I highly support the idea that a student's experiences in high school shape their choices and experiences in college. Throughout middle school and the beginning of high school I was an average student. I figured I would go away to college but which college did not matter to me. I felt I would just go to whatever school I was able to get into. That all changed when my teachers and guidance counselor had a talk with me at the beginning of tenth grade. They thought I could do better, they knew my potential and realized I just wasn't applying it. I had always been a lazy student, I have the capacity to learn information and do very well but it takes me a lot of time and effort to be able to study and remember information for exams. I have always exceled naturally in English, a place where I can write and express my thoughts and opinions freely without restrictions of an A or B answer. So when my teachers and guidance counselor gave me that push I immediately saw a dramatic difference. I began getting A's in all of my classes and eventually was encouraged by my teachers to move into honors and then APs. My guidance counselor knew when I was pushing my limits but not taking on too much, she worked with me on my course choices and then on my college applications. I was pushed to apply to schools which would be target schools for me. I could have accepted my admittance to one of my many safety schools but after careful consideration and support from my educators I decided to push myself once again and attend a more acadmecially challenging school. If I never had those pushes and those educators on my side I probably would have settled for a different SUNY school that required less credentials for admittance. This website offers the DO's and Don'ts of college admissions and I knew all this while applying but it makes me wonder if everyone knew all of this while applying. http://www.quintcareers.com/college_admissions-dos-donts.html
Like it has been said before, this all comes back to unequal resources. The state should mandate that all schools release the same accurate and maximum amount of information to ALL students regarding college admissions and SAT prep. I always just assumed that all students understood college admissions as well as I did until just a few days ago. A family friend asked me to review her daughter's college entrance essay and it was completely out of context. Her writing was choppy and her topic came out of left field. She had no idea what colleges were looking for or where to begin. I could not understand how her guidance counselor did not help point her in the right direction. There needs to be strict guidelines concerning something as important as college. Getting an education is the reason why we all go to school, so why not educate the students on getting the most out of schooling they could possibly get?

No Child Left Behind

I think the No Child Left Behind Act proves what I said in my last blog. The No Child Left Behind Act was mandated to try and create a higher level of equality in the educational system. This act increases the amount of standardized exams students take. The government thinks the only way to evaluate a student's level of understanding is by these multiple choice exams. These tests only leave room for one answer, there is no understanding for the thought process behind the answers. A student can guess and get an answer right or really think about a question and have good reasoning and yet get a question wrong. I can not even recall how many times I took multiple choice tests and believed more than one answer can be right. Sometimes more than one answer was right but we only received credit for the one which seemed "more right". How can something be more right in a society where we were led to believe things are "right or wrong", "black or white"?

http://nochildleft.com/2006/sept06killing.html


This article discusses why No Child Left Behind must go. The biggest one I think is the narrowing of the curriculum. This act takes away freedom and creativity in the classroom. It takes away focus on the individual and places emphasis on the whole class. Students who learn in different ways won't have the chance to. All students will have to focus on the same things and work in the same way, maybe this appears equal but in reality the children who can learn by taking exams and who exel in math and science have the upper hand. The visual and spatial learners are in reality left behind because they can not learn in this one general way.

Either/Or 10/03/07

There were several things in class today I did not have time to address in our presentation. There seems to be an "either/or" mentality which runs through the educational system today. We can either create equality in the educational system OR give freedom in the classroom. Giving equality to all schools and all students tends to mean mandating more exams. The only way we view equality is by giving structure. If each teacher is given what to teach and if we make more tests evaluating what is taught, then all students will be on an even playing field right? However, this creates more rigidness in the classroom and less of a passion to learn. Students who need that push and who need that drive will not get it. Kids will not want to go to school, they will find it boring and useless. Kids also won't feel the need to pay attention in class. Why even go to school if we can read up on the things being taught later, in our own home and at our own leisure? With more structure comes less passion. Students may all be taking the same test but who is to say they can all learn the same? Additionally, these students will be learning what policymakers tell them to learn. Going back to Gardener's theory, what about the kid who learns visually or spatially? If more tests are mandated and more structure is given there will be even less emphasis placed on the individual. Also, are all these tests good for young kids? I was in an Eagle Program at an elementary school in Brooklyn, NY. This program was supposed to be for "gifted" students. We did not have play time, we did not paint or fool around with toys, we worked. I learned spanish, math, english and science in Kindergarden. We had a limited time during the day and not even every day to go into other children's classrooms to play with their toys. We were not given that social opportunity, we were not given time to be five years old. This program made me hate school and I do not think it helped at all. My next year in school, I moved to Long Island and was placed with students who didn't know how to do math or read, I was only ahead for one year. Eventually, all the kids caught up and we were all on the same level, I just had to sit through things twice. Having those tests at such a young age placed a lot of stress on me, it did not make me appreciate the educational system. http://www.standardizedtesting.net/ This article talks about how unnecessary standardized testing is. It talks about how other countries do not administer these tests to children of such young ages, so why do we? These tests aren't even used to create equality and help children progress, they are used to evaluate school districts. There is no impact on the children, the focus is not even on the children, it is on the school and the people high up who want to keep their jobs and look good doing it.