Mcdonaldization

Eli Whitney's introduction of interchangeable parts to Congress in 1801 to arm the U.S. military influenced the standardization of the development of virtually everything from guns and cars to even food and, more recently, education. After noticing the standardization of food production, George Ritzer coined the term "McDonaldization" in his book "The McDonaldization of Society" to describe sectors in American society with fast-food-restaurant-like qualities, such as efficiency, predictability, and control (Ritzer, 12-13). The McDonaldization of education has negatively impacted the overall quality of education in the United States.
The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) forces states to administer assessments used to measure the progress of individual schools. Also, they are required to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards to eventually meet a 100% -nationwide proficiency level in math and reading, language arts, and science in 2014. NCLB does not set a national standard, which allows individual states to lower their standards in order to increase scores and meet AYP. If they consecutively fail to meet AYP standards, they are marked as Program Improvement schools and are to the complete various requirements in order to improve student performance. (State & Federal Programs: No Child Left Behind)
The U.S Department of Education stated that teachers should "cover subject matter required by the standards and teach it well" for students to pass their tests (Testing: Frequently Asked Questions). Consequentially, many teachers use "curriculum aligned to state standards and [use] test data" to focus their class time on teaching to the test to efficiently prepare their students for passing the assessments (Barth). In other words, teachers are narrowing their curriculum in order to meet the standards. For example, surveys have found that 75% of teachers decreased the amount of news they incorporate into their classrooms in order to have...