Reflection 8

There have been three waves or educational reform that has continuously influenced American education. The first and strongest wave of them all began in 1982 and was established as a means to raise standards. It was intended to raise the quality of education by requiring more courses and testing of the performances of teachers and students. States were to take the lead and improve existing practices.

The second wave began in 1986 and was established in order to restructure the school. The purpose of this wave was to give the teachers more power by giving them more control of the school. It also addressed some of the problems that children of color and other students that faced educational barriers.

The third wave began in 1988 and was established as a means to begin comprehensive services; it had the most ambitions of all the other waves. This wave wanted schools to be seen as more than an educational facility. The goal of this wave was to make schools provide health care, social services, and transportation. The overall belief behind this wave was in order to bring a child into adulthood successfully; schools should be like a one stop store, providing educational, social, medical, and other services.

The first wave came about after A Nation at Risk saw the reformation of schools in terms of national defense and economic competition. Corporations were complaining that they had to teach employees basic math and reading skills. The military found recruiting hard because they could not find people that were technically skilled to handle the equipment. Critics began pointing to low scores by American students largely in math and science. They then began saying that schools were not meeting the nation's technical and economical needs.

So, standardized tests were administered to identify weak performing students, teachers, and schools. These tests in turn helped to pinpoint those students, teachers, and schools that were meeting the nation's technical and economical needs. This is why this first wave is still the most dominant today. We still use it to determine who is meeting the standards set by the state.