Alexina LaliberteProfessor VoltzProject Proposal 2/9/15

EIP Proposal: Issues in the U.S. Education System

My EIP will be on issues in the United States education system. In order to compose a better project with more in-depth information, I will be proposing my topic using one main question and a few different subquestions. My first question is pretty basic: What are the issues? Once I did some research and realized that the issues virtually never end and become run ons of one another, I decided that I needed to choose a set number of issues. I chose ten because most of the websites I used for my research had lists of tens. I chose to address the issues of poverty, technology, old curriculum, standardized testing, unequal access to education, H.S. dropouts, violence, the achievement gap, health of students, and common core. After determining the ten issues that I am going to address, I decided that I needed a secondary question. I decided that it was only right to ask the question, How do we solve these problems and bring success to all students? Out of all of the subjects I could've written my EIP on, I chose Issues in the U.S. Education System because it is something that as an Elementary Education major I will have to deal with for the rest of my school and working life. To me, addressing and solving the issues in the education system is extremely important. This issue interests me and is an issue that I am passionate about for a few reasons. One being the obvious; if there is an issue naturally a person is compelled to address and fix it. To me, helping to address and fix issues that will benefit the future of children is something that I would want to spend the rest of time doing. I only want the best for anyone and if I can help provide that, or help work towards providing that, I will. A childs success is detrimental to how they turn out in the real world so we must do anything we can as educators to help ensure their success. I really only know the surface of my topic. I know the issues and I know that they need to be addressed. I know only a few things that have been suggested to solve these issues, but I dont know everything about them. I need to learn more about how deep these issues run, more about the background of them, and learn about solutions and how we can put them into action. To guide my research I came up with ten questions; 1. Who determines these issues? 2. How long have these issues been in existence? 3. Why dont we change the way we address the problems if the way we are now isn't working? 4. What do these issues mean for future generations? 5. Who is in charge of making changes to solve the problems? 6. How long will these problems take to fix? 7. What kind of impact have these issues made so far? 8. Can we erase the damage? 9. Can we do anything to speed up the repairing process? 10. What can we do to prevent these issues from reoccurring? I think that I will find the answers to these questions in the numerous articles that I have read that contain interviews with educators and people passionate about the issues in education. I will also find the answers I need in popular news articles online and scholarly research articles. I think that the questions that Ill have most trouble looking for answers to are the ones that involve putting a timestamp on things. I dont think that anyone is prepared to give an accurate estimate on when the system will be fixed because no one really knows the right solution right now. The question about narrowing my subject if my results are too numerous does not apply to me. I ended up doing some pre-research and came to the conclusion, as stated in my opening paragraph, that there are way too many issues to discuss. So to avoid the trouble, I went ahead and narrowed my subject to just talking about ten issues versus talking about it broadly. If my research turns up very little information, which I know already based on my pre-research that it wont, I will broaden my subject by increasing the amount of secondary questions I ask. My target audience is quite large. My audience is everyone. Everyone interested in the betterment of the United States education system. The people most affected by this issue are the ones who are currently in school and the future generations who will be in school. Everyone should really care about this issue for two main reasons. One, to provide the best for the people who will soon be saving lives, teaching future generations, and even leading our country. We need to give these kids the best so that they can give back the best to the United States.