Both the No Child Left Behind Act and Obama's Race To The Top treat schools like businesses and punish those which do not perform. The only problem with that is "out-of-school factors" like poverty "count for twice as much as all in-school factors".
They try to improve the schools and determine which schools get more or less funding determined by an obsessive emphasis on testing. Naturally when so much funding and salaries are determined by test results, the inevitable result is cheating on the tests.
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/...So instead of trying to alleviate the core problems, like alleviating poverty, they make the problems worse by giving less money to schools in high poverty areas that perform badly. In addition the intensive high pressure testing forces teachers to "Teach for the Test". This means that the students learn a very narrow spectrum of knowledge, and things like innovation and creativity fall behind.
Would it surprise you to hear that nations like Finland and Korea, that perform the best, which are the most creative and the most innovative have de-emphasized testing or done away with it altogether?
"Where Finland rejects testing, nurtures teachers, and encourages its best and brightest to become educators, we fetishize testing, portray teachers as evil parasites and financially encourage top students to become Wall Streeters."
"Just as important, Finland's tax and social welfare system have made it an economically equal society, and its education quality doesn't vary across class lines. By contrast, America's low taxes and meager social safety net have made it the industrialized world's most stratified nation -- and our Separate And Unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore under-performing in poor areas."
There is a direct correlation between poverty and poor performance in school. The main reason America's schools are performing near the bottom of the developed nations, is that we have an unequal funding situation where most of the money comes from property taxes. Naturally the schools with more money out perform those without.
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pag...Better facilities, better equipment, better teachers that are paid more, all make a difference. When other countries encourage the top students to go into education, our nation attracts the best and the brightest to go to Wall Street where they can make Billions, while our engineering, science and innovative industries can't find qualified people here in this country. They have to hire engineers from countries like India which produces about 600,000 engineers a year compared to our 84,000. About 70% of our PHD candidates are foreigners, and then because of our backwards immigration policies, after we train them we kick them out of the country.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/223426-d...Is it any wonder that we are having a hard time competing in the world? Our education system is lousy and discourages innovation, and our economic system rewards our best and brightest to go to Wall Street to learn how to steal our money more efficiently.
If we had a just and fair system we would pay people the most who help the nation the most. The education, science, and engineering, fields should all be paid the most, and those who dabble in risky financial hedge funds, derivatives, currency speculation, and algorithmic super fast stock trades, should be penalized because these things hurt the nation.
Sort of shows where our priorities are. We have poor schools yet more people in prison than all the rest of the world. Starve the educational and technical fields, but give gazillions to Wall Street Crooks. Get rich no matter how much damage you do. That is the free market at work. Might as well sell drugs.