Although my topic’s problem may vary, when it comes to what it’s root causes come from, these are the three key root causes that I think are the foundation of this problem as a whole. One of the things that really restricts us from having someone else make sure that these systems are meeting our necessities is by making sure that something is established in our constitution or at least we pass a national law that is able to commit to our well being when it comes to our education systems, specifically the public education systems. This is important so that we are able to have sort of like checks and balances where we are guaranteed our quality education.
|
Another problem that shows up when it comes to inequalities in education is the public education systems itself. Although there are many restrictions, restricting these systems from giving us our need, there are still inequalities within the public education system itself. For example as I have mentioned in our philosophy, my school was created through a hunger strike that happened nearly 10 years ago. In May of 1998, Mayor Daley, promised our city that three new schools would be built. Those three schools would be North Side College Prep, Walter Payton, and Little Village high school. However, by May 2001 only ⅔ schools were built. Outraged and angered, parents and community members came together to fight against this. This is important to know, because this not only is this something that happened to my community, but this is just one of the few examples how injustices in our systems continue to exist. But this is also an example of how we can fight back.
My third root cause that I believe is one of the most crucial to my topic is standardized testing. We have to eliminate the idea that these tests are going to help solve our problems. According to http://standardizedtests.procon.org/, “A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning..." This means that these tests are unreliable source. We use these scores and tests to try to define exactly how smart we are, when in reality there is no learning going on with these tests. We spend majority of our time prepping for these tests when we could be learning new material. We need to take a step back and think about what we need to do to move on, and these three things, are the ones holding us back. |