Employers and colleges a like are pointing out the gaps in today’s public education and the skills of tomorrow that they need students to have. While much has been said about the No Child Left Behind Act, the full effects of it are starting to be felt.
Employers say that many high school graduates lack the communication and analytical skills that they are looking for. There seems to be some sort of disconnect to being able to work together as a team. The NCLB Act has nurtured an environment where facts were focused on, and achievement was standardized. Many schools did not want to risk the loss of their funding and traded rewarding success to punishing for failure. Some schools lowered their standards due to the incentives to do so, in order to have more students meet that standard, giving their school the appearance of having high-achieving students. But they can continue their education by online college degrees courses.
In Greene County, Virginia, they plan to try to reverse this trend. They have started a pilot program that all the public schools in their county will be participating in. It is a different kind of learning that they have called the William Monroe Academy. The students will not be given as much material that contains the desired answers; instead, they will be given projects to complete that encourage them to seek for answers on their own, to do it themselves. Those who are used to the memorization teaching method of NCLB Act may have to work harder in order to do as well as they have under the previous system. In this program it is much more likely that each child will find out what their own niche is and will truly learn how to excel, not just regurgitate.