Nation At Risk

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A Nation at Risk, Still SS270 Social Problems August 8, 2011 In 1983 a report came out by The National Commission on Excellence in Education, informing the American public that our educational system was not keeping up with other equally advanced nations and, in fact, was actually behind. This report was called A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform and discusses how the U.S.’s educational system lacks in structure, expectations, time in learning, and teaching (Gardner, 2011). Today we find that we are still behind other advanced nations due to globalization, and technological advances that require young people, of today, to have higher education levels than ever before. Some reasons for America’s dragging…show more content…
Each perspective snowballs into the next creating a ripple effect that that can be the root cause of many other social issues of today. To look through a functionalists perspective you have to look at why the system is not functioning as it should causing the failure. Why is there is a lack of funding, teachers, resources, overcrowding, and graduating students who are ill prepared for real life. The system it seems is actually set up to fail. Each state has federal laws in place to regulate tests, curriculum, how much funding each school receives, to scholarship, and grants. What is wrong with this is that there is a conflict between federal, state , and school boards about what agendas are important; a student can be a C average in one state or school and move to another where they are on the honor role, I know of this first hand. Another problem is that federal and state government prevents poorer schools from receiving the funding they need to help their students improve academically. Because of the lack of funding for much needed improvements and resources, the poorer schools also have the worst performance ratings. Creating this bigger gap in funding only hinders a school from achieving academic excellence and eventually causes teachers to lose jobs and schools to shut down. Furthermore to cover shortfalls at least 22 states have scaled back K-12 funding and at least 24 have made cuts in higher education for fiscal year 2012 including reducing, or eliminating, personnel and programs vital to the most vulnerable populations: lower-income and minority students (Ceasar., Watanabe., T., & Times, L. A., 2011). Students are being pushed through a system that allows them to chose their electives such as, the time spent learning how to cook and drive, which counts as much toward a high school diploma as the time spent studying mathematics, English,
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