PBS Video - Episode 4

This video shows American public education from 1980 to the present. It starts out with the Reagan Administration saying that kids aren't learning as much as they need to when they're in school. I mean they went around interviewing high schoolers and one kid couldn't even tell the interviewer who won the Civil War. That is a problem. Kids were taking easier classes like cooking and wood shop, they weren't challenging themselves with higher level math, history, or English courses. Obviously the schools and teachers weren't pushing students to push themselves.

One solution that they did in East Harlem was to make a competition for schools. Students got to pick which high school they wanted to go to, and if a school was lacking student attendance - it was closed. The different schools focused on different things - one was a dance school, one was a science school, etc. I thought it was a good idea, and it did increase academic achievement, but I don't feel like it was the competition aspect that made it work. Students were more engaged and therefore they were learning more.

Another thing that they used during this time period was vouchers. A voucher is given to a poorer student so they can go to any private school that they want and the government will pay for it. Now how is this increasing the public school system? It's not, they're using money to take away students from the public schools. It would have made a lot more sense to use that money to help improve public schools, since a lot of public schools during this period were falling apart. Some had leaky ceilings, others were overcrowded - this is where that money should have gone to.

Some felt restricted by public schools, and this is when the idea of charter schools came into play. A charter school is a school that receives money from the government, but they have to set a goal for their students. And if the students don't achieve that goal in the time period that was agreed upon, then the school gets shut down. A lot of charter schools focus on a certain field - the arts, mathematics, etc. It's kind of like what they did to the schools in East Harlem, except better because there's not as many restrictions like in a public school.

A big part of this episode was that students need to meet certain standards in public schools. The states were the ones who came up with these standards, and students must meet them every year. And now it's up to the teachers to make sure every student succeeds.