English 1A
Karen Davies
14th March, 2012
Educational Change: The First Step As the government grows bigger and bigger the education we get seems to get smaller and smaller. High school education is facing many challenges many these days, one of which is the dropout rate. We cannot just simply let kids stay in school until they are eighteen and then after that just forget about them to let them be. We need to make the education system more in favor of the students, to their needs and wants. Tom Luna, Idaho superintendent says “The fact is that studies show the majority of students drop out not because they aren't capable but because they are bored, unmotivated, or don't see the connection between school and their future employment.” After they graduate from high school we have to make sure they can hold their own in a job and that they are ready for college. We have to make sure that the diploma they get is not just a paper but much more than that. On January 8, 2002 George W. Bush signed the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Act, which started a decade long of rigors standardized testing in math and English in high school. Schools were to make sure every child enrolled in the school made the “proficiency” mark to pass the test; if they did and the school was doing well on the tests then they would receive visits from the governor, had parties, and received money. But on the other hand if schools were not meeting the standards and the students were not making the mark then schools would receive punishment in terms of money defunding and were labeled as failures. "The percentage of schools not making AYP varies from a low of 11 percent in Wisconsin to a high of 90 percent in Florida," said