Demographics

This reading was very interesting. When I thought about demographics before, I didn't really put much weight into it. I figured, you either teach in a poor minority area or a middle class suburban area. I never took into consideration that even in the good suburban areas, there are still people of different cultures to take into consideration. I do owe some of that naiveness to my hometown. 88% of Freehold is white, with the next largest demographic being Asians with 5%. Pretty much everyone is in the same income bracket (most of my fellow Freeholdians fall between 50,000 to 150,000 dollars per year). These readings definitely give me a better perspective of what the education system looks like as a whole, and also makes me think about what kind of school setting I want to work in.

Dear Martian Teachers,

Question Number One,

Schools are seperated into local school districts, which there are over 14,000 in the US. They are funded by mostly state and local institutions, and get little money from the national level. Some schools are underfunded, depending on how well a district is funded by their local institutions. What a school is like varies depending on what school district you look at, because depending on how much money they have. Some schools are severely underfunded and don’t even have enough money for new textbooks, while others have enough money to buy whatever they want.

Question Number Two,

America as a nation is also known as, "the melting pot" of the world. Since the birth of our nation individuals from other countries have fled to this land in search opportunity. Because of this we have a created a nation full of diversity. One cannot classify a typical American under physical characteristics. Because of this, the students who fill our classrooms come from all parts of the world. They range in age, knowledge, language, and ethnicity. 53% of students are white, 24% are Latino, 15% African American, 6% multiracial, and 5% Asian. But all have one intended goal. America's students are a diverse population working towards an academic degree in the field of their choice.

Question Number Three,

most of our teachers are highly educated in their field, and are looking to be further educated. 9 out of 10 are white, and 8 out of 10 are female. The percentage of teachers who are African American is ever declining since the 1970’s. Teaching is a very important but highly stressful job, and 46% of new teaches leave within the first 5 years.

I hope this information is useful to you Martians. Please don't attack us.

Love,
Earth Teachers

Reaction to the first reading

I liked the first reading for the class. It gave a lot of useful information that teachers should know about the education system. It explained that the education system is not perfect, and there are many issues that teachers will have to deal with. The section about the amount of funding a school gets I thought was interesting.

I found a few things surprising in this reading:

The US has a decentralized education system, which is odd because the education system is an important foundation of our way of living

Policies are often made at a local level, not a national level

Fundamental aspects of eduction vary from state to state

Most the money is coming from the state or local level, even though it is getting more expensive to put kids through the school system, but the amount given to school systems hasn't changed.

A lot of education districts are severely underfunded, and is causing a problem for those districts

It is surprising that when we get older, statistically we would be less efficient in applying what we learned at school compared to other countries