Blog 5: Education Legislation

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was made in order to provide public schooling to all, regardless of the families’ income. The ESEA provided financial assistance to the poorest schools and communities. The ESEA helps schools by providing: early-childhood education, tutoring services, after-school centers, computer labs, dropout prevention, job training, parental education, and professional development for teachers.

The ESEA is extremely important for students and teachers today. Although, the act was passed in 1965, schools are still receiving funding because of the reauthorization of the act, which means that students are getting an education even if the live in poverty. Because of this act, the schools will have access to computers, and books that may not be available to the schools if they didn’t receive funding.

Title IX is part of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. It protects both females and males in sports, financial aid, employment, counseling, and school regulations and policies. If Title IX was never passed, education would probably have been left for just males. Although, women were going to school during this time, I believe that a fair amount of attention and resources went to take care of male students’ need over female students’ needs. Females weren’t given much for a choice of education in the past, but after Title IX, schools couldn’t discriminate against girls.

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) was a revision of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, in 2004. This act was passed in order to give students with disabilities a fair chance at getting a good, fair education. After this act was passed, student with disabilities were starting to be included with the general students in some or all of their classes. This has its positives and negatives. I think that it would be very helpful to the students. It will give the students with disabilities a chance to learn the things that they should be learning, not watered down materials. On the other hand, it may be slowing the class down because the student may not be able to learn at the same pace. It also gives the general population of students to have interactions with the students with disabilities, so they will see that they aren’t different and should be treated just like anyone else.

-Korri M. Kraemer