Paper Outline

I) Introduction: I give a brief overview of topic followed by my thesis statement. 

a) Education policies including NCLB and RTT.

i) No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted in 2001 and Race To The Top (RTT) is its current successor.

ii) NCLB was put into law by a Republican administration and RTT was ratified by a Democratic administration.

1) Because of the failed actions of NCLB, RTT was established eight years later and has many improvements.

II) Description of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top education policies. 

a) NCLB: four main points established.

i) To have academic standards, make annual progress towards having every student achieve the standards and closing gaps between all students and certain subgroups of students, test students to see if they are learning, and collect data on how they are doing

b) Race to the Top policy description.

i) enhancing standards and assessments, improving collection and use of data, increasing teacher effectiveness and achieving equity in teacher distribution, and turning around low-achieving schools. 

c) Critics compare both education policies.

i) Critics believe that the NCLB act was unnecessary. (Ravitch)

III) Creationism vs. Evolution

a) Conflicts of creationism and evolution.

i) Ever since the late 18^th century, there has been major conflict between creationism and evolution theories.

ii) Many states started denying the rights to teach evolution in schools.

iii) Problems with reducing teaching of evolution. “Teaching creationist ideas in science classes confuses what constitutes science and what does not.” ( NAS 1)

iv) Controversy occurred in Columbus, Ohio when Freshwater, a science teacher, constantly pushed his religious beliefs on his students. (Schehl 1)

IV) What is an effective teacher?

a) Low achieving schools.

i) “Unfortunately, the lowest performing schools statistically tend to have the less qualified and newest teachers” (Examiner 1).

b) Tenure and teachers.

i) Tenure is the practice of guaranteeing a teacher their job.

ii)  1 out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine and 1 out of 97 lawyers lose their license to practice law. (Waiting for Superman).

V) Are students prepared for workforce or college?

a) Skills necessary for the future.

i) “Written communication skills, the capacity to solve problems/critical thinking skills, the ability to cooperate with others and work in teams.”

b) Do teachers engage students enough?

i) High school students have failed to demonstrate that they have enough skill to continue onto college level courses after graduating.

VI) Standardized testing in public schools.

a) Are standardized tests actually effective?

i) Standardized testing only tests certain categories and can make students feel like they are not intelligent enough or that the testing is unfair.

ii) Standardized testing is a huge part of the NCLB policy (Koretz).

iii) “How Standardized Testing Damages Education” states that RTT

and NCLB puts pressure on schools conducting standardized testing.

b) Negative consequences that come along with testing.

i) Narrowing the curriculum, teaching strictly what is going to be on the test, pushing students out of school, causing teachers to quit, and the absence of student engagement.

c) Ways to substitute standardized testing.

i) Assess the performance of the teachers and students to get a more accurate result of their knowledge.

VII) Public schools vs. Charter schools.

a) What is the difference between a public school and a charter school.

i) Charter schools have their own school board and take money from public schools, public schools are made up of their own government or union.

b) Is there a drastic difference in school rating?

i) A school is great regardless if it’s public or charter.

ii) “There are effective charters and ineffective charters, and there are effective district schools and ineffective district schools,” (Parker 1).

c) Do these schools effect teacher unions?

i) A majority of teachers rely on their union to protect their job and with a union, they are able to discuss district concerns and policies.

ii) Charter school teachers are less experienced and unionized (Karp 1).

VIII) Underfunding in schools across the country.

a) Because of school’s underfunding, “…deprive their own schools of needed resources” (Lecker 1).

i) Result due to the underfunding of schools is that children and teachers must endure large classes, limited textbooks, computers and other learning tools, unfriendly learning environments, cutbacks of teachers, and the elimination of courses and extracurricular activities.

b) Ways to improve schooling.

i) Stated by the Race to the Top education plan, stepping up teacher effectiveness will turn around low achieving schools.

c) How both policies managed the underfunding of schools.

i) No Child Left Behind failed to bring up low achieving schools, test scores didn’t improve enough to get noticed, and the average grades for low income schools remained low.

IX) Conclusion/ Overview of both policies.

a) Different aspects of the policies.

i) One provides incentives for schools to change while the other mandates it.

b) Flaws in the policies.

i) The main focus in schools are exams, and your intelligence is based off of them, schools and teachers are forced to teach the exact same curriculum, which allows no creativity, an unbalanced subject focus, and many teachers pass students that shouldn’t have actually been passed.

c) Which policy was overall more successful.