Taking the First Step :: essays papers

Taking the First StepOn January 27, 1998, in his State of the Union Address, President Clinton proposed an mentation that would immediately spawn a national debate. The goal that President Clinton sought was to reduce class size in grades 1-3, nationwide, to an average of 18 students per class. The presidents plan was to provide enough property to school districts so that an additional 100,000 instructors could be hired. Throughout the rest of his proposal President Clinton covered every new(prenominal) questionable aspect of this plan. Realizing that new schools and classrooms would induce to be built, President Clinton called for a school construction tax cut (Clinton 1998). President Clinton was very adamant about(predicate) his proposition. However, there were, and still are, those that cannot and will not look past the money issue. Building new buildings and hiring new teachers, among many other changes to be made, will be extremely costly. Many critics have asked why the Presidents proposed money cannot be spent on programs to better the school systems, rather than on in all rebuilding them. Case StudiesMany studies have been conducted in school districts throughout the country, all of which have experimented with different class size reduction (CSR) techniques to determine whether or not President Clintons goal can be achieved. According to the April Press Release of the 2001 Legislative Session for the recite of Maryland, the General Assembly, along with Governors Parris N. Glendening and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, have instituted a record amount of investment projects dealing with education. Among those passed by the General Assembly is an Early Childhood Education initiative in which $19 one thousand million will be used to lower class sizes, create all-day Kindergartens, and buy new library and other support materials. This will help to raise standardised test scores later on. In addition, an extra $11 million will be spent on various new P re-K programs. In 2000, the state of California created a Federal Class Size Reduction Program. The chart/road map that was produced investigated the steps that had to be followed in order to ensure that funds were being used properly, and that all classes, in grades K-3, were reduced. Long before President Clintons proposal, states were exploring ways to decrease class sizes. In fact, between the years 1985 and 1989, Tennessee conducted their historied PROJECT STAR (Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio). The study split the K-3 classes into three different class types small classes, (containing only 13-17 children per teacher), regular classes (containing 22-25 students per teacher), and regular classes with a teachers aide who was in the classroom full time.