How Much of a Role Should the Government Have?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spRXuZ7plHQ


As an early childhood education major, I closely listened to presidential candidate John McCain’s response to the question on how much of a role the federal government should have in elementary and secondary education. He directly answered this question by stating that the federal government’s role in education should not be very substantial since most of the funding comes from state and local sources. The government should take a role in education but not an overbearing one. If the government took complete control over the nation’s education, what would happen with catholic schools? Also, if they had more authority they could possibly choose to have a standard curriculum that must be followed in every school. This would allow no freedom to choose what courses you wanted offered at your school that would make it unique and stand apart from others. Competition would be eliminated, possibly causing a fall in the nation’s academic levels. McCain firmly expressed his belief in the need for competition between schools throughout the country when he discussed charter schools. Without the competition, schools would not strive to raise their standards and expectations. Competition is the key to raising academic performances in schools all across the United States.

John McCain discusses in the video his approval of the No Child Left Behind Act. I believe that the government was right in taking an action to improve our nation’s standards in education but I don’t necessarily agree with the NCLB. The NCLB has caused teachers to only focus on the material that kids will be tested on. Teachers often do this because of the blame that is put on them and their school if test scores are not up to standard. Because of this, educators often have little room to teach other interesting material that may appeal more to children. McCain claims that it is time to hold teachers, states, and schools accountable for test scores. Personally, I believe there is only so much one can do as an educator. Some students are just simply poor test takers. Standardized tests have been proven to not be the best and most accurate way in measuring a child’s learning abilities.

At the end of this video, it is evident that McCain believes we as a nation need to be more focused on what is being taught in the classroom. We need to try to direct as much attention as we can to raising the standards at a steady pace without creating pressure among teachers to stick to educating students just on test material. If there is no improvement over the next few years, we may possibly fall behind other countries in our education system.