

Education within the United States fails in multiple ways due to the gradually increasing role of the federal government. The Some of these failures include the separation of church and state, requirements set to further education after high school, and Common Core. Also, the original purpose of education that was set by the Founding Fathers of the United States has changed due to these failures. The most effective plan to fix the failures within the nation's educational system would be to slowly decrease the role of government and let teachers decide the pace of learning based off the rate their own personal students. Basically, the answer to having the most successful educational system in the United States would be to remove the influence of the federal government.

Education within the United States began before the official birth of the nation which was July 4, 1776. In 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Colony decreed that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and every town of one hundred families should have a Latin school to ensure that children read the Bible and receive basic information about the Calvinist religion ("Race Forward"). This was the only official ruling by a governmental establishment until Thomas Jefferson in 1779. In this year, Jefferson presented a two-part system involving scholarships for the laboring class. In Jefferson's words, these scholarships given to the laboring class were given by "ranking a few geniuses from the rubbish" ("Race Forward", 2006). Until 1820, individual states made similar sanctions giving poor students or other specific type of students within the pertaining area. In 1820, Boston opened the first public high school in the United States. Seven years later, Massachusetts passed a law making all grades of public schools open to any student free of charge ("Race Forward", 2006). Massachusetts also becomes the first state to pass a education law in attempt to "civilize" the children of the mass load of incoming immigrants that came to the United States ("Race Forward", 2006). Over time, all states made education of students a requirement to not only "civilize" the melting pot created from foreign immigrants but to make kids of the nation to have the skills available to successfully work and provide for the community. 

The laws made in these early stages were the most successful answer because the government did not regulate the role of the instructor to teach their students. The importance of the officials involving education in that time of history laid solely to improve the well being of the nation as a whole. For example, education would increase a student's success in the working field by preparing them with the proper tools needed. Education also unifies the nation and creates a more peaceful nation. For example, a more peaceful nation results from all of the different cultures within the United States coming together to learn the same subjects and material. This equality of knowledge creates a more unified population within the country. The increase of domestic peace happens because all students are placed together and learn to get along with each other. An example of this can be seen through the evolvement of African Americans until current day. In 1954, segregation of schools was abolished and allowed white and blacks to attend the same school with the ruling of the case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ("Race Forward", 2006). During this period of time, acts of racial violence against blacks were at an extreme high for the entire country as a whole. In current day America, the idea of black and whites attending the same institution is not even a discussion. Most people agree with the abolishment of segregation and the overall hate between the two races, especially at the age education is required, is almost non-existent. Looking back, the answer to find peace among the various races was to educate and culture every student mixed together. This causes students to learn to overcome the natural hate developed from previous generations.

The government has made many rules and regulations over time that has negatively affected the success of the educational system of the United States. One regulation implemented by the government is the separation of church and state. Even though it is not directly stated within the original Constitution, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of this principle since the ruling in the case of Emerson v. Board of Education. Due to this, the separation of church and state is written as the establishment clause of the First Amendment. About twenty-five years later this clause was upheld and expanded with the addition of the Lemon Test. Deriving from the case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Lemon Test determines if a situation involving the establishment clause is violated (Hansen). The Lemon Test contains three steps forbidding Congress to pass any law "respecting an establishment of religion" (O'Connor). These steps include that a statue or action that supposedly violated the establishment clause must have a secular purpose, have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion, and can not foster an excessive governmental entanglement with religion (O'Connor). As can be seen above, the idea that supports this case of removing religion from education is far different from the original intent to create schools. 

The answer is not the same as one who finds the clause attacking against their religion, especially Christianity. Instead of the government completely removing religion from education, a student should have the right to be taught the matters of religion based off their personal interest or values. This solution would satisfy those who want to be educated in religion while not directly forcing religion on any student who does not believe in such a way. Christianity should not be the only religion that is offered for students to be educated in. To continue the nation's overall goal of equality, all religions should be offered to students so that every belief has the right to be exercised freely. For example, in private schools such as Cathedral Academy in North Charleston, SC, the availability for students to act on their right to religion takes place due to their personal interest. An inaccurate solution to the separation of church and state is correct because students who want to pursue religion can just seek private school education. My concern with this idea are with the poor families who want to further their education in religious matters. A private school is far from inexpensive and from a personal experience can cost anywhere between six thousand and twenty thousand per year. For a small income family, these prices for their child's education in religion is not feasible or an option to successful function as a family in the community.

Another requirement set by the government are test for students to further their education. For a student to further education in their field of work, a certain score on the Standardized Test must be acquired for colleges to accept them. For some students, their success and ability to learn in class can be far different than the results from this massive test. This hinders young adults from finding their place in the community as well as increasing their skills in their particular field of interest. Using the idea of Nikki Adeli from Tedx Talks, Standardized Test does not measure one's ability but only calls for students to memorize the information. A student lacks the need to critically think and work "out of the box" to successfully learn (Adeli). A teacher named Wayne Au states, "there were times when no matter what we (teachers) did and how hard we worked, many students still did not fully succeed" (Au). The increasing high stakes of Standardized Testing does not only affect the students involved, but affects the teachers and curriculum that they use to teach their students. Instead of students learning subjects based off of a teacher's curriculum and individual pace, they must be taught the useless information that is on the Standardized Test. These high-stake tests have become completely normal to be involved within the educational system and nobody questions the success of it. Most would think the purpose of the test is to find the students who have talent and should further their education at a high level. Instead, the test simply acts as a requirement for a student to further any sort of education. Another area of the test that should be questioned is the subjects and material on the test. It seems pointless for students that excel in law, vehicle mechanics, stock exchange, or etc, to be tested in math, English, reading, or science to review their talents. Yet, for any of those profession to attend college, they must be tested in those four areas to be viewed as "talented" by colleges. A perfect example of a brilliant person who succeeded without using anything beneficial that would be placed in a Standardized Test is Bill Gates. Gates is the cofounder of Microsoft and worth seventy-seven billion dollars after dropping out of college ("Forbes", 2016). He is a self made billionaire and struggled in the educational system we find our nation's "talent" from. Not one person can say that the richest man in the United States was not talented because he could not succeed furthering his education 

So now, the question would be, what is the answer to fix the problems caused by Standardized Testing. The solution is actually quite simple. Instead of testing students based on their ability of being talented or not, have the test stand simply to locate the brilliantly gifted few that excel greater than others. A lower than average score on the Standardized Test does not mean that a person will not be successful furthering their education. For example, I personally graduated as valedictorian of my high school with a 4.8 GPA. I never came even close to making a C throughout the five years that were calculated towards my grade point average and was able to only allow one B my freshman year. Knowing this, I could not score the expected standard that a valedictorian is supposed to reach. For me, taking a test without being taught the information previously was useless. Instead of the test evaluating my personal talents and abilities, they were evaluating my teacher's ability to teach the specific information or curriculum. Understanding information that was taught by a teacher is far easier to retain and use for future occurrences in life and the workplace.

A third area that the government is negatively influencing education is their attempt to push Common Core to the forefront of all schools in the United States. Common Core is the attempt of the government to mandate one curriculum that every school in the nation would follow and expect students to achieve a certain level of reading and math scores measured by Standardized Test (Soave). This negatively affects the educational system because it causes for students to be left behind due to their failure to learn at the same level as all of their peers. Also, Common Core is the perfect example of the federal government trying to take over the entire educational system (Borowski). Since education is not stated by the Founding Fathers within the Constitution, it should be controlled by the state and local levels. They posses the ability to have a far greater understanding of their students than the federal government would have implementing this plan. Common Core also negatively affects the parents of the students involved. With the passage, a parent would lose their ability to suggest changes in their children's local schools and also the ability to have a voice in the education of their kids (Borowski). Teachers also lose their right to have authority over their classes. Instead of covering information based off the pace set by the particular class, a teacher must maintain the federal government's curriculum that would be imposed. 

Most people do not realize that Common Core also violates the privacy of students. It allows for the federal government to track information on beliefs pertaining to religion, politics, sexual behavior, and plenty more (Borowski). Common Core would cause a decline in the success of the educational system. In an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation, Sandra Stotsky said, "The standards dumb American education down by about two grades worth" (Soave). This quote is very powerful coming from a University of Arkansas professor who served on the committee to approve the standards of Common Core when it was first being developed (Soave). Common Core is also extremely expensive for the taxpayers who support the educational system. The state of Washington estimates the federally imposed curriculum would cost the state three hundred million dollars and California estimates over seven hundred and fifty million dollars (Borowski). With this in mind, the quality of the education would maintain the same. Even if the quality was increased, it would not reach the level of standards worth an extra three hundred million dollars from taxpayers. Stotsky also attacks the strong supporters of Common Core, including both the government and private organizations such as the Gates Foundation, that they were keen to hind the truth of the expensive cost. She says, "No questions were asked about cost/benefit analysis. They didn't want legislatures, parents or local schools to know what was going on" (Soave).  This is a tremendous statement made by a former supporter and key part in the creation of Common Core to show the flaws in the work she created.

The alternative answer is for education to be completely controlled with the collaboration between the local and state levels. This gives the power of authority of education to officials that can make decisions based off of their personal view of their personal region or state. With the federal government involved, localities from New York City to design South Carolina's curriculum that is best for their students (Borowski). Also, teachers should have the ability to teach the information they deem important at the pace their specific class needs to learn in the most successful manor. Parents and students should have the availability to suggest changes at school that would improve the future of their education. All religions should be an option for students to pursue in school and not forced on any particular person. Most importantly, the overall purpose of present day education needs to revert back to the early and basic principles of education. The importance of education should be to prepare students to provide for the community in the workplace after finishing school and also merge various cultures, races, gender, or etc, so that equality is understood at an early age.

The obvious conclusion of the federal government's negative affect on the educational system in the United States can be seen stated above. With the implementation of separating the church and state, the requirements of Standardized Testing, and their current push to apply Common Core are all examples of this. Using the facts and information seen, hopefully one will see the importance of removing the federal government completely from education within the United States of America and return to the original intent of the educational system.
