Movers and Shakers in Education

EDU 210

November 4,2013
Movers and Shakers in Education

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.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.
No Child Left behind: 2002 http://ezinearticles.com/?No-Child-Left-Behind&id=7306796

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 , “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;