Allen 1 Madeline Allen Megan Keaton English 112 28 March 2013 Kennedy, Robert. Why Private School.

Private School Review. N.d. 20 May 2013. Web. The author, Robert Kennedy strongly believes that private schools completely fufill all expectations people have for them. Going to a private school means many extra opportunities for a child. More often than not, they will be more academically challenged, have a smaller class size, more exposure to arts, more funds to their education, a harder push towards college, higher sense of values and the list continues to go on and on. Private schools are most known for their high tuition costs, however little to no scandal as to where that money goes. Children rarely have to come home and ask their parents to buy a book or other school supplies like the children from public schools do. Also at private schools children have a better chance to interact with their teachers more often, because of smaller class sizes. The opportunities for excelling in arts and college continue to soar in private schools. Again, because of the funding private schools are able to add music, dance, and theatre programs to their curriculum at the snap of a finger. According to NELS, students who had attended private school in 8th grade were twice as likelyto have completed a bachelors degree or higher by their mid-twenties (Kennedy n.p.). All in all, private school is a very attractive option for a parent deciding which school their child should attend. Kennedy does a very good job at explaining his argument. He pounds his audience with facts and statistics. In his first paragraph he lays out all the problems and costs a parent has when picking a school for their child and assures the audience that he understands that the biggest issue is the money. He talks about expenses and for the rest of his essay and he is able to explain why private schools are worth that scary tuition bill by saying the benefits of a private education can still far outweigh the costs depending on the local options parents may face, and by saying all of these things the audience is left with no questions.

Allen 2 Because I have never attended private school, this gives me an inside scoop as to what goes on in it. All the benefits help me understand why this side of my argument can be so strong. It also gives a great source of statistics for both private and public schools. I feel like after reading this article I would want my child to go to a private school if I could easily afford it. Using certain quotes from this article will make the private school argument much stronger. Private schools typically have more demanding graduation requirements than do public high schools. In general a student given the opportunity to attend private school will most likely reach a higher level of academic achievement. Private schools have the ability to create their own curriculumadministrators often develop programs that emphasize the arts.

Allen 3 Doss, Ann. Education Advocate: NC On The Wrong Path. Charlotte Observer. 21 March 2013: 2 pages. Web. Dianne Ravitch is Education Advocate and Author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She just recently made a speech at UNC Charlotte. Ann Doss covers the story in the Charlotte Observer. The speech she mad focused on major public issues, including the amount of new state tests and how they are going to benefit testing and technology companies and hurt students. There are 35 new tests coming to schools this spring. MecklenburgACTS and UnTest, two local activist groups run by parents and UNCC students joined Ravitch to urge parents and members of the audience to resist this new reliance on testing to rate teachers. However Ravitch was able to praise the Superintendent, Heath Morrison for also taking a stand against excessive testing. She even added him to the honor roll of her blog after she read a few of his comments in a previous article in the Observer. Although Doss is basically covering the story of Ravitchs speech, she has a strong thesis, which is Increasing charter schools, giving public schools letter grades, abolishing teacher tenure and piling on new tests all moves that have been passed or proposed by state legislature. This gives the audience a good outlook as to what the article is about. Doss is able to add other information to make the cover story. For example she adds the new amount of standardized tests that the board has issued within the past year. She not only covers everything that Ravitch says, but is able to fill in all the missing spots to make this article much more of an impact on the audience. This source will help me most with quotes that I can add to help make my paper stronger. Because Dianne Ravitch is so involved with education throughout the country I will be able to practice ethos by quoting her. She is a writer and author, as well as an advocate and former official in the U.S Education Department. This argument works well for the private school side of my paper because it makes public schools look bad. Its an effort to turn public Education into a profit making venture Parents are the sleeping giant, but when the students awaken, everything changes. There are so many terrible things happening in your state that I feel like a fireman.

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Mack, Julie. Back to School: Why Public Education is Awesome. MLive. 01 September 2012. Web. 28 March 2013. The article first starts out telling a story about an adopted teenage boy from Central America adjusting to life in Michigan. Almost no one spoke his language. He grew into the idea of public school and actually became very enthusiastic about it. He could not believe his schooling was free. Mack continues to talk about how the boy was thrilled to be so lucky. Then she twists the article and calls out all the bad press that public school gets. Then she goes on a complete rampage talking about what public schools do for our country. She describes public schools as one of Americas gift to the world. Public school is the primary way to instill core values and a common culture to a nation of immigrants. Public education not only helps individuals one by one, but also communities as a whole. A well-educated populace has more productive workers, higher incomes and less dependence on public assistance programs; its linked to lower crime rates, improved public health, and more stable families (Mack n.p.) Macks vision of public schools helps argue her point. She has no problem talking about the bad press public schools get and exercising her ability of ethos by starting out a story with a young boy and chooses to step back and looks at public school throughout the nation instead of focusing on one, in a community. The audience cannot help but be captivated by the story. She chooses to end her article with What a privilege. What an opportunity. What a country. Three very strong statements then help the audience even more, by taking a step back and realizing that no matter which school they go to, there is always one available for them. I feel like my public school argument is falling through the cracks and this cannot be a one sided paper, particularly when I personally believe that public school is just as good a private school, depending on the child. This article will help me show that public schools are extremely effective and work well for a child. One of Americas gifts to the world has been the democratizing of schools.

Allen 5 A well-educated populace has more productive workers, higher incomes and less dependence on public assistance programs; its linked to lower crime rates, improved public health, and more stable families. It helped turned the US into the most powerful country in the world, fueling the American dream and the vision of a Land of Opportunity.

Allen 6 Freire, Paulo. Teachers As Cultural Workers. Colorado: Westview Press, 2005. Print. This book is almost an advice book for teachers. It is split up into many different categories, like why he became a teacher, to the first day of school. It is in this order, because its really a collection of essays. There are many points about dealing with funding, and pay for schools, teaching techniques, and how to run with a childs curiosity. Its a view of education from a teachers stand point, a breath of fresh air from a politician or an unhappy parent. Freire, a Brazilian education scholar, has a love, and a hope to American education. It is shown in every single line of this book. His main focus is the fight for education and the importance of it. The authors argument is very strong. As an outside source, viewing American education, the audience is able to take a step back with Freire and see his point of view. It makes his argument so much stronger because he is such a credible source. His format is split into essays which are then split into chapters. His essays were published by themselves at separate times and because all of his work is so resourceful it made much more sense to connect them in a book. Each line could be ripped from the pages and quoted to a teacher for advice, which makes the audience extremely connected to Freire, because even if they were to miss a single sentence of the book, they would be missing a lot. The use of ethos inside of this book makes each audience member take a new look at education. This book is very informational. I probably would have never thought to use it for my paper because its a book about teaching, which hardly fits with my topic. However, he talks about the struggles of funding in education, which is a main point I am going to talk about in my paper. He stresses points about a political battle that must be overcome. This will be the parts of the book that will fit in with my paper. Ill be able to use it from a teachers stand point to make the private school side of my paper much stronger with this quote. Also he talks about the cultural aspect of education which goes hand in hand with my argument for public school. When speaking about the ability to have an education system he says in a cultural frame, we take advantage of a minimum of freedom to amplify that freedom (125)

Allen 7 We would be nave, however, if we disregarded the need for a political struggle, the need to clarify for the public the real condition of teaching profession, and the need to compare the salaries of different professionals and to point out the disparity between them (69). The attribute cultural, expanded from the restrictive attribute class, does not exhaust the understanding of the term identity (123).

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Williamson, Logan. Personal Interview. 3 April 2013 Williamson was ecstatic to do the interview. She felt getting her story out, in some way, might help the ever occurring problem of bullying inside of private school walls. She answered questions humbly and honest. Anyone around her could feel emotion. Logan explained how her first six years of school were carried out in a private school. She talked about how she was bullied, by both students and teachers. She talked about the work load. She talked about her hatred for learning, and even more her hatred for school. She would beg her mom every morning to stay home. She believed even though it was a Christian school, she had found hell on earth. She talked about her friends turning on her because of the size of her house, and the lack of cleanliness her tennis shoes had. She was a tomboy, and didnt fit with the girls who were decked out in girly ways even though they were forced to wear uniforms. All students can remember making Christmas ornaments and having their picture taken in the school hallways for quick gift to their parents. Logan brought three of hers. In none of them she smiled. Her heart breaking story has a happy ending though. It ends with her first day of public school. With an in depth detail of the outfit she wore, and the imaginary runway she walked on through the hallways. She didnt become popular in public school, but she had real friends, real teachers and a real life she wanted. Logans argument for the inside horrors of private schools is heartbreaking. She was descriptive and emotional which made for a much stronger interview. She was a student of both schools and she had real pain and real happiness covered on her face throughout the interview. Im left wondering why her parents would do this. What is it about saying your child goes to a certain school is so fulfilling in their lives? Her argument shows just how the atmosphere of school matters to a child and their learning experience. This will be the strongest point I make. This is the entire reason I chose my topic. Logan is my best friend and the will and fight she had to get her parents to put her into a public school is why I wanted to learn more about the differences. I had no idea at the begging of Megans class that I would choose this

Allen 9 topic until I realized where I ended up researching. Direct quotes from Williamson will be the most useful part of this source. I hated going to sleep, because that meant I would soon have to wake up and go to school. The words they used against me started to define my confidence. I felt like I was less, because my family has less. I know it affected my parents too. They wanted to seem rich, which was the entire reason I was forced to go to a private school in general. They wanted to be a part of that crowd. This is silly, but the first time I realized I was going to have a used textbook was kind of exciting. It didnt have a back but it had other notes in it. I smiled, I learned, I met amazing classmates, and I wanted to learn again.