Psychology SOC Assignment 8

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Chapter 8

Problems in Education

Mooney/Knox/Schacht, Understanding Social Problems, 10th Edition. © 2017 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

Chapter 8: Problems in Education

“Schools need stability, adequate resources, well-prepared and experienced educators, community support, and a clear vision of what good education is.”

—Diane Ravitch, education historian

Learning Objectives

Identify educational trends in countries that participate in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (O E C D).

Use structural functionalism and conflict theory to analyze the presence of corporate sponsors in public schools.

Discuss each of the independent variables associated with school achievement.

Describe the social problems (e.g., the dropout rate) associated with schools, teachers, and students.

Summarize educational policies and practices in the United States.

Chapter Outline

The Global Context: Cross-Cultural Variations In Education

Sociological Theories of Education

Who Succeeds? The Inequality of Educational Attainment

Problems in the American Educational System

Strategies for Action: Trends and Innovations in American Education

Understanding Problems in Education

The Global Context: Cross-Cultural Variation in Education (1 of 4)

The United States has more than 140,000 schools, 4.6 million primary and secondary school teachers and college faculty, 3.1 million administrators and support staff, and 77.8 million students.

17% of adults cannot read or write—775 million people worldwide—two-thirds of them women.

The Global Context: Cross-Cultural Variation in Education (2 of 4)

Education at a Glance, a publication of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O E C D), reports education statistics on over 34 countries.

First, in general, educational levels are rising.

Second, there is a clear link between education and income, and between education and employment.

The Global Context: Cross-Cultural Variation in Education (3 of 4)

Education at a Glance, Continued:

Third, across all O E C D-participating countries, an average of $9,487 is spent per student each year they are in school from elementary school to college.

Fourth, in reference to teachers, the average student-teacher ratio in elementary schools in O E C D-participating countries is 16:1.

Fifth, educational attainment is increasing Worldwide.

The Global Context: Cross-Cultural Variation in Education (4 of 4)

Globally, few countries have the quality of schools or accessibility to education as enjoyed in the United States. Here, students in Lahtora, India, have outdoor lessons because their classroom is too crowded and too cold to have classes inside.

Sociological Theories of Education

Structural-Functional Perspective (1 of 2)

Education serves 4 important functions:

Instruction

Socialization

Sorting individuals into various statuses

Custodial care

Structural-Functional Perspective (2 of 2)

Multicultural Education: Education that includes all racial and ethnic groups in the school curriculum thereby promoting awareness and appreciation for cultural diversity.

Conflict Perspective (1 of 3)

Educational institution solidifies class positions and allows the elite to control the masses.

Quality education and educational opportunities are not equally distributed.

Education provides indoctrination into the capitalist ideology.

Cultural imperialism - Indoctrination into the dominant culture of a society.

Conflict Perspective (2 of 3)

To cover financial costs associated with the increasing needs of educational programs, school systems often find it necessary to contract with major corporations such as Coca-Cola. However, a recent analysis of the impact of commercialization in schools concluded that “the potential threat to children posed by marketing in schools is great enough that . . . the default assumption must be that marketing in schools is harmful unless explicitly proven otherwise” (National Education Policy Center 2013).

Conflict Perspective (3 of 3)

Education perpetuates racial inequality:

Gross inequalities between poor districts and middle-and upper-class districts.

Schools in poor districts have inadequate facilities, materials, and personnel.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective (1 of 2)

Concerned with the individual and small-group issues in education:

Teacher-student interactions

Student self-esteem

Self-fulfilling prophecy - Occurs when people act in a manner consistent with the expectations of others.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective (2 of 2)

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Rosenthal and Jacobson experiment:

Five random elementary school students were labeled as having superior intelligence and ability.

Teachers expected them to do well and treated them in a way that encouraged better school performance.

Who Succeeds?

Social Class and Family Background (1 of 3)

One of the best predictors of educational success and attainment is socioeconomic status.

On standardized tests such as the S A T and the A C T, “children from the lowest-income families have the lowest average test scores.”

Families with low incomes have fewer resources to commit to educational purposes.

What Do You Think? 1

Do you think the federal government should pay for universal preschool for all 4-year-olds?

Social Class and Family Background (2 of 3)

Head Start and Early Head Start

Begun in 19 65 to help preschool children from the most disadvantaged homes, Head Start provides an integrated program of health care, parental involvement, education, and social services for qualifying children.

Early Head Start is a program for infants and toddlers from low-income families. Participating children perform significantly better in cognitive, language, and social-emotional development than their peers who do not participate.

Social Class and Family Background (3 of 3)

Local dollars, which make up 44 percent of school funding, varies by socioeconomic status of the district.

The U.S. system of decentralized funding for schools has several additional consequences:

Located in inner cities where the value of older and dilapidated houses have depreciated

Less likely to have businesses or retail outlets

Due to city proximity, inner city schools are more likely to include hospitals, museums, and art galleries, all of which are tax-free facilities

Disproportionate amount of the money has to be spent on maintaining the school facilities because of age

Race and Ethnicity (1 of 4)

It is projected that by 2024, racial and ethnic minorities will comprise 54 percent of the prekindergarten through 12th grade student population.

In comparison to whites, Hispanics and blacks are less likely to succeed in school at almost every level.

By fourth grade, over 80 percent of blacks and Hispanics are reading below grade level compared to 55 percent of whites. Similarly, by eighth grade, over 86 percent of black and Hispanic students compared to 56 percent of white students are below grade level in mathematics.

Race and Ethnicity (2 of 4)

Bilingual Education: In the United States, teaching children in both English and their non-English native language.

Advocates claim that bilingual education results in better academic performance of minority students.

Critics argue that bilingual education limits minority students and places them at a disadvantage when they compete outside the classroom.

What Do You Think? 2

What do you think about single-sex education?

Race and Ethnicity (3 of 4)

School Desegregation: In 19 54, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education was unconstitutional because it was inherently unequal.

Integration Hypothesis: A theory that the only way to achieve quality education for all racial and ethnic groups is to desegregate the schools.

Race and Ethnicity (4 of 4)

Increasingly, school classrooms will be characterized by racial and ethnic diversity. By 2040, less than half of all school-age children will be non-Hispanic whites.

Gender (1 of 2)

Not only do women comprise two-thirds of the world’s illiterate, girls comprise more than 62 percent of the 125 million children who don’t attend school.

Although progress in reducing the education gender gap has been made, gender parity in primary and secondary schools has not been achieved.

Sixty percent of countries for which there is data have achieved gender parity at the elementary school level, but just 20 percent in low-income countries.

Gender (2 of 2)

Education and Gender in the U.S.: In 1833 Oberlin College in Ohio became the first college in the U.S. to admit women.

Female students at Oberlin were required to wash male students’ clothes, clean their rooms, and serve their meals and were forbidden to speak at public assemblies.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 19 72 states that no person shall be discriminated against on the basis of sex in any educational program receiving federal funds.

Problems in the American Educational System

Low Levels of Academic Achievement

The Educational Research Center uses three indicators to measure achievement in public elementary and secondary schools: current levels of performance, improvement over time, and achievement gap between poor and non-poor learners.

Based on a 100-point scale, the achievement average for the nation in 2015 was 70.2 (C–) and ranged from a high of 86.2 (B) for Massachusetts and a low of 64.2 (F) for Mississippi.

School Dropouts (1 of 3)

The status dropout rate is the percentage of an age group that is not in school and has not earned a high school degree or its equivalent.

In the last several decades, the male and female status dropout rates have declined significantly to 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

School Dropouts (2 of 3)

Figure 8.4 Percentage of U.S. Ninth Graders who Dropped Out of High School before Graduating, by Sex and Socioeconomic Status (S E S)*

*Socioeconomic status was based on parents’ education, occupational prestige, and family income.

Source: N C E S 2015c.

School Dropouts (3 of 3)

Dropout Prevention Programs: successful programs share five common elements:

(1) management of students

(2) mentoring

(3) family involvement

(4) curricular reform

(5) contending with out-of-school problems

What Do You Think? 3

Three white students were expelled and one suspended from San Jose State University for allegedly racially bullying their black roommate. Some are calling the incident a bullying hate crime. What do you think—as alleged, is it a case of bullying or a hate crime or both?

Crime, Violence, and School Discipline (1 of 3)

Despite the horrors of high-publicity school killings such as those at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, the chance of a student dying at school is quite rare—less than 2%.

The unlikelihood of such an event is reflected in students’ perceptions of safety.

According to the most recent data available, 3 percent of students report fear of attack or harm on their way to or at school.

In 2013, 4 percent of the student population between 12 and 18 years of age reported being the victim of a nonviolent crime, resulting in 1.4 million incidents.

Crime, Violence, and School Discipline (2 of 3)

Sexual Assault on Campus:

According to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, an estimated 20 percent of women on campus, most often in their freshman or sophomore year, will be sexually assaulted while in college.

Many will be victims of an “incapacitated assault; they are sexually abused while drugged, drunk, passed out, or otherwise incapacitated”.

The victim will probably know her attacker but will not report what happened.

Crime, Violence, and School Discipline (3 of 3)

Bullying: Inherent in a relationship between individuals, groups, or individuals and groups, bullying entails an imbalance of power that exists over a long period of time in which the more powerful intimidate or belittle others.

When a random sample of American adults was asked about bullying in school, 45 percent said they had been bullied by another student and 16 percent said that they had bullied one of their classmates.

Cyber-bullying: The use of electronic devices (e.g. websites, e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging) to send or post negative or hurtful messages or images about an individual or a group.

Inadequate School Facilities (1 of 2)

A report by the American Federation of Teachers (A F T) has documented many of the troubling conditions that exist in U.S. schools:

. . . rodent infestation, mice droppings, fallen ceiling tiles, poor lighting, mold that has caused mushrooms to grow, crumbling exterior walls, asbestos, severely overcrowded classrooms and hallways, freezing rooms in the winter and extreme heat in the summer, old carpeting, clogged bathroom toilets and no stall doors, inadequate circuit breakers causing frequent outages, and poor ventilation.

Inadequate School Facilities (2 of 2)

More and more school buildings and facilities are in need of repair.

Mold, defective ventilation systems, faulty plumbing, and the like are not uncommon.

Quality education is expected to continue in the classrooms despite deplorable conditions.

Recruitment and Retention of Quality Teachers (1 of 2)

A study by the Alliance for Excellent Education in conjunction with the New Teacher Center (N T C) found that 13 percent of teachers either move schools or leave the profession every year.

High teacher turnover is problematic in a number of ways:

First, newer teachers are less experienced and often less effective.

Second, teacher turnover contributes to a lack of continuity in programs and educational reforms.

Finally, recruiting and training expenses in addition to the time and effort devoted to replacing teachers who have left the profession is considerable.

What Do You Think? 4

At the college level, tenure assures that professors cannot be fired for, as examples, teaching unpopular ideas or holding political views deemed by others as “radical.” Do you think the system of tenure in public school, including colleges and universities, should be eliminated?

Recruitment and Retention of Quality Teachers (2 of 2)

Alternative certification programs are programs whereby college graduates with degrees in fields other than education can become certified if they have “life experience” in industry, the military, or other relevant jobs.

The Challenges of Higher Education

In the academic year 2013–2014, the total cost for a first time, full-time student, who lived on campus and paid in-state tuition was $22,190 at a public institution and $44,370 for a private institution.

Nearly three-quarters of college students graduate with some kind of debt averaging $29,400, 40 million graduates are still paying on their student loans, and another 7 million have defaulted.

Strategies for Action

Educational Policy across the States (1 of 3)

No Child Left Behind: The No Child Left Behind (N C L B) Act of 2001 was signed into law in January 2002.

The federally funded plan was organized around four principles: accountability for learning outcomes, flexibility in funding, expanding school options for parents, and the use of sound teaching methods, including the use of only “highly qualified” teachers in the classroom by 2006.

Educational Policy across the States (2 of 3)

Common Core State Standards

In 2008, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers convened to adopt a common set of academic standards to be used across the states as a means of standardizing educational requirements.

Known as the Common Core State Standards (C C S S), the initiative was motivated by concerns that students in different states were not being prepared equally for postsecondary education and/or jobs in the global workforce.

Educational Policy across the States (3 of 3)

Figure 8.6 Percentage of Public School Teachers Who Report Very Positive/Positive Change in Their Students’ Abilities in Each Area as a Result of C C S S, by Grade(s) Taught (N = 167), 2014

Source: Primary Sources 2014.

Character Education

Character education entails teaching students to act morally and ethically, including the ability to “develop just and caring relationships, contribute to community, and assume the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.”

Service learning programs, one type of character education, are increasingly popular at universities and colleges nationwide. Service learning programs are community based initiatives in which students volunteer in the community and receive academic credit for doing so.

The Debate over School Choice (1 of 2)

School vouchers

Tax credits used for public or private school that parents select.

Charter schools

Originate in charters approved by local or state authorities.

The Debate over School Choice (2 of 2)

Privatization of Schools:

A practice in which states hire businesses to provide services or operate local schools.

What Do You Think? 5

Public funds are not used for the roughly 2.2 million children who are homeschooled, saving taxpayers $24 billion a year. Do you think families who homeschool their children should be financially compensated in some way by their state or local school district?

Understanding Problems in Education (1 of 3)

Any criticism of education must take into account the fact that just over a century ago, the United States had no systematic public education system at all.

Today, the United States spends more money per student, at every level of education, than any other industrialized nation in the world.

Understanding Problems in Education (2 of 3)

Significant educational reform is needed to meet the needs of a global economy:

First, we must invest in teacher education and in teaching practices.

Second, the “savage inequalities” in education, primarily based on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, must be addressed.

Third, the general public needs to become involved.

Understanding Problems in Education (3 of 3)

Students work on their laptops at the Philadelphia School of the Future. Sponsored as part of a public/private partnership between the city of Philadelphia and Microsoft, this model for future schools opened on September 6, 2006. In June 2010, students graduated their first class, and all 117 seniors were accepted at postsecondary institutions.

Quick Quiz 1

Which society of these 8—U S, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, U S S R, U K—has the highest rate of university graduates?

A. Japan

B. U S

C. U K

D. Germany

Answer for Quick Quiz 1: B

The U.S. has the highest rate of university graduates.

Quick Quiz 2

What is the function of education, as examined by structural functionalism?

A. Teaching students knowledge and skills.

B. Teaching students to respect authority.

C. Socializing youth into the dominant culture.

D. All of these choices.

Answer for Quick Quiz 2: D

All of these choices are functions of education, as examined by structural functionalism.

Quick Quiz 3

Ms. Gardener has defined Julian as an "at-risk" student. Julian has been moved to a lower level reading group and is not called on to participate in class discussions. The next month's report card shows that Julian's test scores have slipped. What symbolic interactionist idea is this an example of?

A. dramaturgy

B. looking glass self

C. impression management

D. self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer for Quick Quiz 3: D

This an example of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Quick Quiz 4

According to conflict theorists, what is the socialization function of education?

A. Indoctrination into a capitalist ideology.

B. All of these choices.

C. Promoting awareness for cultural diversity.

D. Teaching students to respect authority.

Answer for Quick Quiz 4: A

According to conflict theorists, the socialization function of education is Indoctrination into a capitalist ideology.

Quick Quiz 5

Which of the following is not true regarding social class, family background, and education?

A. Disadvantaged parents are less involved in their children's education.

B. Disproportionately, children from low income families do not go to college.

C. Low income families are less likely to take their children to museums and zoos.

D. Working class parents do not value the education of their children.

Answer for Quick Quiz 5: D

It is not true that working class parents do not value the education of their children.

Psychology SOC Assignment 8

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