Public Schools 101

1. What are schools like and how did they get that way?
School s is divided into districts and each district has their own standards and rule for how the school is run. Students must attend school a certain number and years and days per year. They are required to fill certain criteria of what they need to study and the number of years they are required to study each subject this criteria is set federal government and state districts. There are different types of schools including public, private and charter schools. The majority or 88% of the students attend public schools which are free of charge to attend as opposed to the 12% of students who attend private which require tuition to attend. The majority of the funding for the public schools is provided by the district and state taxing. The schools offer a variety of supplemental services such as lunch programs, health programs, humanities and social science requirements. These services provided are to help children function in the community and society.

2. Who are the students?
The students are made up of all demographics throughout the country from the highest to the lowest income ratios. The students are made up of all different races and backgrounds. They consist of not only American children whose first language is English but also 19% are immigrants and 10% are English language learners.

3. Who are the teachers?
The majority are experienced and have advanced degrees in there subject areas. This is to ensure a great understanding in their specific area so the student has the greatest possible understanding of the information provided. This is not the case in all demographic areas in high poverty areas teachers are not always highly qualified in their subject area. Most teachers seem to be young white females. Reasons for this might be that the mind set of American citizens is to make more money, considering the low pay of most teachers may be the reason for this statistic. The high rate of teachers changing and leaving the profession is a question of how the education system is run.

Response to the Public Education Primer

I found this reading to be very interesting. I have always attended private and catholic schools so I never really knew how the public education system worked. This article helped me to understand what the public education system is about and how it works hand in hand with the town and its district. This isn't completely different from the way the catholic school system works, the school is affiliated with a church and the church with a diocese and the money given by the church community helps to fund the school along with the tuition that the students pay. The two school systems are similar in that they both answer to higher powers and all things that the schools get and all things that the schools offer depend on how much money the school's parish or district has. So in any case the the richer the school's community the better the school's attractions. I was also surprised to see that students attending private schools only make up 12% of students as opposed to the 88% of the students educated in public schools. I thought that the number a students in private schools was much higher. Overall this article was very informative and helped me to understand the public school system and opened me to thinking about the kind of students I would be teaching and their varying cultures that would be thrown at me depending on which district I would be teaching in.Overall interesting and quite informative. I'm looking forward to this class this semester and I really am looking forward to the field experience at the Newark Arts school!