I will be dividing my paper into two or three large sections:
Section I: The problems
Section II: Potential solutions
Section III: What can the average American do to help? (I am not positive that I will include this section. It really depends on how quickly I write the first two sections!)
In Section I, I will utilize a lot of the research that I have written about in previous blog posts. Here is my general outline for Section I (adapted from a previous post in which I ambitiously outlined a ridiculously extensive paper):
Section I: The problems
- How is education unequal?
- Issues that stem from US public school system/federal funding system
- class size
- physical conditions of school building
- quality of teachers/administrators
- teacher-student ratio
- after-school programming/extracurricular activities
- variety of classes; Advanced Placement courses
- Issues that stem from a student's family or community
- English as a second language
- literacy
- security considerations
- emotional/psychological/physical health
- dropout rates
- lack of access to tutors, private lessons, extra-curricular activities, etc.
- Implications of education Inequality
- standardized testing
- teacher evaluations
- college admissions
- employment (aspirations and actual employment)
- social mobility
- emotional/psychological health
- literacy (individual, familial)
- economic implications (cycle of poverty)
- community growth or stagnancy
I understand that this outline is still fairly ambitious, but seeing as there is a plethora of information on all of these topics, I don't foresee myself running into difficulties in terms of finding information for each category. Of course, I will not be doing a thorough job on each of these topics since there are so many of them.
In section II, I will focus on proposed solutions that address many of the above-mentioned issues. I will include research on and analysis of the many solutions that are out there, from the most logical to the most impractical. My goal is to write an unbiased paper, so I have no qualms about criticizing the approaches that I mention. I will attempt to touch upon the pros and the cons of each approach. Here is an outline of Section II:
Section II: Proposed Solutions (information and analysis) (in no particular order,and this isn't a complete list)
- Charter schools
- voucher system
- Reforming federal funding to public schools
- online education
- early childhood education
- socioeconomic reform (talk about a broad and complex topic...)
- reforming curricula
- Selective hiring
- Student incentives
- Standardized testing reform
- blended learning (cutting costs, class size)
- team teaching (class size)
- resource sharing/clustered schools
- public schools as community centers
- specialized guidance programs for at-risk students
- career counseling
The structure of the possible section III has yet to be determined, but I think that I may profile organizations involved in promoting education reform and education equality, and provide readers with examples of how to get involved in this movement. I recently read through the Forbes 30 under 30 in education and noticed that many of the people on the list founded or are involved in amazing organizations that are working to improve so many aspects of education. I've also happened upon dozens of similar organizations and projects while curating articles for the RealSchool and Occupy Standardized Testing Facebook pages, so I'll be sure to check my Evernote archives for relevant articles.
