New York State Education Policies K-12 Research Paper

Education Policies K-12

From a historical point of view, the federal government has provided only little financial support to American K-12 public education. It is one of the state’s responsibilities to provide and support education in local schools across the states. The federal government also influences public education through numerous policies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze two federal policies affecting K-12 education in the New York state, referring to the various aspects and outcomes of their implementation.

Corporate School Reform

The development of digital technologies and the Internet has revolutionized all aspects of human activities, including education. New platforms and technologies have been introduced for the enhancement of the educational process and provision of knowledge to all children around the globe. According to Roberts-Mahoney, Means, and Garrison (2016), “advanced by powerful venture philanthropies, educational technology companies, and policy-makers, it is suggested that big data, cloud computing, learning analytic software, and adaptive learning systems hold the potential to fundamentally ‘reinvent education for the twenty-first century’ through the ‘customization of education’ and the ‘personalization of teaching and learning’” (405).

People think that the profound use of digital technologies will help their children to prepare for the rapidly changing environments and circumstances of interpersonal and business communication and to become successful in their future workplaces. The federal government supports the use of digital technologies in the sphere of public education.

The US Department of Education plans to implement a corporate school reform. This initiative underlines the need for privatization and marketization of schools and “includes an emphasis on holding schools and teachers accountable for student academic performance through the standardization of curriculum, teacher evaluation systems, and high-stakes testing” (Roberts-Mahoney, Means, & Garrison, 2016, p. 406). The reforms use extensively new educational technologies. The integration of digital platforms in the learning process aims to enhance the quality of education by a personalized approach to the pupils. One of the main purposes of the corporate school reform is to create individual computer-based learning programs that will collect information about the behaviors and preferences of students to analyze the possibilities to enhance education.

Roberts-Mahoney, Means, and Garrison (2016) conclude that “the explicit aim of personalized learning technology is to move curricular, pedagogical increasingly, and assessment decisions away from public school settings to private providers of commercial technology and digital learning platforms” (418).

• Students are interested in learning on their own using digital technologies.
• The implementation of the policy leads to the acquirement of a narrow set of skills instead of knowledge in various spheres of science.
• The policy minimizes the role of the teacher in the learning process.
• Educators need to talk more with students and not only check their digital assignments.
• The policy does not produce the desired outcomes because the use of digital technologies needs improvement.
• Students receive an equal amount of knowledge. Nevertheless, social justice is poorly addressed because new technologies for self-preparation are not always accessible for students living in poverty.

Deregulation and Free Market in Education

Teaching and learning in New York public schools lack quality and efficiency due to the “education debt” imposed upon students living in poverty (Zeichner, & Pena-Sandoval, 2015). Learning programs support self-improvement and preparation, which is not available for all children. There are several approaches to the improvement of financial support of education. The federal policy supports deregulation and the development of a free market in education.

According to Zeichner and Pena-Sandoval (2015), “the Obama administration, which has largely been supportive of deregulation and developing a free market in teacher education, has taken an ironic stance by calling for lowering of standards in federal rules for the preparation of teachers while calling for raising standards for K–12 pupils through its advocacy of the new Common Core Curriculum” (32).

The supporters of deregulation and free-market point to the expensiveness of public education and misuse of financial resources. Money from federal support goes directly to students in need and not to the development of new educational programs. Federal policy provides opportunities for entrepreneurial teaching and competitiveness in New York State. Nevertheless, the ability of teachers to enhance the test scores of students is not the ultimate measure of the quality of acquired knowledge.

New entrepreneurial programs are still too new to assess their efficiency over time. Zeichner and Pena-Sandoval (2015) claim that “one of the biggest flaws in the arguments of advocates for deregulation and privatization in teacher education is their claim, implicit or otherwise, that educational interventions alone can address our education debt and the serious differences in opportunities to interact with knowledge in school in meaningful ways that exist for students of different backgrounds” (31).

• The policy provides opportunities for competitive teaching in New York State.
• The policy does not address the issue of “education debt” imposed on students in poverty.
• Educators are encouraged to enhance the results of the test made by students.
• Educators need new educational programs to provide knowledge to their students and not only enhance the results of tests.
• The policy produces desired outcomes raising competitiveness and developing a free market in education.
• Equity, equality, and social justice are only poorly addressed by the policy and its implementation because it leaves the gap in education level between students living in poverty and their richer peers.

Change Considerations and Recommendations

Corporate school reform needs a change in its structure to allow frequent direct communication between students and teachers. According to Watson, Pape, Murin, Gemin, and Vashaw (2014), “digital learning options are available to many students in a rapidly expanding range of forms, including online courses from multiple sources, dedicated schools built around aggressive digital instruction models, and many digital learning opportunities in traditional school settings” (para. 4).

The School curriculum should include both digital and traditional means of learning new materials. Worthen and Pace (2014) advise federal policy-makers to “embed strategies for continuous improvement into every level of the system, investing in the research, dissemination, and scale of best practices” (para. 3).

Deregulation and free-market policy should pay attention to the needs and problems of students living in poverty. In many cases, the quality of education is diminished by the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs by students. Before trying to enhance the test results, federal policy-makers should examine the situation connected with ATOD use in schools.

Bruckner et al. (2014) claim that “elementary schools emphasize generic social skills and affective skills, whereas middle and high school standards focus on knowledge about biological and behavioral consequences of ATOD use” (para. 6). Moreover, close attention to the environments of education will help teachers to find a suitable approach to their students. Federal promotion should provide “equality for students requiring special education and those for whom English is not their first language” (Berkman, 2016, 321).

References

Berkman, M. (2016). Review of building the federal schoolhouse: Localism and the American education state. American Review of Politics, 35(2), 321-323.

Bruckner, T. A., Domina, T., Hwang, J. K., Gerlinger, J., Carpenter, C., & Wakefield, S. (2014). State-level education standards for substance use prevention programs in schools: A systematic content analysis. Journal of Adolescent Health, 54(4), 467-473.

Roberts-Mahoney, H., Means, A. J., & Garrison, M. J. (2016). Netflixing human capital development: personalized learning technology and the corporatization of K-12 education. Journal of Education Policy, 31(4), 405-420.

Watson, J., Pape, L., Murin, A., Gemin, B., & Vashaw, L. (2014). Keeping pace with K-12 digital learning: An annual review of policy and practice. Web.

Worthen, M., & Pace, L. (2014). A K-12 federal policy framework for competency education: Building capacity for systems change. CompetencyWorks Issue Brief. Web.

Zeichner, K., & Pena-Sandoval, C. (2015). Venture philanthropy and teacher education policy in the US: The role of the New Schools Venture Fund. Teachers College Record, 117(6), 1-44.