Failing Schools
Introduction It is extremely important today to give education the utmost attention, as it is considered a guaranteed insurance into a child’s future. However, it is a usual occurrence for children to fail consistently in many parts of the world especially within the United States. A student who has lost interest in their education will generally pay less and less attention to their teacher and will perform extremely poor on tests and other assessments.
In extreme cases students will drop out of school and therefore completely disregard their education and their future. It is important that causes of inability to perform well at school should be figured out before they can be pin down to improve performances in general and long term successes in whole. Does the issue lie with the students and/or the parents? Lack of Parenting Today many of the children fail for the basic absence of a parent’s guidance or their parents just lacking the necessary skills to properly guide their children.
Children today need their parent’s guidance to help them make the correct choices towards their education now and for the future, instead of just trying to completely control them or choosing something for their child that they might not be interested in. If a parent makes all of a child’s decisions concerning their education instead of making decisions cooperatively with their child, that child may become disinterested with their own education. On the other hand if a parent can’t help a child make good decisions concerning their education then that child might end up the same way, disinterested.
But, if parents are there to guide their children through the process of education and decision making the child will see things from different perspectives but also take on more interest for their education because they see that same interest coming from their parents. This even helps children build some self-esteem and in turn parents would start trusting their child a little more and believing in their ability to make good choices. According to PubMed, the usual cause for the lack of parenting skills is their low socio-economic status. Parents which are living below poverty lines have no such access to parenting skills.
Also, teen parents have a harder time forming parenting skills as opposed to adult parents. In middle class families this is mainly due to lack of emotional and financial support and the lack of awareness. In more well to do families the lack of good parenting is mainly due to parents simply having a lack of time. Furthermore younger parents are more likely to be the ones who are immature and less capable of giving the sacrifices sometimes that are required of parents. Furthermore, the parents that have been abused in their childhood are more likely to make bad parenting choices for their own children.
Students are Hungry or Lack Sleep The results of an August 2007 study conducted by James F. Pagel, who was the MD of University of Colorado School of Medicine, showed that students that had consistently insufficient sleep were more likely to have extremely adverse effects the next day not only on an adults performance but also on a young student’s performance. Hunger and sleep, amongst other things, are two of the vital needs within a healthy society. Adolescents who experience sleeping issues are the ones more likely to receive bad grades because of it.
Based on a 238 questionnaires that were completed by random middle and high school students it was shown that those who maintain a lower GPA were the ones who had the most sleepless nights and other sleeping issues that include restless sleep, snoring, difficulty falling asleep, etc. Doctor James Pagel also stated in some of the previously conducted studies had proved that students who had irregular sleep patterns, inadequate sleep or otherwise poor sleep quality didn’t perform well in school in comparison to the students who had no complaints of sleep or sleep related issues.
Doctor Pagel’s study gives additional evidence indicating that sleep disturbances significantly affect daytime performance and occur at high frequencies in adolescents as measured by GPA. Some problems for students in the classroom associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) include restless legs and a difficulty to concentrate. ADHD is a diagnosis in children that if left untreated can lead to poor school performance. The studies of Dr. Pagel conclude that parents should discuss the possibility of ADHD early on in a child’s life if suspected.
Discussing the possibility of ADHD early and facing it head on with treatment can have positive long term effects for children. Student’s Lack of Motivation Students need to be motivated in order to perform well in school. Seems simple but the lack of motivation might result in the failure for students, so the lack of motivation must be found and dealt with so students can succeed. Today we see more and more students showing up to school without having developed a basic motivation to learn. Students can be unmotivated and just tune out for several of reasons.
The cause for the lack of motivation can be placed on many factors such as: •The media today causing much of the distractions. T. V. , the internet, video games, etc. •Students take their entertainment at a higher priority in comparison to their education. •They could have a learning disability and therefore they cannot keep up •They might not be getting help from home or their teacher and they could then simply give up! •They convince themselves that they can’t do the work (“So why just even bother to try? “). •They could have a physical problem, such as the poor hearing, poor vision or bad headaches. Negative peer influences are a factor too. “I just don’t want to be nerd or the teacher’s pet. ” (I have already heard that! ) •Parents and the other family adults are not just involved enough to bring about the basis of self-motivation. •Children might not see much relevance of material within their lives. Therefore, they don’t see school as providing them with any benefit. •The teachers might not take sufficient enough steps to increase their students motivation •Children being absorbed in thinking about the “Now” and not thinking enough about their future could also result in the lack of motivation at school and their education.
Can the problem be with the school itself? Schools are Wasting Funds/Money Billions of dollars that go schools remain either unspent or gets wasted away on expensive contracts this is according to a watchdog that accuses ministers on failing to hold head teachers account for on their expenditure progress. The Audit Commission, a public corporation set up in 1983 to protect the public purse, concluded that schools today are wasting nearly 1 billion pounds of public funds per annum by hoard such in banks or failing to make investments to produce better cleaning, meals or equipment.
The report concluded that despite the increasingly funding since 1997, the time when labor came to power, head teachers have not been seen pulling all money to effective usage. They could save ? 415m if they had negotiated better contracts for running of their schools plus are also sitting on the ? 530m in “excessive” reserves. There has been much collective failure through system – from the schools right up to the government level – to emphasize efficiency, the report will say. “If no one ask ‘could you do this mmuch more efficiently, more cheaply? , you are not then going to be focused on it,” Mr. O’Higgins said. (Tony Attword: What the audit commission says about school finance in EducationMarketing). The children’s secretary Mr. Ed balls who published a white school paper had set an annual report card for schools that served as a drive to federate higher performing secondary and lower performing neighbors. Individual schools that have taken their eye off the ball are the ones lacking to build good students. The problem lies with the agency conflict as the school runners are not the school funder.
Given tight financial forecasts, then they are going to have to then [be aware]. The report will then urge the government to ensure that such schools are spending money efficiently or not. Schools waste millions of pounds of tax payers money this is suggested by an internal governmental report. BBC Politics show has revealed a report by WH smith Mr. Richard Handover. It claims civil servants along with head teachers appear to having no idea what money value means. In his friendly report, Mr Handover narrates: “Financial efficiency… is just not seen, at any level, as core responsibility of management. Today there is no accountability or poor accountability of schools progress. The secretary of education Mr. Michael Gove says that if one is serious about holding educational institutes to account, we need to form a much sharper focus on whatever happens to pupils as students move through the school, as well as they leave the school. (Schools to be held accountable for pupils’ career success). “Publishing such information about what students do once they leave GCSE would also help enhance schools and parents accountability and provide chance for improvement in result.
Accountability gets improved though with report cards. However, not all schools take any action against students failing. T. J. O’Malley talks about America (USA) in his 2010 report where he points attention to ever increasing APT ( Advances Placement Tests) in the past 10 years. It is important that schools should take actions to improve their results and give attention to weaker students however their accountability could only increase through government and parent’s attention. Lack of Qualified Teachers Are qualified teachers important?
Teacher quality has a much stronger impact on the achievement than other of the school resources. Students who had the ineffective teachers in a row had lost ground and may never recovery. In California, USA the State’s lowest ranked schools are on the Academic Performance Index (A-P-I) have least qualified teachers. The schools with many under-qualified teachers have usually high turnover rates and the lack of connection with the student or to the community. When schools lack experienced and qualified teachers, new teachers don’t have much skills and experience and need to learn to teach well with standard.
Moreover, passion and commitment are the vital qualities in the teachers. However, such characteristics must be the ones that should be coupled with rigorous training that credential of the states require and with awareness plus valuing of many cultures that making up California’s student population. Disadvantage with Disinterested Teacher Often, the teachers are unable to connect to students or convey their expectations to them and this would then leads to communication gap between the student and Teacher.
Also, many of the teachers have the habit of just constantly dominating the thinking process of students, this reduce their decision making and brain storming power and they are unable to score well at school. Effects of the No Child Left Behind Act Effects on teachers, schools, and school districts Increased accountability Supporters of NCLB claim that one of the strong positive points in the bill is the increased accountability that it thereby required of the schools along with its teachers.
According to this legislation, schools are required of to pass yearly tests that will then judge how much improvement students have to make over the fiscal year. These annually standardized tests are the major research that is now used to decide whether the schools are living up to standards that they therefore are required to meet. If such improvements are not met then the schools face decreased amount of funding and other sorts of punishments that contribute to increased accountability. According o the supporters, these goals would help teachers and the schools to realize the significance and the importance of educational system and how that affects the nation. Opponents of this law base their objections on the accountability by stating the punishments only would hurt the schools more. It won’t contribute to the improvement for the students. If the schools along with the teachers don’t live up to accountability standards, then parents may choose to shift their children to other different schools in the area.
Effects on curriculum and standards The incentives for the improvement also may result states to the lower their official standards. This is because each of the state can then produce its own standardized test a state can then make its own statewide tests easier to produce increase score. A 2007 study that was done by the U. S. Dept. of Education indicates that observed differences in the states’ reported scores would largely cause differences in the stringency of their standard. Improvement over local standards
Many argue that the local government had fail the students, necessitating much federal intervention to remedy issues like that of teachers teaching outside of their areas of expertise, and the complacency in face of continually failing of schools. Some of the local governments, notably the New York State, have voiced much support for NCLB provisions, because the local standards had just fail to provide an adequate oversight over the special education, and NCLB would allow the longitudinal data to be just better used to monitor. Quality of education Ideally the increases in quality of education by requiring the schools to improve much performance •Improves the quality of instruction by requiring the schools to implement “scientifically based research” practices in classroom, the parent involvement programs, along with the professional development activities for students that are not expected or encouraged to attend college. •This also supports early literacy through Early Reading First initiative. •Emphasizes the reading, language arts, the mathematics, science achievement as among the core academic subjects.
Conclusion It is a general fact that each of the students is not of similar aptitude and mental ability as that of another. Everyone takes time to learn and then to perform. While many of the students are able to tackle through tough challenges of the academic pressures and to perform well in the exams, yet many others are unable to handle such pressure. The constant poor performance lowers self confidence of student and he or she will feel lost in the crowd of the brilliant students.
It is of utmost attention that parents along with the teachers should make sure that every student takes career in the field that would motivate him/her to give his/her total dedication. Besides the academics, sports and the other disciplines must also be encouraged, to maintain interest and avoid burnout. References 1. Alhola, Paula; Paivi Polo-Kantola (October 2007). “Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance” (Review; Full text). Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat (Dove Medical Press) 3 (5): 553–567. PMC 2656292.
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