(I apologize ahead of time for a lack of the letter E in this, it keeps sticking and I might not catch all of missing ones)

I read another article that Diane Ravitch wrote on Obama's race to the top campaign. You can read it in the link here , but I will also summarize.

Her article compared that made the same points as her other one for class about hunger, homelessness and other factors bing why students arent doing well but Obama's plan only accentuation some of the worst parts of NCLB, such as basing performance on standardized testing, and firing staff for poor production, and also rewarding top scorers with more government money. which only leads to states to lower standards so they pass, and teachers prepping students on how to pass the tests, not to actually learn.

In my opinion I feel that we almost don't care about the students anymore. We don't care if the students pass or fail anymore, it is if the teachers pass or fail. I don't know if I have a solution to the problem that will work, nor does anyone else I think. The issue is that all of these policies put into plac is that they are getting solved because they are not tackling the right issues. for example: the issue is that the kids aren't scoring high enough on tests, so we will give you more money if they score higher on tests. Now what would be the easiest solution to this problem? Lower the test scores, problem solved. This needs to be solved, but how? in almost every other job or profession it is hailed has genius if you come up with the easiest most efficient way to make more money, yet education has a much harder task is left up to the people up top but affects the teachers who are the most influential, but I feel have the least say in the matter.

When it is all said and done the government will always be in control of the public school systems because well... they are public. The government will also always be full of people that have no idea what they are talking about, yet think they deserve to. So although I don't like to be pessimistic I feel that to at least some degree teacher's and experts on education will always feel that they are not getting the help they need and the steps to helping the kids are not going the right way.