Tonight in PLA we had the difficult task of narrowing down our “wooly” topic of Education Reform to only a few sub-topics. Naturally everyone had different ideas and interests that they shared with the class and this of course made our task of getting down to only six sub-topics that much more difficult. In the end we chose these six topics: Primary and Secondary Ed, Gen Ed, Alternative Ed, Economic Disparity/ Finance, Corporate Responsibility and Global Education/ International Students. Six great and complex topics.
At the beginning of class I was not sure what group I would like to be in. Three of the six really caught my attention, those being Primary and Secondary Ed, Global Ed/ International Students and Economic Disparity/ Finance. Since my junior year of high school I have been fortunate enough to meet several exchange students from all over the world that were spent a year at my high school. As I transitioned into my college life at Penn State I sought out even more opportunities to meet and befriend international students. At Penn State however, there seems to be a divide between international students and American students and this is an issue that I would really like to look into and address. So it would have been natural for me to join the group on Global Ed/ International Students, however, I did not end up there. In the end and I think actually since it was put on the board a week ago, I have been/ was most compelled by Primary and Secondary Ed group.
Primary and Secondary Education is such a critical part of education as a whole. It is the foundation and the framework of further education and life in general. Primary and Secondary Ed is responsible for inspiring young kids and adolescents, for helping them shape their ideas, their interests and their futures. Unfortunately it is no secret that in the United States we face weaknesses in Primary and Secondary Ed, especially in math, science and foreign language. Americans constantly rank below other developed nations on international assessments of reading, math and science. Based on this knowledge alone, there is no question that the system needs reformed.
Secondly, I was drawn to this topic because of the wealth of sub-categories that fall within the realm of Primary and Secondary Ed. Some of the categories that we generated as a class were student and teacher evaluation, standardized testing (this ties in with the first one of course), special education, school board governance/ communication between teachers and school board and curriculum committees. Once we broke of into our specific groups, our group also briefly discussed the use of technology in the classroom. In addition think it would be really interesting to look into teacher compensation and the potential effects on performance both by teachers and their students. While there are definitely more sub-categories that we could look at, I believe we are already going to have a difficult time paring down the list we generated to only 3 or 4 categories.
Overall I am very excited to finally know what topic I will be exploring, researching and writing about over the next few months and am looking forward to really delving into the many facets of Primary and Secondary Education reform. I also look forward to seeing and learning about my classmates’ topics and proposals at the end of the semester.
