| The black students,students of low-income families,students of language minority and students with disabilities are disadvantaged groups in the basic education in the United States.Equity in the basic education is promoted mainly by legislation in the United States.The main purpose of legislation was to protect the equal educational opportunity between the 1950s and 1980s,and federal government has turned to equitable educational quality since the late 1980s.The thesis tries to analysis the backgrounds,contents,implementation and effects of related educational Iaws during the past half century.The thesis consists of six parts.The introduction part clarifies the reason of choosing this title,defines the core concepts,such as educational equity,equal educational opportunity,equitable educational quality,overviews related domestic and foreign literatures,and defines the research content.The first chapter analyzes the process of Brown.Brown was the beginning of legal guarantee of the equal educational opportunity in basic education."Separate but equal" decision of Plessy made racial segregation constitutional.According to the Fourteenth Amendment,the Supreme Court made the decision that racial segregation in public schools had no place.The decision ended racial segregation in the legal sense and had historical significance,but the southern states resisted the decision fiercely.Brown ? decision in 1955 mandated that desegregation should be enforced"with all deliberate speed".Desegregation was enforced slowly.In the 1968 decision of Green,the Supreme Court mandated that a unitary,nonracial educational system should be created.The decision sped up the desegregation.In the 1969 decision of Swan,the Supreme Court mandated that school districts should bus the students.But in the 1974 decision of Miliken,the Supreme Court didn't support the proposal of interdistrict relief,the pace of desegregation slowed down.The second chapter expounds the expansion of equal educational opportunity in the basic education.Since the 1960s,Federal legislation has expanded the beneficial groups to students of low-income families,students of language minority and students with disabilities.Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 aimed at providing student of low-income family with equal educational opportunity by federal funds.Achievements had been made since the implementation of the act,but some problems existed,such as the disorder of the establishment of program and use of funds,shortage of implementation staff,etc.Bilingual Education Act was enacted in 1968.The act aimed at providing non-English instruction.With the Amendments of Bilingual Education Act,the status of English instruction was improving gradually,and "English-proficiency" became the purpose of bilingual education.In 1975,the Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act.It aimed at providing all handicapped children with free appropriate public education and ensured that they could get special education and relative services.With the implementation of the act,the investment to special education was improved,the number of children receiving special education increased,the performance of handicapped children got better.But,some problems existed,such as unsatisfactory effects of procedural protection,incredibility in identifying the handicapped children.The third chapter expounds the beginning of equitable educational quality guaranteed by law in basic education.The American society realized that educational quality was at risk with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983.The government promoted equitable educational quality mainly by establishing educational standards and school choice.Six goals were set forth at the Charlottesville Education Summit in 1989.The goals emphasized learning standards and outcomes.Goals 2000:Educate America Act was passed in 1994.Its core provisions provided grants to states to develop their own sets of standards and aligned assessment systems,so as to guarantee the equal educational opportunity and high standards of educational achievements of all children.The Congress passed Improving America's Schools Act later in 1994.The act was committed to enabling students to obtain the knowledge and skills required by challenging state education contents standards,to achieve the challenging state perfornance standards.In the 1990s,the two acts didn't promote educational equity between the disadvantaged and the advantaged students,achievements of all groups were improved very slightly.The major forms of school choice were school voucher,magnet schools and charter schools.School choice offered opportunities to choose high quality schools to the students of low-income families and minority students.Whether school choice improved educational quality was a hotly debated question,but it couldn't be denied that equitable educational quality was the value choice of the legislation.The fourth chapter discusses the perfection of the guarantee of equitable educational quality.Beginning with No Child Left Behind Act of 2002,the federal government started to close the achievement gap by mandatory legislation.Title I of No Child Left Behind Act aimed at improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged.The act met with a series of resistances during the implementation.The Department of Education relaxed some of the rules.Title ? of No Child Left Behind Act was titled with Language Instruction for Limited English Proficiency and Immigrant Students.It aimed at ensuring limited English proficient children to attain English proficiency,achieve high levels of academic attainment in English,and meet the same challenging state academic content and student academic achievement standards as all children are expected to meet.The Congress passed Individuals with Disabilities Education hriprovement Act in 2004.The act revised high quality teacher standard,student assessment and accountability system,individualized education program.Among the 25 groups of data on the gap between the poor and the rich students,the black and the white students,LEP and non-LEP students,the disable and the normal students,13 groups of data showed that the gaps were narrowed,4 groups unchanged,8 groups widened.The acts took eH-eect as to close the achievement gap and promote equitable educational qualityThe conclusion part is characteristics,experience and reflection on the evolution of education educational equity in the basic education.This study suggests that there are three major characteristics:from the guarantee of equal educational opportunity to the guarantee of equitable educational quality,from equitable educational inputs to equitable educational outputs,from segregation of the disadvantaged to desegregation of all groups.The major experience is:laying more stress on the protection of the disadvantaged,amending the acts in time to adjust the internal and external circumstances,making operable law to ensure that provision on educational equity can be implemented effectively.It's worth reflecting that the needs of different interest groups made the promotion of educational equity very difficult,laws played a role in the promotion of educational equity,but it's effect was limited. |
PDF Full Text Request