Assignment #1 Public Administration- the Good, The Bad, The ugly William T. Thompson Prof. Neely PAD 500 Modern public Administration: Managing Public and nonprofit Organizations

To understand how to solve a problem, we must first understand what we are trying to fix. For example, can a carpenter without any medical experience repair a heart valve? Of course not, he or she must first obtain the proper education necessary to perform such a complex operation. The same can be said about the American education system.
Throughout America’s history parents, educators, and government officials have been debating what changes must be implemented for American children to receive every opportunity possible to gain an education that will prepare them for the future. the one type of public policy the education system would be suited for is by way of distributive polices because “ of its most common form of government policy where it uses general tax revenues to provide benefits to individuals or groups, often by means of grants or subsidies and other educational assistance”(blanc,denhardt,denhardt,2014,pg.55). The educational system in our country has changed over the years to accommodate all students with special needs and learning disabilities’ will touch on two (2) positive programs and two (2) negative programs. The first would be special education inclusion. Inclusion means “improving learning for both classified and non-classified students, children learn to accept individual differences, develop new friendships, parent participation, and lastly it’s the law (turnbull, A. 2013)”. when teachers are properly trained they will notice when to implement the following modifications to their classrooms “provide a study guide or outline for new units, provide a study sheet to prepare for tests, provide a list of key words and concepts for daily lessons, orally and visually summarize each lesson’s key points, teach highlighting skills of critical information on worksheets” (turnbull, A. 2013). On the other hand, there is a downside to special education inclusion and those problems would be “the need for more research when determining the best technology to deal with the problem, the need to start doing a better job of training new teachers to serve all kids, and the redesign of teacher education programs (turnbull, a. 2013)”. the next policy modification is (ESL) English as a second language modifications are changes in courses, standards, test presentation, location, timing, scheduling, expectations, student response and/or other change which is deemed necessary to provide access for a student with a disability to participate in the course, standard or test, but which most critically does fundamentally alter or lower the standard or expectation for that student's participation in the course, standard or test. Over the last 10 years there have been an influcts of Hispanic and other ethnic groups coming into the United States. Modifying instruction is critical to (ESL) students’ success. Although I think it would be unfair to change lesson plans throughout the whole educational system. a few techniques I think would work is to “ assign students a bilingual or English speaking study buddy, allow for flexibility in the task assigned, reduce assignments and lastly give (ESL) students extra time to do work or complete projects” (rowlands,2013). The downside to (ESL) would be the hiring and training of bilingual speaking teachers and the money it would cost to implement programs to catch those students up with their English speaking classmates. The first negative policy modification would be the policy of (NCLB) no child left behind. Although (NCLB) started a national conversation about student achievement but the (NCLB) movement quickly fizzled out. (NCLB) “ had created incentives for states to lower their standards , emphasized punishing failure over rewarding success, it focused on absolute scores rather than growth in progress and prescribed a pass- fail one size fits all series of interventions for schools that miss their goals (rowlands,2013). the upside to (NCLB) is the reforming of (NCLB), for instance, “states and their school districts are asked to develop meaningful ways of measuring teacher and principal effectiveness in order to provide better support for educators” (rowlands,2013). The second negative policy modification is behavioral modification which assumes that assumes that observable and measurable behaviors are good targets for change as well as effective interventions because behavior modification techniques never fail. “Alternatively, a participatory model has been proposed where direct service staff and their immediate supervisors work with middle and senior managers to identify competencies and component skills and then design the implementation plan” (Ricciard, J. 2011). There are ten (10) steps that should be implemented to insure that all students get the appropriate treatment they deserve and these steps are as noted “number 1: secures all teaching materials prior to the session, number 2: sets the training environment, number 3: directs the person to session, number 4: implements all steps, as specified in the program, number 5: uses least-to-most prompt hierarchy, number 6: reinforces correct responses, number 7: records data correctly, number 8: redirects to task, as needed, number 9: ends session with terminal reinforcement, number 10: resets materials and environment” (Ricciard, J, 2011). Once a competency has been identified and its component skills delineated and written into a concise checklist format, the manager is able to begin on-the-job competency-based training. Nevertheless, there is a downside to behavior modification behavioral modification can be time consuming and very expensive. Those two elements alone could prevent a child from succeeding in life as a normal productive citizen. The three methods by which the constitution specifically the powers of congress would address the role government within business administration would be the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The executive branch of the federal government “enforces the laws that are enacted by the congress. The head of this branch of government is the president of the United States. There are various departments in the executive branch of the federal government that have an effect upon public education” (Russell, 2012). The legislative branch of government consist the first step in the legislative process is “the introduction of a bill to congress. A bill is first considered in a subcommittee, where it may be accepted, amended, or rejected entirely. If the members of the subcommittee agree to move a bill forward, it is reported to the full committee, where the process is repeated again (Russell, 2012)”. The judicial branch of government has three levels. The first is the federal district courts. The second is the circuit court of appeals of which there are eleven circuits plus the federal and D.C. circuits. The highest level is the Supreme Court. The function of the judicial branch is to interpret the law. A decision of a circuit court of appeals may be appealed to the Supreme Court. Actually, a decision of a federal district court can be appealed directly to the Supreme Court but such an appeal is rarely successful. The party who desires to appeal must request a writ of certiorari” (Russell, 2012). All bills must go through the proper channels before it can become law, For example, “when Congress passed The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equity Employment opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established to administer Title VII of this Act. The EEOC enforces the principal federal statutes that prohibit discrimination in employment. The EEOC drafts and enforces regulations, litigates to recover damages for the victims of discrimination, and investigates complaints concerning employment discrimination. A teacher or other employee of a public school who feels that one of these statutes enforced by the EEOC has been violated may file a complaint with the EEOC following the directions provided at the website. An administrative process has been established to resolve such complaints. After exhausting this administrative remedy, the teacher or employee may bring an action in a federal court (Russell, D, 2012).

To infer, the educational system in America has come a long way from its inception. it has had to change how it operates such as; supporting special education,(ESL) English as a second language,(NCLB) no child left behind and how the federal government has played a key role in the legislative branch creating polices, . The executive branch enforces the laws that are enacted by the congress and lastly the judicial branch of government that has the responsibility to maintain those laws on the books.

References

House, W. (n.d.). Reforming no child left behind. Retrieved on July 8, 2014, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12/reforming-no-child-left-behind
Rowlands, H. (2013, August). Modification Tips and Techniques for ESL Students. Retrieved on July 12, 2014, from http://www.scsk12.org/scs/subject-areas/esl/pdfs/hurleys-esl-modifications.pdf

Turnbull, A. (2013, January). Children with special educational needs. Retrieved on July 15, 2014 from http:// www.specialeducationbehaviormodification.com/

Russell, D. (2012, July). What is the role of the Federal Government in the policy making process? Retrieved on July12, 2014, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/legislative-branch
Ricciard, J. (2011) Retrieved July17, 2014, from http://www.seattleimplementation.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Ricciardi-20111-achievinghuman-service-Outcomes-through-competency-based-training.pdf Behavioral modification