1 Education © Robert J. Atkins, Ph.D.

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3 How does your family income effect your attending college?  As family income increases, the share of children going to college goes up.  SAT scores

4 Is it worth going to college?  A high school diploma and a college degree both raise personal income.

5 Japan vs America  Japan Entrance based on personal ability demonstrated on achievement tests  America Practical and job related Everyone can attend

Do you remember? 6  Are families with higher income more apt to have children go to college?  As education increases, what happens to income?  What is the difference between the American and Japanese educational systems?

7 What are the manifest functions of education?  Socializing of young  Creating new culture  Integrating people into a new society

8 What are the latent functions of education?  Child care  Consumes time & energy  Lasting relationships

What are some problems within education?  Functional illiteracy  Educational tracking  Bureaucracy  Teacher shortage 9

What is functional illiteracy?  People leave school without learning basic skills  Urgent problem Greater than 5 other countries 40 M adults=8th grade language skills 10

What are the problems with educational tracking? (Conflict perspective) Best schooling goes to students who are more privileged to begin with.  Segregates students into different worlds 11

12 What problems are increased by bureaucracy?  Imposes uniformity and ignores cultural variations  Numerical performance and test scores = success  All students are expected to progress at the same rate

The teacher shortage problem 13

14 Do you remember?  What are manifest and latent functions of education?  What are some problems within education?

Solutions  “School choice” model  Magnet schools  A Nation at Risk  Community colleges 15

16 What is the “school choice” model?  Assumes U.S. public schools perform poorly because they have no competition  Designed to increase competition

17 What are “magnet schools”?  Encourages students to specialize in specific areas of study

18 A Nation at Risk  Requires more Math, English, Social Studies, Science, and Computer science  Improve teacher training  Improve teachers’ salaries

19 Community colleges  Enroll almost 40% of college students  Greatly expand the opportunity to attend college  Enroll ½ of African American and Hispanic undergraduates

Do you remember?  What are four of the suggested solutions to educational problems? 20

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