Alex's Analysis of Academic Actuality

   Via gettyimages        This week I watched a TED Talk by Geoffrey Canada,  titled “Our Failing Schools. Enough is Enough!”. In this TED Talk, Canada discusses some observations he’s made in the American Education System, and he shares some of his frustrations with the lack of growth in the industry. During the talk, Canada focuses greatly on how little the American Public school “Business model” has changed in over 50 years. He says “Look, you go into a place that's failed kids for 50 years, and you say, "So what's the plan?" And they say, "Well, we're going to do what we did last year this year." What kind of business model is that? (Canada)”. This is the basis for Canada's talk, the idea that millions of American students are failing academically and we aren’t doing anything to fix it. Later, Canada moves on to talk about the growing evidence that science and technology need to have a greater role in the education system, “Technology has chang

     (Image from NHPR)         This week I read a post from the Blog titled “ Brooke's A's and F's of Education ”. The main takeaway from the post is that the American public school system is experiencing major funding inequality. The most interesting point that the author brought up is that “schools with a lower percent of poverty got more [federal and state funding]”. I found this point particularly interesting because any funding that a school doesn’t receive from the federal government, they must then make up through local funding. This of course means raising taxes for the already impoverished families. And that itself is the root of the inequality. An area that has a higher percentage of impoverished families will have to tax said families more than an area with more financially stable families.       I completely agree with the point that the author makes in her blog post. The lack of federal education funding in areas with higher poverty rates cause a feedback l