Question

Hi can anyone pleaseee read my paper and give me some feedback on what you think..it can be good or bad..also any ideas you guys might have to make this paper better thank you!

I will post it at the bottom

Answer 1

According to Newsweek’s ranking of the best countries around the world Finland is number one in education while the United States is ranked 26th. 26th is not so far from one but because it is the United States well that is pretty far off indeed. So what is going on with the United States educational system that it has not made Newsweek rank it number one? This has interested me because as a child of parents who immigrated to this country, so I could have the best education available, I am wondering why the best education is in Finland and not the United States which is almost number one in everything else. It just can’t be that there is a country full of bad teachers and a country just full of good teachers there must be something else wrong with the educational system that is causing it to fall behind internationally in education. Can the United States educational system take steps to become ranked number one in the world?
Before researching on ways the U.S. educational system could improve I wanted to start my research off on what are the serious problems causing the U.S. educational system to fall behind. I was looking for a source that would give me some facts that was easily understandable and at the same time a credible source. So after looking through articles and scholarly papers of what I thought might help me give a simple description of what the issues causing the U.S. educational system to fall, I came up with nothing but graphs and statistics that would only help me later on in my research. So I turned to a different medium, video news reports and found a great video by CBS News called “Where America Stands: Education” in this video reporter Russ Mitchell gives a layout of what challenges the American educational system faces. In his layout Mitchell points out three problems: society, material learned and politics. Mitchell interviews Washington, D.C’s, school Chancellor Michelle Rhee in which she talks about how many feel that it is the kids that are not doing a good job when in fact it is not the children’s fault but the educational systems fault. Rhee says, “"In society there is not a particularly high regard for education", meaning that in American society there is no driving force that makes kids want to be educated and that it is frowned upon. What Rhee said made me think more about this issue as I never thought about it that way in which obtaining education is not seen equally to all other people, I was viewing it though my eyes and how it was seen in my family. While education can be the least important thing in one household it can be the most important in another’s. With the diversity of the United States this could be a challenging problem to tackle by educators. The second thing addressed by Mitchell was that the right kind of material is not covered in schools. “Unlike most other countries that have national standards of what to teach, in the U.S., it's a state-by-state decision,” says Mitchell, meaning that instead of having a national educational standard there is actually a state by state educational standard which that alone is a problem for any country. I began to wonder why that is and why it has never occurred to me that maybe the way kids are learning in New York could be entirely different from the way kids in Ohio are learning. This made me think I already solved the issue, America just needs to have a national education standard one that every state follows but as I continued watching the video my solution to having a national education standard didn’t seem as easy as I thought it would be. Politics was a third problem facing the American educational system says Mitchell. This quickly put a wall around my idea of a national education standard in which politics on the national isn’t bad enough dealing with each state’s politics to just even come together and agree upon a national education standard would probably be a nightmare. Mitchell states that, “tenure and unions protect even bad teachers, and with limited funds, there's always a budget battle. More money for a successful charter school, for instance, means less for public schools,” bad teachers that can’t get fired and worrying about money just builds up issue on the educational system and with all three things stated by Mitchell it really doesn’t look as if the educational system can be changed. This news report was a great start for me because it gave me simple and somewhat detailed information on what the big issues facing the American educational system are and made me think of solutions as I was watching.
In the next part of my research I wanted to know what makes Finland’s education so good that it has caused it to be ranked number one in the world. In the article, “What makes education in Finland that good? 10 reform principles behind the success” by Bert Maes, Maes goes through , as the article states, 10 reform principles that makes educational system good and gives brief descriptions of each one bolding key methods that stand out in each reform principle. This is a great for my article because it gives me a quick clear sense of what the Finnish educational system is all about and what methods do they use that are similar to the educational system in the United States and which ones are completely different. Two of their methods stood out the most for me; one was that there are no mandatory tests or exams except for their nationwide National Matriculation Examination which is given to students at the end of their upper-secondary school which is when they are between the ages of 17-19. This shocked me because tests and exams are what drive schools in the United States because most of the money that schools receive is based on how students do on nationwide examinations given yearly. Maes points this out and says, “Teachers have more real freedom in time planning when they do not need have to focus on annual tests or exams,” which I think would please a lot of American teachers if they also had this opportunity because throughout my years in high school I would always get two or three teachers who would begin the first day of school along the lines of , “I am here so you can be successful in the _______ exam.” The second method that stood out to me was that in Finland the government works as one when it comes to education and share’s a common goal. Maes says that, “In many countries the opposing-parties usually polarize debates and public opinion” which needed is true in the United States with local elections every November where television, radio and internet ads tell you that a certain issue will cut funding to schools so don’t vote on it but that another issue that puts more cops on the street will cut funding to schools and that can be a tough decision for many parents who want their kids to be safe and also want their school to have the money needed so their child can succeeded in school. This source has given me some really good information for my paper in which I can use as a way to help me justify certain methods that the United States should adopt from the Finnish system.
The other issue that is easily overlooked by many is what criteria Newsweek used in ranking education in countries. No other place to look for that answer then from Newsweek ‘s website where it stated a brief explanation how they determined the education rankings. It was a “combined universal score on TIMSS and/ or PISA tests using Eric Hanushek's normalization methodology,” not knowing what Eric Hanushek’s normalization methodology was I looked it up and found that it was basically a data of countries and how good education affects things like economic growth and income growth in those countries. That made me look back at other categories Newsweek had in their rankings like health, quality of life, political environment, and economic dynamism of countries and it turns out Finland beats the United in all of them except for economic dynamism in which Finland is ranked eighth while the US is ranked second. So what that told me was that education plays a tremendous factor in society because if the society of whole is not educated to a certain degree then it could cause problems in the future for that country.
After looking through these three issues I feel more confident about tackling my question, can the US educational system take steps to become ranked number 1 in the world. An initial answer to this question would have to be that the United States can take steps in improving their educational system but for being number one, I don’t think that will become achievable with factors like politics and society being a couple of factors in which it would take many years just to change where education is highly regarded and politics does not affect the ways schools run. I would like to do more research on other issues facing the American educational system and what steps have been or are being taken to fix them and if there are some things that can’t be changed. It will take a lot more research on trying to come up with the right way to answer this question.

Answer 2

Okay firstly I'm a bit of a nit-picker when it comes to writing, I'll write down everything I think is wrong - so keep in mind that you can always ignore some of the things I have said. Particularly since I don't know what year level you are :) I've copy/pasted your writing and I'll put my comments/changes in [].

You keep refering to "your research". It is generally better not to directly refer to your researching. Instead it is better to start with (on the particular paragraph) something like: "The next issue on this topic is not only why America's education system is not as good as finlands but why finlands is so good. So and So claimed this was a result of ....". Do you see the difference? Also its great to find an essay or a piece of writing that you thing looks like a good thing to base your writing on and base your format/style on that.
Could you tell me what your assignment was? :)

Anyway all in all not a bad essay :) Good job!


According to Newsweek’s ranking of the best countries around the world Finland is number one in education while the United States is ranked 26th. 26th is not so far from one but because it is the United States well that is pretty far off indeed [this sentence seems a little colloquial, what do you mean by "not so far" - be more specific]. So what is going on with the United States educational system that it has not made Newsweek rank it number one? This has interested me because as a child of parents who immigrated to this country, so I could have the best education available, I am wondering why the best education is in Finland and not the United States which is almost number one in everything else [sentence is a bit long, break it up]. It just can’t be that there is a country full of bad teachers and a country just full of good teachers there must be something else wrong with the educational system that is causing it to fall behind internationally in education [Maybe reword, something like "The ranking may not just be a result of teachers..."]. Can the United States educational system take steps to become ranked number one in the world?

Before researching on ways the U.S. educational system could improve I wanted to start my research off on what are the serious problems causing the U.S. educational system to fall behind [Before research/start researching - Only need one of these]. I was looking for a source that would give me some facts that was easily understandable and at the same time a credible source [Has your teacher ask you to talk about this? This is usually assumed]. So after looking through articles and scholarly papers of what I thought might help me give a simple description of what the issues causing the U.S. educational system to fall, I came up with nothing but graphs and statistics that would only help me later on in my research [again do you need to talk about your research?]. So I turned to a different medium, video news reports and found a great video by CBS News called “Where America Stands: Education” in this video reporter Russ Mitchell gives a layout of what challenges the American educational system faces. In his layout Mitchell points out three problems: society, material learned and politics. Mitchell interviews Washington, D.C’s, school Chancellor Michelle Rhee in which she talks about how many feel that it is the kids that are not doing a good job [replace "good job" with "well"?] when in fact it is not the children’s fault but the educational systems fault. Rhee says, “"In society there is not a particularly high regard for education", meaning that in American society there is no driving force that makes kids want to be educated and that it is frowned upon. What Rhee said made me think more about this issue as I never thought about it that way in which obtaining education is not seen equally to all other people, I was viewing it though my eyes and how it was seen in my family [might be able to make this sentence a bit shorter "Rhee's statements made me view education differently..."]. While education can be the least important thing in one household it can be the most important in another’s. With the diversity of the United States this could be a challenging problem to tackle by educators. The second thing addressed by Mitchell was that the right kind of material is not covered in schools. “Unlike most other countries that have national standards of what to teach, in the U.S., it's a state-by-state decision,” says Mitchell, meaning that instead of having a national educational standard there is actually a state by state educational standard which that alone is a problem for any country. I began to wonder why that is and why it has never occurred to me that maybe the way kids are learning in New York could be entirely different from the way kids in Ohio are learning. This made me think I already solved the issue, America just needs to have a national education standard one that every state follows but as I continued watching the video my solution to having a national education standard didn’t seem as easy as I thought it would be. Politics was a third problem facing the American educational system says Mitchell. This quickly put a wall around my idea of a national education standard in which politics on the national isn’t bad enough dealing with each state’s politics to just even come together and agree upon a national education standard would probably be a nightmare. Mitchell states that, “tenure and unions protect even bad teachers, and with limited funds, there's always a budget battle. More money for a successful charter school, for instance, means less for public schools,” bad teachers that can’t get fired and worrying about money just builds up issue on the educational system and with all three things stated by Mitchell it really doesn’t look as if the educational system can be changed. This news report was a great start for me because it gave me simple and somewhat detailed information on what the big issues facing the American educational system are and made me think of solutions as I was watching .

In the next part of my research I wanted to know what makes Finland’s education so good that it has caused it to be ranked number one in the world. In the article, “What makes education in Finland that good? 10 reform principles behind the success” by Bert Maes, Maes goes through , as the article states, 10 reform principles that makes educational system good and gives brief descriptions of each one bolding key methods that stand out in each reform principle. This is a great for my article because it gives me a quick clear sense of what the Finnish educational system is all about and what methods do they use that are similar to the educational system in the United States and which ones are completely different. Two of their methods stood out the most for me; one was that there are no mandatory tests or exams except for their nationwide National Matriculation Examination which is given to students at the end of their upper-secondary school which is when they are between the ages of 17-19. This shocked me because tests and exams are what drive schools in the United States because most of the money that schools receive is based on how students do on nationwide examinations given yearly. Maes points this out and says, “Teachers have more real freedom in time planning when they do not need have to focus on annual tests or exams,” which I think would please a lot of American teachers if they also had this opportunity because throughout my years in high school I would always get two or three teachers who would begin the first day of school along the lines of , “I am here so you can be successful in the _______[don't need to include the line, the sentence makes sense without it] exam.” The second method that stood out to me was that in Finland the government works as one when it comes to education and share’s a common goal. Maes says that, “In many countries the opposing-parties usually polarize debates and public opinion” which needed [did you mean to write indeed here?] is true in the United States with local elections every November where television, radio and internet ads [maybe just write media here instead of TV,radio,net] tell you that a certain issue will cut funding to schools so don’t vote on it but that another issue that puts more cops on the street will cut funding to schools and that can be a tough decision for many parents who want their kids to be safe and also want their school to have the money needed so their child can succeeded in school [this sentence is massive, definitely need to break it up. Could also say something like "political leaders use funding for schools as leverage for..."]. This source has given me some really good information for my paper in which I can use as a way to help me justify certain methods that the United States should adopt from the Finnish system [Maybe re-word, "It is now clearer why the Finnish system is ranked higher..].

The other issue that is easily overlooked by many is what criteria Newsweek used in ranking education in countries [great idea/sentence :D]. No other place to look for that answer then from Newsweek ‘s website where it stated a brief explanation how they determined the education rankings. It was a “combined universal score on TIMSS and/ or PISA tests using Eric Hanushek's normalization methodology,” not knowing what Eric Hanushek’s normalization methodology was I looked it up and found that it was basically a data of countries and how good education affects things like economic growth and income growth in those countries. That made me look back at other categories Newsweek had in their rankings like health, quality of life, political environment, and economic dynamism of countries and it turns out Finland beats the United in all of them except for economic dynamism in which Finland is ranked eighth while the US is ranked second. So what that told me was that education plays a tremendous factor in society because if the society of whole is not educated to a certain degree then it could cause problems in the future for that country.

After looking through these three issues I feel more confident about tackling my question, can the US educational system take steps to become ranked number 1 in the world. An initial answer to this question would have to be that the United States can take steps in improving their educational system but for being number one, I don’t think that will become achievable with factors like politics and society being [are] a couple of factors [full stop here] in which [Start sentence again here and reword a little] it would take many years just to change where education is highly regarded and politics does not affect the ways schools run. I would like to do more research on other issues facing the American educational system and what steps have been or are being taken to fix them and if there are some things that can’t be changed. It will take a lot more research on trying to come up with the right way to answer this question.