Comment on a colleague’s work #2

In response to the National Journal's post, Hello! they discussed Nation Prayer Day. This is my response to what they said:

I respect your argument and your right to believe in whatever god you choose, but not everyone believes in a god and I think clearly if you think about the idea of National Prayer Day and it being encouraged by the government, Jefferson would flip in his grave because clearly church and state are not separate. And just because National Prayer Day has been around since 1952 doesn't mean that it is appropriate for this day in age. Do you know what was also around in 1952? Segregation. We have progressed as a society since then, for the better.
Furthermore, not everyone prays to "the man above" and people are thankful in their own way. If everyone would stop wasting their time closing their eyes and clasping their hands together talking to an imaginary person praying for change and actually get up off their knees and physically do something about what they are praying for this world would be a much better place.

note: I did not capitalize god because I do not feel it is appropriate whether that is grammatically correct or not.

Original editorial or commentary #2

The No Child Left Behind bill needs some help in the US and Obama is the one to help. It was first passed in the Johnson administration and took on a major change when Bush took over in 2001. Now it is Obama’s turn to try and find a better way to make sure that kids in America are being educated and retaining the knowledge they are being taught.

George W. Bush changed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to make it focus on standardized test scores in school. This became know as the No Child Left Behind bill. They focused specifically on the minority students and how they were doing on these test. They test children in 3rd grade through 8th grade and each year every school is expected to show improvements until they get all the way to 100% of students passing. If they fail to beat last year’s score they missed the government’s goal and they are marked down as failing and the government doesn’t do much to change that.

Teachers are frustrated with emphasis on these standardized tests that aren’t helping to prepare students for the future. “Teaching” for these tests often takes away from teachers actually trying to teach their students. Standardized tests are a great idea but in actuality it doesn’t work. When it comes down to it, schools are trying to get all their kids to pass them and they end up have to teach students different list and have them just memorize the information they are given. A lot of the time it doesn’t expand much beyond applying what they are learning and students usually forget the information right away.

Obama plans to wipe the slate clean and stop identifying schools as failing and instead focuses on how to help improve those schools. Obama wants to focus more on the teachers and how they are teaching the students. He needs to step up and follow though with his ideas and find a way that is going to help students learn and keep them from failing, not just classify them as failing as Bush’s “No child Left Behind,” ended up doing and got mocked for it.