School System Is in Need

¶ … school system is in need of restructuring. It is more than apparent that our modern day legislators are fully aware that our current educational system has been failing our students and our culture. The remedy is usually to pass laws or to mandate special education programs. but, what has actually occurred has been that our schools have moved more towards mainstreaming. Our educational process and schools have been moving in this direction for a variety of reasons such as that mainstreaming, for the most part, is a legal issue and most school districts do not want to become entangled in messy and very public lawsuits. But there is no doubt that there are many inherent flaws and failures based on the philosophy that one-size fits all in education and that all children, communities and socio economic groups are the same. If the school system is to succeed for all, there must be a complete reevaluation and eventual restructuring so as to meet the needs of the rich, the poor, both non-disabled and disabled students and anyone else needing a more specialized approach to education. "Our children are simply not prepared for continuing their education at the collegiate level or for employment." (Macht)

Our existing educational system does not work because it is indirectly and in many cases based on the concept of mainstreaming. Consider some of the many outcomes of this single line of reasoning. For example, the multiple-choice test that has become a foundation of the existing educational process. Multiple choice tests are the equivalent of fast-food restaurants and drive-through banks. and, as our world becomes more technologically advanced, standardized testing will remain a norm in our schools. "Despite widespread efforts to change the way students are tested in schools, the Educational Testing Service says multiple-choice exams are still educators' first choice. A new study of tests taken by American students in 1992-93 found at least 14.5 million kindergartens through 12th-grade students took standardized tests - the kind given by states to determine how kids are doing. Seventy percent were multiple-choice exams given to all students in a class." (Henry, 1994)

After decades of this, no one seems to understand that our educational process is based on a process that that requires students to choose answers without actually providing any logical reasons for their choices and that these exams are often racially biased, culturally disassociated and based on the idea that all people think alike. The fact that the process actually promotes guessing has been seen as irrelevant. Our mainstream system and multiple-choice exams are outdated - they become the norm after World War II when our educational system fell victim to the massive population explosion which entailed all new and unique challenges in grading students' work. At the time and having been influenced by military efficiency of World War II, the nation adopted standardized testing and mainstreaming because they held an aura of scientific respectability and eased the grading dilemmas. Of course, the reason we keep these outdated systems today is more based on the fact that standardized testing and single educational objectives are far more cost effective and require far less objective and social knowledge by the educational faculties. In other words, cost and ease of presentation continue to win.