For+or+Against

One for, one against....[|How to do this]... One of the major tenets of merit pay is to reward top workers, just like in the business world. Well, teaching is not a business, teachers work hard enough already and really aren't in teaching for the money. And really there isn't enough money to impose a merit pay system. ||^  || A full-service school integrates education, medical, social and/or human services that are beneficial to meeting the needs of children and youth and their families on school grounds or in locations which are easily accessible. A full-service school provides the types of prevention, treatment, and support services children and families need to succeed.. . services that are high quality and comprehensive and are built on interagency partnerships which have evolved from cooperative ventures to intensive collaborative arrangements among state and local and public and private entities. ** || This 2002 legislation encompasses numerous actions designed to require all states to develop rigorous content standards, hold schools accountable for the learning of students in all subgroups, and guarantee that all students are taught by "qualified" teachers. || Proficiency is debatable. Who decides the levels for proficiency? Perhaps they are simply too high. How well does a student really need to do in order to be considered proficient? The tests don’t recognize students’ abilities to think for themselves as they should. The government identifies intelligence by what students’ think, not that they have the ability to think for themselves. ||^  || [|Authentic Assessment] || Van Stedum, Ann || The motivators emphasize that performance-based assessments, if instituted on a district, state, or national level, will allow us to monitor the effectiveness of schools and teachers and track students' progress toward achieving national educational goals. According to the motivator viewpoint, performance assessments will make the educational system more accountable for results. || **Authentic Assessment-** A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Teachers, especially Science Teachers, have very little time to spare with their current responsibilities. Consider designing task scenarios, collecting the necessary equipment and supplies, communicating performance standards, observing performance of students, evaluating performance, cleaning up following the activity, and then communicating the evaluation to students and families in a comprehensible fashion. This all requires a lot of what teachers don't have... **TIME**. ||^  ||
 * Link ||  || For or Against || Describe ||
 * [|For] || Dr. Fiegen || Proponents assert that voucher systems would promote free market competition among schools of all types, which would provide schools incentive to improve. Successful schools would attract students, while bad schools would be forced to reform or close. The goal of this system is to localize accountability as opposed to relying on government standard || **Voucher Plans -** is a certificate issued by the government by which parents can pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school to which they are assigned. ||
 * Against || Bingaman, Tracy A. || Critics say that voucher plans have the potential to lead parents and guardians to focus on issues other than the quality of a school's academic programs. Some choices they make may lead to an increased stratification of society along social class, political, and religious lines. Some decisions represent choices based on criteria other than instructional-program quality. There is also concerns of fairness, particularly in situations in which vouchers can be used to pay for educational services provided by private schools. ||^  ||
 * For || Ericsson, Kristen K. || Charter schools allow students to have a more focused education, without having to meet requirements of public schools. This allows charter schools to budget for different things, such as a Spanish teacher, enriching programs like Boost Up, allow outside services to participate in education - like occupational therapists. Education is often based on the most up-and-coming curriculum, which allows students to often get the best education regardless of their social status and where they live. Furthermore, charter schools dont' have attendance zones, so it is a great way for kids who have a poor education system within their attendance zone to get a great education. || **Charter Schools-** are legally independent __public__ schools created through a formal agreement between a group of individuals, such as teachers or parents, and a sponsor, usually a local school board or state department. ||
 * Against || Evelsizer, Ross J. || Charter schools take funding and students away from public schools. They do this by serving generally the same population as a public school in the same area. However, whereas public schools are generally influenced by locals, charter schools can be controlled by a non-local sponsor. Having a non-local sponsor could adversly affect the overall goals the school is trying to achieve within its student body. Since each sponsor and/or group of parents may have a different ajenda from school to school, acceptable school standards would be hard to follow and keep. ||^  ||
 * For || Geistfeld, Matthew J. || Supporters point out that open enrollment gives parents more control over their child's education, and allows parents to pursue the most appropriate learning environment for children. For example choosing a school may enable parents to choose a school that provides religious instruction for their children; stronger discipline; better foundational skills including reading, writing, mathematics, and science; everyday skills from handling money to farming, or other desirable foci. || **Open-Enrollment-** A plan that allows a parent or guardian to send a student to any existing school within the school district, provided the school has not reached its maximum capacity number for students. In some instances, open enrollment may extend across school district boundaries. ||
 * Against || Gloede, Gina A. || Critics point out that in districts with open-enrollment, parents and guardians often choose schools for reasons unrelated to the quality of educational programs, which includes proximity of school to parent's workplace or for their student to play a varsity sport at an "A" school over a "B" school. ||^  ||
 * For || Ihler, Michael D. || Magnet schools serve the special interests of learners as well as provide urban school districts with a means of achieving acceptable levels of racial integration. Magnet schools are also models for school improvement plans. || **Magnet Schools-schools-** Represent another approach to school choice. Usually magnet schools have a specific theme for which they are especially well known. ||
 * Against || Medill, Amber L. || Since magnet schools usually requires students to have an excellent academic performance, it removes some of the best learners from other schools and will reduce the overall talent. Sometimes magnet schools recieve more financial support than other school, leaving them with a lower level of services that would be present if magnet school didn't exist. ||^  ||
 * For || Michel, Casey R. || A nation at Risk was a landmark of education reform literature. Countless previous reports by prestigious national commissions had been ignored by the national press and the general public. //A Nation at Risk// was different. Written in stirring language that the general public could understand, the report warned that schools had not kept pace with the changes in society and the economy and that the nation would suffer if education were not dramatically improved for all children. It also asserted that lax academic standards were correlated with lax behavior standards and that neither sould be ignored. //A Nation at Risk// was a call to action. (//Are We Still a Nation at Risk: Two Decades Later// p. vii) || **A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (1983) -** report of American President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education. Its publication is considered a landmark event in modern American educational history. Among other things, the report contributed to the ever-growing (and still present) sense that American schools are failing miserably, and it touched off a wave of local, state, and federal reform efforts. ||
 * [|Against] || Miller, Ashley M. || In 1990, Admiral James Watkins, the Secretary of Energy, commissioned the Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico to document the decline in the Nation at Risk report with actual data.[5] When the systems scientists broke down the SAT test scores into subgroups they discovered contradictory data. While the overall average scores declined, the subgroups of students increased. In statistics this is known as the Simpson paradox. The 3 authors presented their report.[6] David Kearns, Deputy Secretary of Education allegedly told the authors of the report,"You bury this or I'll bury you"[7], though this quote is disputed by Diane Ravitch.[8] Education Week published an article on the Sandia report in 1991.[9]. Unlike the Nation at Risk report, the Sandia Report critique received almost no attention. The mindset among the American public that "public schools are broken" can trace its roots back to the Nation at Risk report . ||^  ||
 * [|For] || Neiman, Leslie E. || Americans value hard work and results, and our capitalist system hinges upon rewarding such results. Incentivized teachers will work harder and produce better results. Merit pay would inspire potential teachers to give the profession more consideration as a viable career choice, rather than a personal sacrifice for the higher good. By tying teaching salaries to performance, the profession would look more modern and credible, thus attracting young college graduates to the classroom. || **Merritt Pay Teacher Compensation**-- term describing performance-related pay, most frequently in the context of educational reform . It provides bonuses for workers who perform their jobs effectively, according to measurable criteria. ||
 * [|Against] || Reiss, Anthony J. || Creates competition is at odds wit the collegial character of effective schools. Merit pay purports to reward good teachers, but what is a good teacher? Furthermore a teacher is not the only influence on a students success. Merit pay also creates an environment of bias and favoritism.
 * [|For] || Roeder, Joseph D. || A full service school would serve as a convenient and affective way to help our children. It would allow easy access to certain treatments with out having to travel, plus kids could be more closely monitored by the administering professional. It would create a bigger close-knit family. || **Full Service Schools:
 * Against || Shull, Mary-Lyn || Who manages? The management of programmes has been a hot issue in some areas. Principals and head teachers have not been keen historically to have work happening in schools over which they have little control. However, there are significant barriers to them managing the sort of support services associated with full-service schools. The colonizing effect of the school. One of the issues common to community and full-service school initiatives is the concern that activities become focused on the school rather than spread through a range of institutions in local communities.The dominance of medical models among support services. The focus is upon the behaviour of individuals. Action is, thus, taken to try to prevent them engaging in high-risk activities or upon treating their illnesses or troubles. The problem here is that what are in effect deeply political or public issues get treated at the level of private troubles. Tensions among staff on school sites. Existing school staff can feel undermined by the work of the ‘new’ arrivals. Those already undertaking support roles around counselling and health promotion may feel upstaged or bypassed. There can also be significant conflicts around school discipline policies. ||^  ||
 * [|For] || Stricherz, Abby R. || This law requires that school not only assess “average” leaner, but also groups in the minorities of the classroom. The basic principle for this law is accountability. It requires each state to follow certain standards for what students should learn and at what grade level. The specific school district needs to make adequate yearly progress and keep records of the progress. There is a time limit in which all students need to be proficient in twelve years by the means of the state. This law will help keep school districts accountable for the learning of all of their students, instead of just the “average” learners. || **No Child Left Behind Act - 2001**
 * Against || Tvedt, Ryan W. || The tests themselves undermine the real goals of education. Tests don’t recognize students’ unique strengths and weaknesses, but rather recognize them as a statistic. It shouldn’t be “No Child Left Behind”, but rather “Leave Them Behind.”
 * For
 * A category of assessment that makes judgements about student learning based on their performance on tasks that parallel (as closely as possible) "real world" conditions.** ||
 * [|Against] || VanKekerix, Erin M. || A typical science class has thirty or more students. To be able to assess students for the skills that the 21st century will require means watching them as they focus on problems, gather information, identify key variables, develop a research question, etc. A teacher circulating around the room listening to cooperative groups may be able to catch a few of these behaviors on a legal pad with a clipboard. However, many more of the behaviors will be missed entirely as the teacher tries to identify the student and take notes on what they did. Furthermore, all of that written data will have to be interpreted at some point into summary data.
 * [|For] || Wald, Timothy J. || High-stakes testing is needed so individual teachers and schools can be held accoutable for educating children. This also gives everyone a standard to follow and helps make education uniform from school to school. We can't let students slip through the cracks anymore! NCLB may be the best piece of legislation put forward in the past fifty years. || ** High-stakes tests **When the outcome of a standardized test is used as the sole determining factor for making a major decision, it is known as high-stakes  testing. Common examples of  high-stakes  testing in the United States include standardized tests administered to measure  school  progress under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), high  school  exit exams, and the use of test scores to determine whether or not a  school  will retain accreditation. ||
 * [|Against] || Whitney, Megan P. || High-stakes testing causes stress for students, parents, teachers, and school administrators, and has been reported in some cases to even lead to psychological distress so severe that it requires hospitalization or treatment. The idea that performance on a single exam could change the course of someone's life is distasteful to some people, especially those who disapprove of standardized tests in general. ||^  ||
 * For || Wilson, Vanessa R. || School Business Partnership Programs are of great value to the public school system. These partnerships garner a great deal of interest and enthusiasm in the school system as well as involvement by these agencies can often lead to opportunities for involvement in and support of activities that may otherwise struggle for funding. As the coach of a local high school Show Choir I can attest that without the involvement of many of these partnerships there is high probability that this choir would not be available to the girls in future years. || **School Business Partnership Programs -** Because of the keen interest of what goes on inside school many outside of our profession have, partnerships of various kinds between public school and other agencies and organizations have been formed. ||
 * Against || Wilts, Ashley J. || School business partnerships also pose many barriers. Those including cultural differences, turnover, busy school staff, background checks, school staff resistence, training, and communication. The two biggest concerns seem to be cultural differences and communication. Cultural differences are an issue because businesses are used to receiving results quick and right away but it doesn't work that way in schools. Also, keeping communication open between the school and business is essential but often times that line is lost. ||^  ||