Their instructional content has commonalities with the low-income districts in various states as compared to affluent districts of same state. The state government need to know that inequality in the learning opportunity to learn is a problem for poor as well as minority students (White-Clark, DiCarlo& Gilchriest, 2008).  Keen scrutiny reveals that the greatest variation in educational opportunities lay among the middle-income school districts.  The government should not assume that just because some people live in a middle-class society that their children get equal chance to learn critical mathematics topics to the desired depth and incoherent as well as focused way.

            Unequal learning opportunity threatens every student since it remains the difference in classrooms which is the greatest variation source. Over what state, district, or school a student goes to, classroom assignment translates to what topics they get a chance to learn. Classes differ in the topics taught, duration, rigor as well as order. For instance, students in various “algebra" classes need to focus on primary arithmetic topics or handle complex mathematics, experiencing greatly different learning opportunities even when sharing one-course title and even in one same school! What policy makers never realize is the widespread of the activity of tracking, where learners at one same grade get taught varied mathematics content, truly is (Polikoff, 2012). Students who get in classrooms where there is limited topic coverage see chances of moving to take advanced courses in higher learning institutions severely limited.  The reason is that once a student gets placed in low track, it is difficult to catch up. This situation has longer term results. National survey show that in the eighth grade three-quarters of learners get tracked in a way or another, as are approximately a third of the fourth-graders. I challenge the federal government to rationalize influencing children's chances based on how effective they do while they are ten years of age. Before we rush to decisions, just from the fact that classrooms remain places where great inequality comes from, it doesn’t translate to blaming teachers.  A large number of teachers are always ill prepared to tutor mathematics (Polikoff, 2012). The worst mistake is that they get forced to pick and select what to tutor from conflicting textbooks’ guidance, state as well as district standards and assessments.  Many mathematics books provide shallow coverage to many topics instead of focusing on limited key topics in every grade. This approach gets done in many higher-achieving nations.

            Despite the great challenge of providing equal opportunity in learning mathematics, I strongly believe that there is a great reason for optimism. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, for instance, presents a perfect chance to implement high-quality standards. The Common Core provides an opportunity to reform the entire fragmented, incoherent United States mathematics curriculum which makes mathematics learning an outcome of blind opportunity, and to shift towards a system which gives every child an equal opportunity at an education (White-Clark, DiCarlo& Gilchriest, 2008). Since many good employment opportunities base on mathematics and sciences, the government will be have done injustice to the students if it does not level these critical subjects in its educational system.  The national government needs to implement one mathematics curriculum for all American schools to provide equal opportunities for students. Inability to do this will continue to subject many talents to destruction. The government should also invest in training more mathematics teachers to ensure personnel sufficiency. When this gets done, students will be availed with equal opportunities while at the same time given a leveraged curriculum. The dream of American people have often rested on an assumption that education  creates the level playing ground through  which this becomes possible.

            To conclude, provision of fair ground for public education remains a responsibility of the national government. There is, therefore, need for policy makers to work toward implementing educational reforms that eliminates education inequalities, particularly in mathematics. Such reform need to get promoted by a common curriculum for specific grades as well as proper and well-equipped teachers.  We should, therefore, remain with no option but to call the government to eliminate this inequality and provide equal opportunities for children the public education system.  The federal government needs not only come to its task for fairness in resource allocation but also in syllabus regulation.

 References

Battey, D. (2013). 'Good' mathematics teaching for students of color and those in poverty: the     importance of relational interactions within instruction. Educational Studies In       Mathematics, 82(1), 125-144. Doi: 10.1007/s10649-012-9412-z

White-Clark, R., DiCarlo, M., & Gilchriest, N. (2008): "Guide on the side": An instructional         approach to meet mathematics standards. High School Journal, 91(4), 40-44.

Polikoff, M. S. (2012): THE REDUNDANCY OF MATHEMATICS INSTRUCTION IN U.S. ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOLS Elementary School Journal, 113(2), 230- 251.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in research paper writing help 24 hours if you need a similar paper you can place your order for essay writing services.