AG Statement: As we are all in this class right now, attending a four-year university, we all know how important a good education is, and how essential it is for our success. And it goes without saying that all of us have graduated high school, so we can vouch for the fact that your high school career plays a crucial role in determining where your life takes you after graduation.
Credentialing Statement: However, as Lindsey Burke Will Skillman Fellow in Education and Education Policy Studies, and research partner Vance Fried explain in their article published by the Heritage Foundation about open education, “Millions of American students are consigned to public schools that fail to meet their unique learning needs.”
Relevancy Statement: The reason that we, and potentially our future children, have not received the proper education in the past, is because of government implicated programs such as Common Core, No Child Left Behind Act and Standardized Testing that restrict students from getting the proper education they need.
Thesis Statement: The education system needs to be revised to better fit students’ needs and prepare them for their future.
Main Idea #1: Most politicians that implement policies such as the NCLB Act and Common Core are not educators, and should therefore not determine what programs are best fit for students.
Main Idea #2: School’s and colleges need to be less focused on Standardized Testing scores.
Main Idea #3: School’s need to introduce individualized learning and revise the education system to encourage an individualized path for each student.
Transition Sentence: Education, especially at the high school level, is the make-it or break-it point for students.
Main Idea #1: So it is crucial that the education system is designed to allow success for every kind of student, and give them the proper preparation for life after graduation. Politicians who have no experience or educational background in the education field can not do this.
Subpoint #1: Common Core, for instance, has good intentions, but they are not carried out as well as they could be. As the official Common Core website states, it’s goal is to “focus on developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful.” However, this goal is contradicted by the NCLB Act, as it pushes student through grade levels, even if they have not developed these skills and learned the material needed to be successful in life.
Subpoint #2: Also, while the NCLB Act may also have good intentions, it is unconstitutional and highly coercive. Law Graduate Jason Miller defends this position in his article published by the McGeorge School of Law when he explains that Article 1 Section 8.1 of the Constitution states: “Congress’ spending programs must be optional, specific, limited in scope, and unambiguous.” However, Miller argues that there was no way for state education officials to foresee state-wide standardized testing in the future when they first passed the first ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act). However, while unconstitutional, the States have now been forced to accept the revisions to the ESEA, such as NCLB, or are threatened with losing federal funding for schools.
Subpoint #3: Miller concludes, “If NCLB or any similar measure were invalidated due to coercion, what would the future hold for federal involvement in education reform? The answer may lie in realizing there are actual federal interests in public education above and beyond providing for the general welfare.”
Transition Sentence: Along with Common Core and NCLB comes Standardized Testing, and we’ve all suffered through the anxiety of wondering if our SAT and ACT scores would suffice for the college we want to attend.
Main Idea #2: School’s and colleges need to be less focused on Standardized Testing scores, and more focused on the student’s overall academic achievement.
Subpoint #1: Colleges are too intent on basing acceptance and scholarships off standardized test scores, and do not equally account for GPA, courses taken in high school and extra circulars.
Subpoint #2: And what is the purpose of standardized testing anyways? Isn’t it to test the intelligence and ability of the individual student, and to see how much they have learned from their educational career thus far? Shouldn’t common core and the educational curriculum be better preparing students for these tests-preparing them to succeed? They should, but they do not. As Burke, and Fried proved in their article, Reading and Math scores have remained almost constant in the past 45 years, and have shown little to no improvement.
Subpoint #3: To gain an educators perspective, Valerie Lake, an 8th grade teacher at a middle school in New York City, states about standardized tests, “I don’t think they effectively evaluate a student’s ability to independent demonstrate that they’ve mastered these standards…”, and I could not agree more. Personally, I do not believe that my Standardized Testing scores reflected my academic capability. I recall turning to the science portion of the SAT and feeling my stomach drop because I had never even seen over half of the material that I was being tested on. And this was the main factor that would determine my acceptance into college, and what scholarships I would receive.
Transition Sentence: So you’re probably all thinking, what is my grand solution, then? What is the answer to the problem?
Main Idea #3: The answer is that, unfortunately, there is not one universal solution. But there are small steps we can take to reforming the education system for the better-one including individualized learning.
Subpoint #1: Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave full support to relieving states of the NCLB Act back in 2011, because he believed that student’s needed to be judged on more than just their standardized test scores. “Success in life doesn’t mean you get a Ph.D.,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “and we’ve got to make sure the education system recognizes other kinds of progress.”
Subpoint #2: Individualized learning encourages student’s to think critically, engage amongst each other and the teach more frequently, and help them grow as individuals to discover who they are and what they want from life, opposed to sitting in a desk and regurgitating information that teacher demands them to memorize and repeat.
Subpoint #3: As Bloomberg puts it perfectly, “college isn’t the right thing for everyone,” and that not every student is going to go to college, so “we have to make sure they have the skills.”
Summary: To put it simply, the current education system is corrupt, and is not adequately preparing student’s for life after high school, and therefore needs to be reformed. Eliminating, or at least revising, harmful government-implemented policies such as Common Core and the NCLBA, and implementing approaches such as individualized learning, are all important steps to start taking to improve the education system for us, and the future generations to come.
Peroration (memorable close): For the sake of us, our children, and the future generations to come, we need to start taking these steps.
WORKS CITED:
Burke, Lindsey, and Vance H. Fried. “Open Education: Individualized Learning from Kindergarten to College.” The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 9 Nov. 2015. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
Hall, Miriam . ““At First We Felt Angry”: Four Teachers Explain How Common Core Changed Their Jobs.” Slate 9 Sept. 2015: n. pag. Print.
Jason Miller, Telling Schools What to Do, Not How to Do It: Reimagining the Federal Government’s Role in Public Education, 46 McGeorge L. Rev. 605 (2014).
Santos, Fernanda. “Bloomberg Supports Relief From ‘No Child’ Law.” The New York Times . The New York Times Company, 26 Sept. 2011. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
“What Parents Should Know.” Common Core: State Standard Initiative . District of Columbia, DoDEA, CCSSO, NGA Center, 2017. Web. 4 Feb. 2017.
WRITTEN BY: GRACE RILEY (DURATION: 5 MIN)
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Well done.
This speech is impressively organized. I have a few suggestions.
Be careful when you cite the sentence “Congress’ spending programs must be optional, specific, limited in scope, and unambiguous,” as justification for removing standardized testing. You have four different terms there that don’t mean the same thing. It would be helpful if you explained how exactly this clause means standardized testing is not constitutional. It almost sounds like you are suggesting the government should have no involvement in education at all which opens up a whole different discussion.
I would be careful with the argument that universities are paying too much attention to test scores when it comes to admission. You might want to back that up with some solid facts or statements since a lot of universities in the US will insist that SATs and ACTs are lower on the list of importance for them when considering applications.
While I agree there is no one hard and fast solution, offering no solution to a problem other than “get rid of/overhaul standardized testing” is not a great way to end a speech. People are less likely to remember a speech that just talked about a problem. It seems like the only solution your really offer here is government should not be involved in education which, as I said, opens your speech up to a boatload of criticisms that are difficult to refute without offering an alternative.