Characteristics and Signs of High Quality Education in Elementary Schools (Essay Sample)

High Quality Education
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High Quality Education.
There are concerns as to why the U.S. students perform below the International averages and fall behind in academic accomplishments. There are several signs and characteristics which are indicators of high-quality education in elementary school.
The first sign of high-quality education relates to adequate school resources. These resources range from human, material, and financial resources. The financial resources refer to the federal expenditure on education. This expenditure is assessed in terms of allocation to teacher’s salaries, maintenance and construction of buildings, and expenditure on operational costs such as meals for students. The human resources refer to the availability and adequacy of qualified and well-trained teachers in schools. The teacher-student ratio is a key indicator as to the availability of sufficient human resources and should not be too high. The availability of material resources such as adequate physical infrastructure and supply of educational materials indicate the quality of education is high. Also, there should be equitable resource allocation between the socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged schools (Resources Invested in Education, 2013).
The second sign is the quality of teaching provided in the schools. Teaching quality constitutes a set of actions and activities that improve the student’s outcomes. The first indicator of high-quality education is qualified teachers. The teachers should have academic degrees, proper certification, undergo teacher preparation programs, and take teacher test scores. This is best highlighted by Finland where the teachers must complete several years of graduate level education, and they become highly trained. This explains why the average mathematics score of 15-year olds in Finland is much higher than that of the U.S.A since U.S teachers vary much more in training. (Hightower, Delgado, & Lloyd, 2011)
The third sign of high-quality education is the parental involvement and encouragement. According to El Nokali, Bachman & Vortuba-Drzal, (2010), parents wield considerable influence on their children’s development as the children progress through school. The parents should foster a behavior that will support their children’s academic excellence. Also, the parents and teachers should work together to respond better to the children’s academic, social, and behavior skills. Lack of parental encouragement might be one possible reason why the U.S students perform poorly. The American parents and teachers place greater importance on the native academic ability as the key to academic success. They should consider the example of Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese parents who believe that all children can perform academically with enough effort. These parents help their children do homework and they help them strive for achievement.
The fourth sign and characteristic of high-quality education is a curriculum focussed not only on the absorption of facts but on the development of the 21st-century skills such as problem-solving. The curriculum should be designed in a way that offers intellectually challenging, relevant instruction with real-world applications more focused on high-level reasoning and critical thinking, and less focused on making the students absorb facts. The curriculum should be broad based to enable students to use their cognitive skills like synthesis, problem-solving, and analysis because this promotes long-term retention of knowledge. The instruction in the U.S.A has been criticized because it more focussed on the absorption of facts and less focussed on promoting critical thinking.
U.S No Child Left Behind Act.
The No Child Left Behind act was in place from 2002-2015 and it was an update of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Act was developed after concerns that the American education system was no longer globally competitive. The act pushed for the increased federal role in holding the schools responsible for the academic progress of all the students. Special emphasis was put on the improving the performance of the disadvantaged students like those living in poverty, from minority groups, those in special education, and those who are learning English. The American states were not required to comply with the regulation, but those who did not be at a higher risk of losing the Federal Title I money ("No Child Left Behind Overview: Definitions, Requirements, Criticisms, and More", 2016).
Under the law, states were required to test the students in reading and math in grade 3 through 8 and once in high school. The students are to be reported for the whole student population and the disadvantaged groups. The school is to keep a track of their goals through a mechanism known as adequate yearly progress (AYP), and should a school miss its state’s annual target for two years or more, it is subject to a lot of serious sanctions. For instance, a school that misses AYP for two consecutive years in a row should allow the students to transfer to a better-performing school in the same district and if a school misses AYP for three years in a row, it must offer free tutoring to the students. The law also required that teachers employed from the beginning of the 2002-03 years should be highly qualified with a bachelor’s degree in the subject they teach and have a state certification ("No Child Left Behind Overview: Definitions, Requirements, Criticisms, and More", 2016).
The Act has been criticized because it has led to the U.S students performing below the international average and accomplishing less academically. The Act mandates sanctions for schools whose students do not meet the goals on achievement tests. These sanctions include student transfer to higher-performing schools, staff firings, school closures, and takeovers among others. This forces the schools to focus more on teaching students to absorb facts to meet the set targets rather than to enable students cultivate initiative, problem solving, and creativity in all students.
High Stakes Testing.
High-stake testing refers to the process of using tests to make important decisions about the students’, schools, and states in an attempt by the federal government to ensure that the students are enrolled in effective schools and taught by effective teachers.
Pros
The first advantage for high-stakes testing is that it allows for accountability. The teachers and schools are held accountable and responsible for teaching the students. There is scrutiny of the results and schools which do not perform according to ...