United States education reform--加拿大Paper代写范文

加拿大Paper代写范文:“United States education reform”，这篇论文主要描述的是美国教育方式的改革经历了从枯燥古板的讲课方式到调动学生积极性的灵活教育，可以说美国的教育方式还是有了比较大的变动，学生们不再像以往坐在教室中听老师对着黑板讲课，他们有着自己的想法，在学习中不在处于被动的状态。

Today students in the United States mostly encounter only one type of teaching technique, a traditional style overrun with chalkboard lectures and unenthusiastic teachers; a classroom structure which forces students to act like the receptacles Freire described in his work, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." Paulo Freire argues that too often education involves what he termed ?banking' the educator making ?deposits' in the pupils. Children do not express or think for themselves anymore. Currently American students function as toilets for a teacher's input.

Styles of pedagogy have changed over the past twenty years. No longer are students passive learners, regurgitating information from chalkboard lectures derived from out of date textbooks (Fullan, 4). Today's educators understand that to produce an education beneficial for life the United States must educate its children with an array of techniques mirroring life's developmental stages. One initiative driving public education reform in America is the idea that schools will improve when teachers learn how to address the individual needs of each child (Fullan, 6). First Things First (FTF), a reform model developed in 1996 by the Institute for Research and Reform in Education (IRRE), comes close to addressing the needs of individual students through good educational practices supported by decades of educational research (IRRE website.)

The approach American schools have taken to reform has changed drastically. Reform plans in the 1980's were characterized by efforts to identify and ?cure' children and adolescents who were failing to thrive by creating narrow programs designed to address specific problems. The reform ideology was based on a micro level. Children who were problematic, or those labeled ?at-risk', were placed in programs to reduce negative school features like dropping out, drug use, and teen pregnancy (Fullan, 8). While some programs were designed to increase student's job skills no significant increase in better outcomes for youth was achieved. James P. Connell, founder of FTF, illustrates how the "safety net" approach to school policy gave way a "youth development" approach in the late 1990's. The latter approach is based on research of proven methods of pedagogy (Connell, 94).

Policy makers, private funders, and community leaders have become more knowledgeable about the role the social environment plays in youth development. As those in power positions gain broader perspectives of what goes into educating America's youth the focus is shifting away from fixing individuals who fail, to fixing the systems and institutions responsible for those individuals. This idea of accountability is antipodal to the traditional American approach and is representative of a Japanese management style. The Japanese believe it is better to "Fix the problem, not the blame (Rowley, 8)." Any failure is the result of the process not the person. Everyone makes mistakes and there are a lot of mistakes that can be made. Japanese business has thrived because of the beliefs that if you fix the process/system so that the mistake cannot be made again, you will have succeeded in fixing all the people.

It wasn't until the late 1990s that reformers began to recognize the need to change systems at both the school level and at the district and state levels. The Annenberg Institute for School Reform was charged with convening a national taskforce to examine the question of how to redesign districts so that a large number of high-performing schools could flourish. The taskforce was designed with the hope that it would be able to pinpoint key kinds of supports and services that districts provide to schools and how those supports need to be rethought in light of President Bush's push for standards-based accountability. It was within this context that the FTF initiative was adopted in Kansas City in 1996 (Annenberg, 10).

The IRRE looked at research on the different features of a whole-school reform, organizational change, and research on youth development and created its own plan for initiating and supporting change through district-wide restructuring and realignment of resources, FTF. FTF is a comprehensive school reform characterized by principles of developmental psychology that address the need for humans to feel competent, autonomous, and related, and the premise that meeting such needs in social contexts promotes positive development (Moles, 2). FTF aims to fix problems in American schools on a macro level, by changing school structure, pedagogical practices, teacher accountability, and governance to create environments in which students and adults are engaged in active learning (Gambone, 3).

Successful school reform in the FTF model depends on three general conditions: strong, long-standing, and mutually accountable relationships among school staff, students, and families; effective instructional practices that engage students in "rigorous and meaningful academic content;" and alignment of resources like time, money, people, and facilities in order to support the first two conditions (Connell, 45).

The FTF theory of change is a framework that proposes a set of early, intermediate and long-term changes needed to produce system-wide, significant improvement in student outcomes (IRRE website). Starting with the longer-term outcomes desired for youth, the model works backward to the developmental milestones in education needed to achieve these outcomes, outlines the supports and experiences required to achieve these milestones, describes the school-building restructuring necessary to ensure these supports are in place for both students and adults, and outlines the district-level activities required to create the conditions and capacity for system-wide change. By starting at the end and working backwards FTF mirrors the strategic planning practices in place by major universities and businesses all over the world, like consensus building, vision, and assessment of goals (Connell, 95).

What are the long-term goals for youth? The FTF framework starts with this question. Long term outcomes like decent jobs, good relationships, and the ability to contribute to the community in positive ways are the policy goals that the IRRE identify as the most important long term goals for educating children in America. These conclusions call for positive outcomes in the early school-aged years. With that in mind the second question in the regression model is produced; what educational outcomes lead to these long-term goals?

"Children must master the ability to be productive in order to achieve later success in life (FTF, 4)." During the school years there are two critical factors that most experts agree predict adult outcomes: how well students do in school academically and how committed they are to their education (Kemple, 10). Achievement and attendance therefore become the focus of educational systems undergoing change because of their association with success later in life.

As the foundation is laid from the top down another critical question emerges; what supports and opportunities improve educational outcomes? According to FTF, significant changes in the education environment are required in order to improve student performance and commitment. Specifically, "?changes must occur in the everyday lives of students in their classrooms and schools (Connell, 96)." Students should experience better interpersonal and instructional supports, which in turn lead to more positive beliefs and greater engagement in school. For these student changes to occur, schools and districts need simultaneously to increase supports and opportunities for the adults in schools, which lead to more positive beliefs and greater engagement on the part of these adults (Connell, 98).

The last question in the regression model deals with both the implementation and assessment of FTF. The last question is simply, how? How should schools change in order to increase supports and opportunities? FTF identifies seven changes referred to as FTF's "seven critical features of school-site reform," that provide the parameters for change activities to better support youth and adults (Ashby, 10). The list encompasses four changes for youths and three for adults that represent the intermediate outcomes that, if achieved, signal progress towards improving educational supports and opportunities and, ultimately, toward achieving the desired long-term goals for American students.

The first goal of the FTF model is to produce what the IRRE calls "continuity of care," for children. This is achieved by forming small learning communities (SLCs) that keep the same group of professionals, students, and families together for extended periods throughout the school day and across multiple years. This idea presents a daunting task for administrators. Implementing this critical feature requires decisions about how to restructure the school. In order for this to work planning has to extend beyond the traditional one-year timeframe and class-scheduling ideologies must transcend the classic forty-eight minute block scheduling method (Rowley 19).

Planners considering the FTF model must also consider the goal of lowering student to adult ratios to no more than fifteen to one in core academic subjects like reading and math. In an era of packed classrooms this goal can cause more problems in terms of implementation than any of the others. The implementation of this critical feature requires some flexibility in scheduling and the possible redistribution of professional staff. One school in Kansas City would pull out rotating groups of students to attend elective courses while the remaining subjects would participate in reading or math instruction. This example illustrates an "outside the box" approach to scheduling as an effective solution to meet this critical goal (Ashby, 11).

The third critical goal for FTF is the establishment high, clear, and fair standards for academics and conduct. The academic standards define what all students will know and be able to do within and across key content areas by the time they leave high school and at points along the way in their school career. The conduct standards define how adults and students should behave. The conduct standards are agreed to by all who are affected and reinforced by adults in the school who model positive social behaviors.

The implementation of this goal is all about alignment. Administrators within the school must align curriculum so that it is on par with national, district, and state levels; so that students can be successful in assessment at all three levels. Administrators must also create a conduct protocol for identifying staff and student agreed-upon standards of behavior for all people within the building as well as developing a system of rewards and consequences (Connell, 97).

By providing enriched and diverse opportunities for learning, FTF's fourth goal, students benefit in three distinct ways. First, when children are actively engaged through different pedagogies like cooperative learning, education is more authentic and real-world based making students more enthusiastic about their role in the process. Second, by utilizing assessment strategies linked to different styles of teaching students are pushed because they feel accountable for their performance. Lastly, by creating individual and collective incentives for student achievement, as well as leadership opportunities in academic and non-academic areas, students are recognized for their achievements and are empowered by this recognition (FTF, 5).

The last three goals defined within the FTF framework speak specifically to adults in the reform process and involve changes in governance and accountability. When all constituents in the planning process share a unified vision the process is more likely to succeed. "In most instances people resist the call to reform, not so much because they fear change, but because they bristle at having the will of others imposed on them? (Guskin 5)." Most scholars who examine educational governance structures identify the faculty within a school as its primary asset. Therefore it is important that governance structures within schools provide for the faculty voice to be heard.

One of FTF's goals is to "equip, empower, and expect," all staff to improve instruction by creating a shared vision and expectation of high-quality teaching and learning in all classrooms; supporting SLCs implementation of research-based teaching and learning techniques to fulfill that vision; and engaging all staff in ongoing study to improve curricular and instructional approaches (FTF, 6). Implementing this critical feature involves deciding the level at which decisions about instructional practice and professional development should be made within SLCs, grade level committees, and so on.

Continuing with the idea of communal buy-in FTF's next goal seeks to ensure collective responsibility by providing collective incentives and consequences for SLCs as well as school and district staffs based on improvements in student performance (FTF, 8).

The last goal defined in the seven critical aspects calls for flexibility. Schools must, "?allow for flexible allocation of available resources by teams and schools, based on instructional and interpersonal needs of students (Connell, 101)." Resources in this context include people, places, money, space (facilities).

To support the implementation of the critical features and goals listed above, FTF uses three strategies; small learning communities, the family advocate system, and the idea of continuously improving instruction. SLCs are also known as "schools-within-a school," "houses" or "families." Each SLC has its own group of teachers and students, and sometimes its own physical space within the school, governance system and budget. Multi-age classrooms are created by combining students from different grade levels in one class regardless of age (Moles, 4).

The family advocate system is built upon the research that says that positive relationships between students, teachers, and parents will result in increased student achievement. The Family Advocate System brings families into the SLCs and attempts to bridge the gap between school and home. The system supports regular opportunities for parental involvement through their family advocate, a teacher, administrator, or other staff member who is responsible for meeting regularly with students and their parents and clearly articulating mutual goals so that all the members who contribute to a students learning are on the same page (IRRE website).

Its designers do not consider the FTF framework a "program" with a fixed set of materials and training procedures. Instead, it is intended to allow schools to work through a structured process for deciding how these seven changes are going to be implemented in their site. The choice of specific activities targeting the seven critical features is left to each school (Ashby, 13).

结论与评价---Conclusions and Commentary

A study completed in 2003 examining FTF's implementation in the Kansas City School District showed tremendous gains in student achievement. The reform initiative was implemented in forty three schools throughout a district encompassing twenty thousand students. The differences in students who scored proficient in math and reading doubled in some cases and the district-wide strides in this are blew away state trends from the same year. Dropout rates were falling in high schools while attendance reached nearly ninety percent in the district (Gambone, 13-14). The success stories for FTF are abundant. The debated material, however, is scarce. How can you argue something built from proven methods of teaching and learning?

The current trend in American education is that smaller is better. The belief that students in private schools benefit from more individualized attention because of smaller class size has spilled over to the ideas behind reforming public schools. Oliver C Moles, Jr. illustrates three weaknesses of SLCs in a report prepared for the National Clearinghouse for Comprehensive School Reform; the possibility of tracking, problems with multi-age groups, and academic rigor.

Tracking in SLCs becomes a serious possibility as better students may be attracted to certain aspects of SLCs (Moles, 2). One flaw found in the examination of the Kansas City implementation was parents who would try to remove their children from programs where they were being taught with poorer students (Ashby 13). This is a challenge for administrators who must make SLCs appealing to all. Students of varied learning abilities mixed together results in different students reaching objectives at different times, a process that inevitably leads to tracking according to Moles.

In the FTF model SLCs are comprised of students who span across grade levels and pair older students with younger ones as mentors and coaches. Moles points out how the challenges of teaching students on a wide range of levels can wear down teachers (5). According to him the teacher preparation and certification in this country are lacking especially among middle school teachers, and asking sub-par teachers to implement and sustain a complex style such as this is an uphill climb. How can educators maintain academic rigor in a system where students learn at different paces? This is the third problem as identified by Moles (7).

In the study that examined Kansas City School Districts' adoption of FTF a problem with implementation was apparent. Even though teachers were excited about the reform and the ideals behind it their workload more than doubled. Teachers who formerly "flew under the radar," were now held accountable as family advocates and leaders of SLCs (Gambone, 14). It is important in any reform process to build early victories so that enthusiasm doesn't drop off (Rowley, 2). The Kansas City School District almost lost its momentum between the first and second years of implementation, before school staff could see the fruits of their labor (Gambone, 14).

Despite these weaknesses there is overwhelming evidence that supports the promise of SLCs. When SLCs are used school climate, safety, and student attendance improve followed by gains in student achievement (Moles, 6). The more personal learning environments that SLCs create are central to improving student outcomes.

For me FTF is a smorgasbord of the best practices every other reform has to offer cooked into one reform that holds faculty, students, and parents accountable. I attended a private Quaker school my entire life leading to eighth grade and in many ways my school was a small learning community. I was stuck with the same ten classmates, give or take a new face here or there, for nine years. The process better prepared me for my public high school experience than some of my classmates who had been publicly educated since kindergarten. I built better relationships with teachers and administrators and was more personally motivated than some of my counterparts. I see a lot of what I experienced in the framework of FTF.

First Things First is the best reform there is. I can't dispute it because everything I have learned through my pursuit of education has led me to believe that the practices and methods preached throughout this reform are the right ones. If schools around the country adopted the ideals of FTF no longer would students be objects, they would become subjects in their own learning.

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