Charter Schools and Schools

¶ … American schools failing- RAVITCH In the last two decades, there had been a growing opinion among those in the public policy landscape on the public educational system. They believe that public education has suffered a sharp drop in its rankings and is now just ordinary. According to them, the schools are "broken". The teachers and principals are seen as the major causes of this decline due to their low levels of sternness as well as expectations from their students.

This challenge can only be solved if the educational institutions are properly monitored with no room allowed for excuses (Kozol, 2013). The pressure was raised a notch higher in 2002 when the federal testing law; No Child Left Behind, was signed and this law mandated a number of highly important and standard examinations which were aimed at ensuring all students were proficient come 2014. With time, it became clear that this objective wasn't feasible and the leaders of the privatized world saw an opening.

They proposed a number of business-modeled treatments claiming these were the sole solutions. A number of major figures in the financial world and huge charities started showing interest in charter institutions, backed their enlargement and even made grant funds available to a number of them. Some others, who were not totally philanthropy-inclined identified a business opportunity and established their own charter schools with the sole aim of profit (Kozol, 2013).

According to Ravitch, this privatization trend is simply a hoax and a genuine threat which has developed based on the belief that schools have dropped in quality. The student scores are unstable over the years, a situation caused by varying testing methods and difficulty. However, considering the National Assessment of Education Progress, a body which has analyzed data on mathematics and reading scores biennially ever since 1992 and also in every four years from the early '70s, the heights achieved have been gently increasing by decade.

The scores, based on their data, is now at their highest levels ever. The levels of graduation are equally at their peak levels as more young men and women are gaining admission now more than ever before (Ravitch, 2013). Despite this, the children from Black and Hispanic ethnicities are not totally in line with this trend.

The disparity in white and black kids was highly reduced during the anti-segregation days however this disparity is once more evident due to the even higher segregation of schools and residential areas based on ethnic and economic status, a situation which is not even contested and seen as normal. The business competition has not been effective in reducing this gap. Charter schools should be banned because they are profit-driven and their records are not in good order.

Their performance ranges from awful to excellent and average, they are not an improvement on the public schools. The number of them who post quite excellent records are very selective (openly or covertly) in their enrollment. Several of them do not admit children with chronic problems. Another group is known for advising or out rightly expelling students whose performances are a threat to their high rankings (Ravitch, 2013).

This unwanted situation is only getting worse under the President Obama's administration who has sounded his and his party's unerring support to the agelong Republican agenda. President Obama's education package, called Race to the Top only contains a few differences from No Child Left Behind.

As a matter of fact, his package only worsens the problem as it demands that states assess their teachers, though only to an extent, using the basis of the annual improvement in the scores of students without considering if a teacher has a different class of students to teach each year, which is the norm, and also without considering if the number of disabled or troubled students under a teacher is more than that of another who posted higher scores.

All of the selected reform packages of President Obama's administration, which bore several.