Education is at the forefront of reform both locally and internationally. Through the turn of the century, initiatives have been put into place in order to catapult nations into a contending status as they relate to other nations. For much of the past quarter century, at least since the Reagan presidency, public education in the United States, and abroad, has come under sharp criticism and attack. Critics have introduced all manner of reforms, many with a decidedly free market or neocorporatist bent (Bulkley & Fusarelli, 2007).
All and all, with the mounting availability of opt out options, schools must seek to retain as much of the student body as possible. There are charter schools and private schools being erected seemingly effortlessly. Public schools may lose their student base to privatized education in two specific methods. The first is the contracting out model, in which a state school has some or all of its educational functions contracted out to the private sector under accountability guidelines established by the local and/or central government.
Education management companies such as Edison Schools in the United States and 3Es in England fit into this model, where all of the educational functions–pedagogy, curriculum, school management and improvement–are taken over by the private company. Additionally, there is the state-funded private school model, where private schools are allowed to opt-in to state funding, as in Denmark and Holland, or new independent schools are specially created under government regulations to receive state funding, as with charter schools in America, Canada, and China, and City Academies in England and
Wales (Stateuniversity. com, 2012). The following paper will attempt to dissect manners in which the school system of the UK have fared in the educational market as it relates to that of the educational processes of the United States. The various elements of race, religion, economy, assessment, and accountability are a few of the factors examined. Tony Blair is a British Labour prime minister who led a profound change in British elementary and secondary education (Hill, 2005). In education, Blair is responsible for taking initiatives no one would have expected from the leader of his party.
Blair built on the ideologies to retain funding to schools and strengthen unions and local education authorities. As a result, he constructed the Bexley Business Academy secondary school in far southeast London. Bexley is a brand-new school, built on the ashes of the Thamesmead School. Set in in the lower socioeconomic demographic of London, Thamesmead would have fit comfortably in East St. Louis. Content with graffiti and fighting in the halls, intimidation of teachers, detached older teachers, and younger ones leaving as soon as they could find another job.
The average student was absent nearly two days a week, and fewer than one in 20 could pass the five exams needed for university admission. Despite all naysayers, Bexley became a staple for the future of British education. At Bexley, a new school in every way, private funding mixes seamlessly with government support and people from government and the private sector work side by side. The school was designed to give children a look at a life that is different in almost every way from the rough neighborhoods in which they live.
It works because of serious student orientation to the Bexley way, uniforms that would look smart in a wealthy prep school, and instant teacher intervention to stop disruptive behavior. The school operates 12 hours each day, giving students a place to study and socialize from early morning to past dinnertime. Like America’s successful Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and the Cristo Rey schools, which are making a big difference in inner city Chicago, Houston, New York, and other big cities, Bexley wraps community center and parish around school.
With such changes in place, reforms as deep as Blair’s are possible in the United States. Blair and his cabinet had to deal with every issue that opponents of standards and choice raise in the United States. They started with the argument that schooling was too important to be left to a protected monopoly (Hill, 2005). A similar concern of educational personnel in the United States who view the national curricular assessments as more of financial tool for political parties involved than a tool to assess pupil’s success rate.
When opponents said principals could not handle responsibility for funds and teacher hiring, Blair said, yes they could, and proved it. Similarly, they argued, the ablest people would avoid teaching jobs if pay were linked to performance (Hill, 2005). Other phenomenon faced within the United States with the initiative for merit pay. Initially, educators were livid at the notion of having pay, already suggested to be subpar, linked to the success of students based on a nominal assessment tool.
The inequalities of school district from rural versus urban areas seemed to pose the notion that there would be a disproportionate comparison in achievement levels of students on these standardized tests. No, they would not, was the answer; teacher numbers and quality would improve (Hill, 2005). However, in conjunction with the views of the Blair project, teachers stood up to the challenge and overcame the adversity. Schools would lose their focus and pander to families if parents could choose; no, they would not. School segregation would get worse; no, it would not (Hill, 2005).
Again, proven to be true by the apparent modification of schools to appeal to the surrounding population and market themselves as contenders for the students’ educational success. With any school district, assessment and accountability are necessary items used to ascertain students’ ability to succeed at any given level of education. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2012), the No Child Left Behind Act, thrust the United States into implementing national assessments in the subject areas of reading, math, science, and writing namely.
These assessments take place both at the national and state levels. Assessments completed through the state only occur in public schools; where private schools are subject to testing where national assessments are implemented. Similarly, the National curriculum assessment (NCA) in England has been in place for nearly 20 years and are responsible for regulating and implementing assessments in the same subject areas (Whetton, 2009). Both assessment regimes are deeply rooted in a olitical desire to regulate education, and thus hold schools accountable for learning and success of students. Moreover, similar to the United States, the UK is experiencing trepidation over the emphasis placed on standardized testing. For example, assessment system itself must be dissected for reliability, validity and manageability across gender, ethnic, and economic realms (Whetton, 2009). Another aspect that hinders accountability on national assessments, in both the United States and the UK, is the inequality between school districts and parent involvement.
Where there is a higher socioeconomic background, there will be better access to technology as well as textbooks and learning aids. As research reports, school inspection reports, at the end of the 20th Century, in both Scottish and English primary schools, clearly identify the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as the weakest aspect of professional practice. On this evidence, despite initial certainty of political purpose and considerable optimism regarding its effects on teaching and learning, ICT remains, after twenty years, a marginal force in the education of 5-12 year-olds.
Though numerous research studies in the 1980’s and 1990’s seemed to have identified the conditions for the effective transfer of ICT into primary schools and repeated governmental initiatives invested heavily in both infrastructure and training, teachers have not embraced ICT within their core practice (Robertson, 2002). Furthermore, lower socioeconomic school sites have a propensity to have lower parent involvement, which also adversely effects student performance. Other concerns derive from the political implications underlying within national curricular assessment, e. . funding. As a result, in the UK, the history has included initial establishment of an assessment system, which prompted a turbulent revolt and simpli?cation of that system. Subsequently, there came a period of relative stability with a gradual increase in the uses and purposes of the system and a growth in the in?uence of the accountability purpose. This brief history has now prompted a search for an alternative system. The belief in the link between educational standards and economic success as a country has grown stronger in the UK (Whetton, 2009).
This ideology has helped spawn a fund, which will strategically place the UK in the limelight of technological advancement. At the end of the Century, a new and significant investment in ICT for schools, funded by the New Opportunities Fund, provided all Primary schools with between ten and thirty new PCs, depending on the size of the school. The capacity of new technology to support learning and teaching across the curriculum through experience of simulations, problem solving, investigating and handling information is considerable (Robertson, 2002).
When compared to the assessment system within the United States, the similarities are alarming. There too has been an assessment system put in place and ridiculed. Once educational personnel deemed the system as unchangeable, it became tolerable. Finally, the disconcerting manner in which pupils were experiencing failure as opposed to success with the system, a change has ensued to incorporate a Common Core national curriculum. Similar developments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland including the National Curriculum are now solidly in place.
In Scottish primary schools, over the last twenty years of the 20th Century several changes have taken place, including, but not limited to: a radical re-structuring of the curriculum for 5-14 year-olds; the integration of pupils with moderate learning difficulties; new approaches to developing literacy and numeracy; and a multitude of smaller initiatives. All of the initiatives working together will result in, personal, and social development, which have been made to work to a level, which broadly satisfies both politicians and schools inspectors.
Yet, in each case, this has happened against a background chorus of complaint about lack of consultation, inadequate preparation, hurried timescales and lack of resources. Regardless, teachers have made these initiatives work despite the constraints (Robertson, 2002). Thusly, because of national curricular in both nations, accountability in education is now a genie that is out of the bottle and will have to continue in some form. To assist educators in meeting the rigorous demands of accountability and assessment, school personnel have engaged the use of professional learning communities (PLCs).
Learning communities can be as large as a whole school or as small as a classroom, alternatively, a subject department or pastoral area in a secondary school in England and Wales. It is where a group of people is trying to learn together, although that does not mean that all have equal power to direct or shape that learning process. The development of school learning communities is in part shaped by their leaders in addition, managers at all levels and in part by the members of them. Their collaborative cultures develop through people working together.
Thus, on the one hand, middle leaders tried to create collaborative cultures through a commitment to values of improving teaching and learning and facilitating personal and work-related development among the members of their departments, students, and teachers alike (Busher, 2005). Another important factor, pressing on educational debate in both the United States and the UK is issues on religion, race, class, and education. The concerns are real, however, the manner in which they are incorporated into education vary in some ways.
At a theoretical level, there appears a notion of race and gender class in the UK and the United States, in which some minority ethnic groups are discriminated against and suffer a penalty due to their race. These penalties materialize in, for example, teacher labeling and expectation, treatment by agencies of the state, such as the police, housing, judiciary, health services and in employment. According to research, social class difference in educational attainment by age 16 in England and Wales was greater than differences based on race, gender, or religion (Hill, 2009).
Similarly, the debate around religion, race, and education in the US lies at the crossroads of two conflicting demographic trends. On the one hand, the US has experienced a growth in non-traditional religious minorities such as Muslims and Sikhs who, along with atheists and agnostics, ask for greater tolerance of their perspectives. On the other hand, the US has also witnessed the growth of an increasingly vocal segment of the Christian religious majority, conservatives and fundamentalists who feel that religious tolerance, especially in the school curriculum, has been taken too far (Lester, 2006).
One concern more apparent in schools is the nonconventional family. There are specific religious based views that assert a family unit consisting of a father and a mother; however, the views of others may deem the unit of containing two fathers or two mothers. These views amongst others are some that must be handled with care as not to offend either subgroup. These trends are certainly apparent in other liberal democracies around the world, but the latter trend especially is not (at least yet) as pronounced as it is in the US.
Thus, a concentration on the religion-and-education debate in the United States and the approach to the ‘inclusive public school’ recommended here will seemingly be instructive to scholars of religion and education in other nations (Lester, 2006). Class or race stratifies many British and US public schools, and this homogeneity prevents the cultural interaction between groups that breeds respect. Witnessed on several accounts, many lower socioeconomic schools are comprised of the students contained within the surrounding areas.
These schools more often have the higher prevalence of free and reduced lunch unfortunately aligned with minimal bouts of parental involvement. Even when diversity is present, asymmetrical relationships between groups undermine respect by confirming the dominance of favored majority groups and breeding resentment in minority groups (Lester, 2006). Indeed, religious schools in Britain serve a dual function. In the US, the most notable and largest minority groups, African Americans and Hispanics, share the dominant religious beliefs. In Britain, the largest minorities are distinguished simultaneously by their ethnicity and religion.
Non-traditional religious schools provide sanctuary from religious, racial, and ethnic discrimination. Additionally, the varied religious beliefs of these minority groups are not fostered. Contrarily, the students’ beliefs and customs are assimilated into those beliefs and custom of the dominant British society. These schools have been less religious than the families their students come from. Unfortunately, some of the beliefs the students internalize are thwarted because the majority of teachers in British Muslim and Sikh schools are not Muslim or Sikh, respectively.
Coupled with the fact that UK religious schools are extremely diverse, catering to each minority group is deemed utterly impossible. For example, research denotes one Muslim primary school, which can point to its enrollment of students from 23 nationalities. There is some evidence that private schools may do a better job than public schools in integrating diverse student populations when diversity is present. When faced with the daunting tasks of accommodating a plethora of minority groups and religious beliefs, the UK may benefit from accepting lobalization as a means of receiving international backing to assist with constructing nontraditional schools to foster diversity in the multi-deity society known as Britain. Economic globalization is associated with increasing levels of international trade and competition (Hartley, 2003). In the United States, the task of separating religion and education is somewhat a smoother transition because of supporters of vouchers, who invoke the language of individualism and choice in arguing for their position.
They claim that a good liberal democratic society should be a community of communities held together by a core of common values but respectful of the distinctive identities of minority groups (Lester, 2006). Church of England schools, for instance, are relatively welcoming of students from different denominations, and teach students about different faiths; some Muslim, Sikh, Greek Orthodox, and Seventh – day Adventist schools are less welcoming of students from different faiths and teach a more rigid sectarian curriculum regarding religion and morality.
The distinction between bridging and bonding schools is even clearer in the US: Catholic, mainline Protestant, and Reform Jewish schools, for instance, possess many of the qualities of bridging associations, while most fundamentalist Christian schools are intended for bonding (Lester, 2006). The Labour government’s quest in England is to affect a tightening bond between education and the economy. In England, recent research in primary schools reveals few opportunities for expressing creativity. Much of instruction derives from a teacher-centered approach rather than one that is more student-centered.
During specific lessons, students are contained within a whole-class setting and have limited opportunity to assimilate new ideas or incorporate existing schemata (Hartley, 2003). Just as the emphasis on direct teaching may do little to inculcate a productive creativity for the new economy, so also might it not motivate pupils (Hartley, 2003)? Contrarily, within the United States classrooms observed, many lessons are student-centered with students having opportunity to explore classrooms and operate in peer-buddy groups. Learning is fostered through interaction and manipulation; coupled with technological reinforcement proves paramount.
