Chloe - A Student's View

          This past week I have watched many Ted Talks centered around the idea of education reform. Our current education system is relatively the same as it was 100 years ago even though every other aspect of society has changed. ( Unsplash)          While there have been times in our history when the government has tried to change the education system, none of them ever really succeeded. If you are old enough, you may remember the No Child Left Behind Act, which was established in 2001 ("No Child..."). This act had 4 main pillars: accountability, flexibility, research-based education, and parent options ("No Child..."). President George W. Bush put this act into place to provide all children with fair and equal opportunities for high-quality education ("No Child..."). However, this attempt at a new system failed in 2015 because it required all students to make a mandatory score on standardized tests ("No Child..."). Since th...

This week, I read the article “10 Challenges Facing Public Education Today” which focuses on multiple challenging aspects of education. The section “The Pressure Is On” is about how the amount of stress that school puts on both students and teachers is steadily increasing.  One idea that I found interesting was that teachers are actually just as stressed as students. According to a study done at the University of Missouri , 93% of elementary teachers reported having high levels of stress (Alvarez), and I don’t think that’s something that’s widely discussed. Personally, when I look back at my elementary school years, I realize that my teachers managed to hide their stress and responsibilities from us so well that we didn’t notice. To this day, it's even often hard to tell when my high school teachers are stressed. It made me wonder what exactly is making teacher’s stress levels so high, so I looked up some more information about this idea.           O...