This Week's Guest Author: Katie K.
This week, our class completed a second transfer task, where we compared and contrasted 2 different pieces of text based on current world issues. I decided that my world issue would be the "No Child Left Behind" act. This bill was proposed to Congress, and signed by Former President George W. Bush by January of 2002. The bill requires every state to set achievement standards and reachable goals for all public school students. Then, each year, students are assessed on their goal achievement with standardized testing. For Missouri, the test is the MAP, taken each year by public school students in grades 3-8. This helps the government focus on narrowing the achievement between the proficient students, and the minority students that are falling behind. This also is showing the government the accountability of the education coming from teachers. It also gives students that are falling behind the option of school choice if they are attending a consistently low-performing school. This bill encourages teachers to "teach to the test" so students are learning and correctly preparing for the state test. Last year, the Obama Administration proposed a deal to congress to overhaul the law, due to the fact that many believe that NCLB has failed to improve schools in the United States. I agree that every child counts and that every student deserves great education for a successful future.
I related this issue to "The Lighthing Thief", which I recently finished. Percy was both dyslexic and diagnosed with ADHD, and was consistently performing poorly in his school. I inferred that Percy had already been "left behind" by his school, and should have been taught in a way that he could understand better, which I believe should be required for every student in America.
What do you think? Do you think NCLB has raised education quality in the U.S. What are some pros and cons?
What world issue did read about? How did the authors' viewpoints of your two pieces of text compare and contrast?
-Katie
Mu world issue was suicide. A bit depressing, I know, but it was actually pretty interesting. One article I came across was about how sad teen suicide was, and how all those teens had an "undeserving death" in other words, 'it wasn't THEIR fault the killed themselves!'. The next article I read had a completely different perspective about teen suicide. The author described how teens who committed suicide were "selfish" and "didn't think about the people they were leaving behind". Although in both articles it stressed how serious depression/suicide is, and what a HUGE problem it is in our world today. I never knew some people had such a divided view on 'why people commit suicide'.
ReplyDeleteI think its different from different states because in Matthews/Charlotte North Carolina we had very low choices of classes. In NC we had our main classes, Spanish, and computer class. Which is different from Creve Coeur MO Parkway Northeast Middle School they have a variety of choices for you're education. I think it just depends on where you are at and how much class choices the school has.
ReplyDeleteFor my world issue I decided to talk about bullying in school. I think that article 1 was better then article 2. Article 1 was talking about how teacher wards off bullying. They were doing this by making every student have a group with somebody. They were also saying that its bullying is starting stop. Article 2 was saying how bullying has gotten worse and bullying cases are ending up in court. I agree with article 2 because I think bullying is starting to stop. From a students viewpoint I see people that are getting bullied starting to let a adult know about it. I see the bullies getting in trouble because the teachers and principles are letting parents know. Thats why i think bullying is stoping.
I think Obesity is one of the biggest of Americas issues. In America we let restaurants sell toys in kids meals with high calories, just so the kids parent can buy the unhealthy meal so there kid can be happy (McDonald's, Burger King, Hardies and other "Fast Food" restaurants). Almost half of America is Obese. A way to prevent this is to stop frying foods, lower proportions, more veggies and stop selling toys with meals over 500 calories.
ReplyDeleteI think that some kids should have to be left behind because what if they really don't get the material because they were to busy goofing of in your class.the pro about that is so kids don't want to be left behind because of humiliation and, because if the proceed to the next grade they could try to better them selves. some cons are that the kids would think they don't have to work on the school days but when the map comes up they try to do their best.
ReplyDeletethe world issue i read about cyber-bullying and both of the authors view points were about how they need to enforce a new rule about cyber-bullying.
Over the past few weeks our class has been doing a transfer task about how the view points of authors contrast and compare over world issues. I choose to do Global Warming and obviously this is a issue that can have multiple view points. from the data I have collected it appears that some people think Global Warming is a big issue and others don't think it exists. One person who believes in this issue is Tomkar Director of N.O.A.A stated that the average temperature this decade has been the warmest ever recorded, but others might disagree. An International Conference barely even addressed the topic because they have data that shows temperatures in Canada are dropping.
ReplyDeleteThe world issue i read about is should homework be abolished. The articles that i read about compared because in each of the articles it said that they want to give 10 minutes per grade.So for example they would give 10 minutes of homework to 1st graders and 2 hours of homework to 12th graders. But my 2 articles constrast because one said that they think that there is no point of assigning homework becauseit has no affect on student acheivement. The other article said that if you are going to give homework, then dont give alot.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your comments on my post! I really appreciate your thoughts!
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