Social Issues

A big issue in the U.S right now and particularly in the state of Florida is education. Even though the U.S is a 1st world country,it still has educational problems. Many European countries have a better education system than the U.S. In some countries, middle school students are learning math that U.S students learn in high school. In 2001, The No Child Left Behind Act was passed. It's basically an act that improves standards of learning and improving the quality of education. It focuses on reading, math, and science. It also helps with yearly testing. If a school fails its yearly test, the school with recieve assistance such as tutoring. The act also makes options available for parents. Parents know which schools have better education and can choose which school to send their children to. Another important aspect of this Act is improving teacher quality. There are programs to support teacher training.
It may not seem that the No Child Left Behind Act is helping education but there are people who are education activists. One of these activists is Dr. Rudolph "Rudy" Crew. He is the Super Intendent of Miami-Dade County Public school. One of the things that he has changed that I found very intelligent is having schools use the same books and lessons. If a child moves, the child won't be very lost. And also if everyone is learning the same things, it will be easier to figure out why some kids are not understanding material and it will be easier to figure out different ways of learning. Teachers talk to each other and discuss their classes and they discuss what works with their classes.
Education needs to step up in the U.S. When I heard some of the things that kids in Europe are already learning at youger ages, it really shocked me. Many of those kids are also multilingual. This is not only in Europe. A student at FIU who is part of a tutoring program is from Jamaica. She tutored me in Chemistry and she said that she's been doing Chemistry for years. I took one year of chemistry in high school and I feel that I just relearned everything I learned in one year in one month in College level Chemistry. I wish that I had taken Chemistry every year.Another problem is extra help. I have not heard of many free tutoring programs for schools. There are teachers who are willing to stay after school and tutor students but there are also teachers who do not. I think schools need to figure out a way to make more tutoring available because not everyone can afford going to expensive tutoring companies and not everyone has parents that can help them with homework. There is a lot of free help in college but there needs to be more free help in high school and elementary. A lot of learning problems that people have come from elementary school because they did not learn the material correctly or not at all.
Education is very important to me. I can remember countless times when I didn't want to go to school or when I complained about homework, tests and quizzes, and even teachers. Even though I said all of these things, I had so much fun in school. I loved reading and experiments and doing in class projects and having discussions. There were certain subjects that were difficult for me such as math but once i finally understood it, I felt so good about myself. Thinking back, I even liked learning about new things. Anytime we learned something new in Science or History, everyone would say, "Oh so that's how it works" or "I never knew that! That's so cool!" My classmates and I never really realized how much we actually liked learning. I might never use some of the things that I've learned over the past 18 years of my life but a lot of the things I've learned are interesting and in the future, I'll probably have to help my kids with it anyway. Education is something that I would stress to everyone.
For more information about No Child Left Behind go here.
For more information about Dr.Rudy Crew go here.