Special Admissions High Schools in New York City: Unequal Opportunites for Everyone :: Free Essays Online

Special Admissions High Schools in New York City: Unequal Opportunites for Everyone As a teenager growing up in New York City a major part of your life is the high school that you attend. New York City is filled with high schools, public, private, and parochial. Within the public school system in addition to "regular" public schools there are also special admission and magnet schools. Although these schools are all technically part of the same system, there are very great differences and disparities between them. As a student at a special admissions public school I was very aware of the problems that existed at my school, but also took for granted the advantages my school had over "regular" public schools. Our ceiling was falling down, we had no windows or ventilation, and we had teachers that didn't teach, but we also had a computer network, beautiful grand pianos, small classes, a Jazz Chorus that took a trip to Europe, AP courses, and a ridiculous number of graduates attending Ivy League universities. Some of the "regular" public schools might have had windows, but that was really the only advantage, after that we had them beat by quite a lot. I grew up across the street from two high schools. One of them, Fiorello Laguardia High School, is a special admissions public school for students who are gifted in the performing or visual arts. The student population at Laguardia is relatively diverse with students of all races attending, although the majority of the students, as at all of the NYC special admissions high schools, is white and Asian. The other high school, Martin Luther King jr. High School is a "regular" public high school. The population is almost entirely African American and Hispanic with a very small minority of Asian students. In Manhattan, as in many areas of New York City, where one attends high school has little to do with where one lives. Almost everyone takes some combination of busses and/or subways every morning and afternoon. Because of this, the problems cannot really be blamed on districts. The disparities between schools has much more to do with who attends the school than where the school is located and the income of the population of that area. Technically, according to Marty Schwartzfarb, an educator in the New York City Public school system, all of the high schools run by the New York City board of education are supposed to be receiving exactly the same amount of money per student.

Standardized Testing in Schools

Standardized tests are administered in all schools across the U. S. in lieu of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. According to these laws, schools have to administer standardize tests to qualify for various types of licensing and grants. For instance, a certain percentage of the students in public schools must pass the standardized tests to be allowed federal support and funding for that particular school. If the results of the standardized tests are not at par, the school does not get funding. At the same time, many students have to take high-stakes standardized tests to get into various colleges/universities of their choice. If the students do not do well on such tests, they are denied admissions. The thing to note about these standardized tests is that they are not reliable and they contain various biases in them. Many people have criticized how such tests do not contain relevant information that can be found in the course syllabus and they test students on impractical levels. Others believe that standardized tests provide results based on very few parameters that do not reflect the students’ real intelligence. Looking at the various researches and opinions of critics, we find that standardized testing is not an effective measure of gauging students’ intelligence, and they should not be used in schools. For example, one of the biggest reasons standardized testing is not effective is because of the subjectivity that can be found in such tests. For instance, Williams (2005) speaks of how many of the standardized tests are gauged by computers. These computers look at the essays input and they provide the results after running certain algorithms that measure certain aspects of the essay, such as structure. Williams (2005) presents a very interesting fact of how some of his colleagues and even he himself used an online website to generate essays about a subject and fed that into the testing machine. The essay that was generated was completely gibberish but was constructed properly according to the rules of grammar. For instance, the essay was supposed to be about standardized testing, but it speaks of how governmental officials and monarchs use the system. The testing machine, however, said that the essay was very well written. This is because the essay followed rules of grammar impeccably, even though it did not make any sense. This shows how standardized testing can be extremely ineffective, as they are mostly being gauged by computers that assess their structure and not their contents. Another problem with standardized tests is that they do not take into account the syllabus that students learn all year round in their classroom curriculum (Rosengarten, 2002). This means that it makes what children are being taught in classrooms as being useless. Children are taught a different syllabus in class, and they are expected to prepare for a test that tests them on other criteria. This causes two problems: one, that the children are being given two different types of education, and two, teachers are not sure what to teach their children. They must teach the children the regular coursework, however, they also must make sure that the children pass the standardized test so that they can receive the federal funding and grant, as per the No Child Left Behind Act. Many people have criticized this act. According to his act, each school must administer standardized tests to its students so that all schools can be gauged on a similar platform (United States Department of Education, 2001). If the students attain a certain level of score on these tests, the public schools are given the federal funding and grant; however, if the school fails, the grants are withdrawn (Diorio, 2008). This is why most of the schools pressure their teachers to prepare the students in such a way so that they ace the standardized tests (Smyth, 2008). This can be problematic. Another problem with standardized testing is that when teachers prepare the students for the standardized tests, they neglect and ignore the subjects that the students will not be tested on. For example, most of the standardized tests focus on mathematics and English skills more. This is why to help students pass the standardized tests, teachers’ pay more attention to these subjects and other subjects, such as science, humanities, history, and art are ignored. Children are getting a skewed education that is tailored to fulfill the federal mandate. Moreover, as noted earlier, most of the standardized tests test students on knowledge that is not part of their syllabus. This results in teachers preparing the students to take the test and do well at it, instead of providing a homogenized form of education that benefits students across all the different subjects. This also means that students can effectively remain lazy and not study all year round and only prepare themselves to take the standardized tests at the end of year to pass their grades. This is also not good, as the students are not being given the proper way of being educated, which should be consistent all year round and not focused on passing one test at the end of the year. Furthermore, standardized tests are also not effective because they contain various biases (Se Queda, 2011). This is because the standardized tests are designed to be administered to a large population that has to take the same test. All the students are required to answer the test in the same manner. This can be problematic, as the U. S. has a very diverse student population from various social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds (Scholmerich et al, 2008). Placing them all on the same level and playing field is giving advantage to some of the students while making it more difficult for others. For instance, children from different parts of the country would have different sets of skills. For example, a child raised in a big city, such as New York City, would have completely different mindset and set of skills than a child who was raised in a small town, such as Fort Pierce, Florida. This has to do with cultural dynamics and the way that children are taught, treated, and raised in different surroundings. Each of these children would respond in different ways to various educational questions because of their differences in the way that they were raised. Standardized tests do not account for such differences, as the same test is administered in the same manner for all students. At the same time, children with disabilities, e. g. blind children, are also mandated to take standardized test under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In such cases, the questions are read out aloud to the children and they have to speak out their answers (National Council on Disability, 2008). However, the No Child Left Behind Act ignores the blind children and gives them a null score Mefford, 2009) since they cannot read, which means that the standardized tests are skewed and biased. Additionally, many critics have voiced their concerns over how standardized tests should not be allowed because they are unfair. Such critics talk about how the questions â€Å"require a set of knowledge and skills more likely to be possessed by children from a privileged background. The discriminatory effect is particularly pronounced with norm-referenced te sts, where the imperative to spread out the scores often produces questions that tap knowledge gained outside of school† (Kohn, 2000). At the same time, since the standardized tests contain various patterns that students can be taught, various parents can help their children get the proper preparation so that they can pass these tests. This means that the rich and better off people tend to have the ability to provide their children with private tuitions, helping them prepare specifically for the standardized tests so that they can do well. This is another bias that can be seen in the standardized tests, as those who are able to afford to get specific education and preparation for the standardized tests are able to get better scores. This goes against the true reasons for the standardized tests, which is to gauge the students equally across the same platform. Clearly, the rich have an advantage, as they can afford to be specifically prepared for the test, giving them better scores not because they are more intelligent but because they could pay enough money to tailor their preparation exactly for the test. Another reason standardized tests are ineffective is because they tend to measure superficial thinking rather than the deep thinking of the students. Many scholars have indicated the difference between active thinking and superficial thinking, in that active thinking occurs when students ask many questions about their course, coming up with questions themselves and then linking their current coursework with what they have learned in the past. Superficial thinking occurs when students tend to copy down the answers, do a large amount of guesswork and do not ponder on the more difficult aspects of the curriculum. Research has shown that students who get higher scores on their standardized tests are usually those that indulge more in superficial thinking rather than active thinking. Even though some of the students who indulged in active thinking were also able to get high scores, the correlation between superficial thinking and high scores on standardized test is a positive one. This is another reason standardized tests can be seen as being ineffective, as they tend to measure the wrong kind of things; instead of measuring the students who do active thinking, they favor superficial thinking, which is not good. Thus, we find that standardized tests are ineffective for many reasons. Standardized tests test students on a set of knowledge and skills that they are not usually taught in their coursework. This is why many of the teachers tend to teach students how to pass standardized tests instead of teaching them the proper syllabus. To do this, the teachers have to cut down on other subjects, such as art, and sometimes even take the recess time from the children’s daily timetable. Students can also suffer because many subjects that are not paid attention to help children in building their moral and social learning. At the same time, standardized tests tend to be biased against certain portions of the society, as some students are able to do well on them because of their social backgrounds. Children belonging to rich parents also benefit, as they are able to afford tuition and materials that have been designed to prepare them specifically to get good scores on standardized tests. Finally, it has been found that standardized tests measure superficial thinking more than active thinking. All of these reasons depict why standardized testing is wrong and that it should be replaced with other forms of testing that are more homogenized and work to test the students across relevant parameters.ReferencesDiorio, G. L. (2008). â€Å"No Child Left Behind Act of 2001†. Retrieved on November 7, 2012 from: http://ehis.ebscohost.com Henry, P. (2007). â€Å"The Case Against Standardized Testing.† Minnesota English Journal. 39-71. Retrieved on November 7, 2012 from: http://www.mcte.org/journal/mej07/3Henry.pdf Kearns, L. (2011). High stakes Standardized Testing and Marginalized Youth: an Examination of the Effects of on those who Fail. Canadian Journal of Education, 34(2). Kohn, A. (2000, September 27). â€Å"Standardized Testing and Its Victims.† Education Week. Retrieved on November 7, 2012 from: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/staiv.htm Mefford, D. (2009, October 01). â€Å"Why Was No Child Left Behind a Failure?† EduBook. Retrieved on November 7, 2012 from: http://www.edubook.com/why-was-no-child-left-behind-a-failure/15467/ National Council on Disability. (2008). â€Å"The No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,† Retrieved on November 7, 2012 from http://www.ncd.gov Rosengarten, D. (2002). â€Å"Standing up to standardized tests.† Dollars and Sense, 232: 6 Scholmerich, A., Leyendeker, B., & Citlak, B., Ulrike,C., Jakel,J., (2008). Assessment of Migrant and Minority Children. Journal of Psychology, 216 Se Queda, m. (2011, February). Biases in Standardized testing. Persephone Magazine retrieved October 26.2012 Smyth, T. S. (2008, January/February). Who is No Child Left Behind leaving behind? Clearing House, 81, (3). United States Department of Education. (2001). â€Å"No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 for Elementary and Secondary Education,† Retrieved on November 7, 2012 from: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html Williams, B. (2005). â€Å"Standardized students: The problems with writing for tests instead of people.† Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 49, (2): 155.

Risk Management Plays a Vital Role in Healthcare...

Risk managers are a vital lifeline in the healthcare organization. If this organization had an active risk manager in place, many of the events leading up to the infant losing its life could have been prevented. There are many steps that a risk manager must take once a risk is identified, this paper will walk through the steps that are required after the risk happened. A risk manager plays an important role with the events in this infant case study. Risk managers hold a wide variety of responsibilities that include: risk identification, risk control, risk financing, claims management, policy review, safety, security, corporate and regulatory compliance, accreditation compliance, mandatory event reporting, and worker’s†¦show more content†¦Once the root cause analysis and action plan have been prepared and submitted to The Joint Commission, they will decide if the plans are adequate. If the determination that an event is reviewable under the Sentinel Event Policy occurs more than forty five calendar days following the known occurrence of the event, the hospital’s response will be due in fifteen calendar days. If the hospital has failed to submit a root cause analysis within an additional 45 days following its due date, its accreditation decision may be impacted (Sentinel Events, n.d). Once a sentinel event takes place, the next step is to perform a root cause analysis. Root cause analysis is a systematic process used to address problems or non-conformance to identify the source of the problem. A root cause is the underlying breakdown or failure of a process when resolved, prevents the problem from recurring (Connelly, 2012). As soon as the event happens the root analysis should begin and should include everyone involved. The team should list in chronological order all the steps related to the error. 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