Education Disparity

As an economic, political, and military leader of the world, the United States should be strong educationally too. Sadly, it is not the case. Our country lags far behind in international testing among many industrialized nations. However, it may be true that many of our kids are not getting a proper education; we can not deny the fact that America does have many intelligent students. Question comes, should we help the kids who are behind, or should we advance the kids who are above?

President Bush set an ambitious agenda to help American students - No Child Left Behind. All 50 states, including my state Maryland, is subject to testing. A few days ago, I took a look at the statistics, and i found out that our school did pretty well. However, i wonder: how valid are all those testings? Do they actually test students' ability? Or are they just another schemes to make the kids and parents feel better by giving the kids some ridiculously easy tests?

While our school gives mandated testing to kids every year, many students take the AP Exams end of the year. Our school has done well. we have a high pass rate and many students get 4s and 5s. Moreover, it is obvious that the school has focused on the "elite" groups, assigns the best teachers to prepare them, and expects good result. It is a good thing, but not when the "elite" group is very small, because the majority of the students are not getting needed help. My school has around 1400 kids. of such big population, 21 are in AP English, 15 are in AP Calculus BC, 18 are in AP Physics, 15 are in AP Spanish. sounds very "elite," right. the good thing is that around 90 students are in AP Psychology and 60 in AP Calculus AB. The numbers seem relatively large, but compared to the school's population, the number is pathetic.

The trend of my school is that there will be more kids enrolling in AP classes while more kids achieve low level of academic excellence due to poor attention given by the school administration. In a way, it is not a bad thing, since there will be more AP students. However, we can't ignore the people that lag behind. While we achieve higher academic excellence, we should not leave them behind. But is "No Child Left Behind" doing a good job. I don't think so. We need some better policies that bring the bad kids up while not bringing down the good kids. and "No Child Left Behind" is bring the good kids down b/c the tests are extremely easy.