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One Nation Under GOV: Does The Government Belong In Our Schools?

With the United States falling to 17th in the world in high school graduation rates, it's time to ask whether federal intervention in the American education system done more harm than good? We take a look at two federally mandated policies, teaching tenure and standardized testing, to see what they reveal.

Teaching Tenure

There are currently about 7.2 million public school teachers in the United States. Of these, 2.3 million are tenured. Giving tenure to experienced public school teachers after years of service is a noble theory, but how has it worked out in practice?

Theory

  • Gives teachers freedom to "rock the boat"
  • Inexperienced 'cheaper' teacher protection
  • Dismissal of tenured teachers requires:
    1. Moral misconduct
    2. Incompetence (based on state guidelines)
    3. Insubordination

Reality

  • Job security promotes lazines:
    1. 58% of people polled said that tenure does NOT mean that a teacher has worked hard and proved themselves to be very good at what they do
    2. 78% of people polled said several teachers in their schools fail to do a good job and most are just going through the motions
  • Makes it cheaper to reassign bad teachers to new schools than to fire them because of the legal battles
  • Many experts believe paying teacher more, rather than granting tenure, would incentivize performance

No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) helped expand the standards and accountability movement in an attempt to ensure that all students are proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Theory

  • Helps educators determine which student are struggling the most
  • Holds schools accountable for the education provided

Reality

  • 100% proficiency is a tough standard never met by any country in the world
  • Teachers and principals are being pressured into cheating to inflate scores
  • Because the law only covers math and reading, other subjects are being ignored to focus more time on those two subjects
  • There has been only a very minimal improvement in test scores

Finland, the #1 developed country in the world for education, does not require any standardized testing for high school graduation, whereas schools in the United States require an average of 12 standardized test prior to graduation.



One Nation Under GOV