A Case Study on the Top Educationists of USA.

Under the guidance of: Submitted By:

Ms. Pritha Chakraborty Priyanshi Pathak

BA(J&MC)3C

Enrolment number: A2072415012

AMITY SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

AMITY UNIVERSITY, NOIDA
UTTAR PRADESH
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have taken efforts in this Research report on the topic,

“A Case Study on the Top Educationists of US.”
However, it would not have been possible without the
kind support and help of many individuals and
organisations. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to
all of them.

I take the opportunity to thank my mentor and guide Ms.

Pritha Chakraborty for her constant support and guidance
throughout this research report. Lastly, I would like to
thank my parents for their support and encouragement to
finish the project.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CASE STUDIES OF

Clara Hemphill

Anant Agarwal

Salman Khan

Arne Duncan

ANALYSIS

CONCLUSION

FUTURE PERSPECTIVE

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

 A Case Study on the Top Educationists of USA

INTRODUCTION

Education is derived from a Latin word ‘educatio’, which means

breeding, rearing or bringing up someone. It is not just a term but a
process which everyone is a part of throughout their lives. Education
helps the person in building their personality and opening a thousand
doors to something new and unknown every time. It helps people have
a perception and a method of looking at something with a certain
viewpoint. It not only benefits an individual but also creates a strong
impact on the society and country he is living in. The more educated
the countrymen are, more prosperous is the country.

To attain education there are several methods such as research,

storytelling, discussions, training and finally teaching. People who teach
or are anyways associated with disseminating of knowledge to others
are called Educationists or Educationalists.

There are certain people in past who are considered the most
important people in the history of education. Without whom a whole
lot of things wouldn’t have been discovered. They are the change
makers in the field of education. A few notable names from the past
are Aristotle, he wrote subjects like physics, metaphysics, music,
theatre, poetry, zoology and biology. He was also the teacher of
Alexander the Great. Albert Einstein is best known for his contribution
to physics because of which he also won Noble Prize for the subject.
If we see from India the list is never ending. Right from our first Vice
President and second President Dr. Sarvapalli Radha Krishnan whose
birthday is also celebrated as Teacher’s Day in India to our 11th
President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam whose contribution in science has made
India stand where it is today in the field of technology. From Chanakya
to Swami Vivekanand India has seen a whole lot of faces who promoted
and brought a considerable change in the field of education. There
contribution has changed lives of a lot of people.

In this research we will be talking about some of the famous

educationists who have brought a change in the field of education in
USA.
 CASE STUDIES
Clara Hemphill
Clara is someone who a lot of New Yorker parents are thankful to. She
is the one who founded Insideschools.org and made the lives of parents
much easier. The idea of opening something like this came across to her
when she was finding school for her own children. She says that,
working as a foreign correspondent in Rome she thought that Vatican
has the most secretive bureaucracy in the world but when she came to
United States she found that New York schools are the ones who hold
that title. Before starting Insideschools.org in 2002 she earlier came up
with three books which served as a directory of schools in the region.

She is a reporter and editorial writer for New York Newsday. She has
also won Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. She has been a foreign
correspondent for the Associated Press. She has also served as a
producer for CBS News based in Rome. She has been regarded as one
of the 200 most influential New Yorkers by New York magazine for her
work of empowering parents. She has authored three books in which
she talks about the various schools of the city. The books have detailed
explanation of each school right from elementary, middle to high
schools which help the parents to choose the best school for their
children. The New York Times has even called her books as the most
definitive guides to the city’s schools.

Clara is currently heading the Centre for New York City Affair’s policy
work which discusses about the economic segregation of city’s schools.
She along with her team is currently examining that in spite of schools
having mixed income neighbourhoods why is there a high
concentration of poverty in them.
Anant Agarwal
Mr. Anant Agarwal is an Indian professor of electrical engineering at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He did his schooling from
St. Aloysius, Mangalore. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Indian
Institute of Technology, Madras. He further went on to pursue Ph.D. in
electrical engineering from Stanford University, California.

Mr. Agarwal is the founder and CEO of edX. It is an online portal which
has a tie-up with Harvard University, Massachusetts University and
many more for giving the online course material on different subjects.
This majorly helped the people who are hungry for education. EdX
provides free course material all across the world for people to study.

EdX started with the aim of providing education to those who cannot
afford to study in the big Universities as these.

EdX was set up in the year 2012 and since then it has seen a massive
success as people from all across the world are logging into the website
and accessing study material. There has been a significant response
from big universities for making their course material available to public
with the help of EdX. The last poll which was taken on the 29th Day of
December, 2017 showed that edX has enrolled around 14 million
students in around 1800 different courses.

People getting enrolled in the online courses of EdX are entitled to get
the certificate of the successful completion of the course.

Mr. Anant has received a number of awards. Few of them being,

Maurice Wilkes Award for Computer Architecture which he received in
the year 2001, Harold W McGraw, Junior prize in Education in higher
education which he received in 2016 for being an excellent leader of
Massive Open Online Course Movement.

In addition to this he has also received Padma Bhushan which is the

fourth highest civilian award from the Government of India in the year
2017.

Salman Khan
Mr. Salman Khan popularly known as ‘Sal’ is an educator and an
entrepreneur and also the founder of ‘The Khan Academy’. He is a
Bangladeshi-American educator who teaches students through his
YouTube videos.

He is an alumnus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology from where

he earned Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science degrees. Mr.
Salman Khan has also done Masters of Business Administration
programme from Harvard Business School.

Mr. Salman Khan in the year 2003 started tutoring his cousin over
internet with the help of Yahoo! Doodle pad. Then slowly his other
cousins and friends also started to take tuitions from him. He then
simultaneously moved from Yahoo Doodle pad to YouTube in the year
2006 where he started uploading videos on his channel. He named his
YouTube channel ‘The Khan Academy’. The popularity of his videos
became sky rocketing and he then had to leave his job of as a financial
analyst in the year 2009. He then put his hundred percent focus on his
videos where he started tutoring. In the initial years Khan Academy
reached the viewership of 458 million.
Khan’s sole mission of uploading the videos became to educate people
of all ages. He opened it for everyone whoever found the content
useful. In fact, Khan’s videos are being used in the rural countries of
Asia and Africa to educate children and people there.

Mr. Khan also wrote a book on Khan Academy which he titled as “The
One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined”.

Khan Academy which was formerly a channel dedicated to children

opened the Coach feature where it also helped the teachers to get
connected with the students with the help of videos and monitor tools.

By the year 2018, Khan Academy’s videos were viewed over 1.4 billion
times. His initiation of such a channel has helped in developing the
education system from being a one-to-one classroom teaching session
to technologically advanced video session which has helped increase
the effectiveness of lectures.

Arne Duncan
Arne Starkey Duncan was the United States Secretary of Education. He
served as the secretary from 2009 to 2015. During his tenure as the
secretary he has been criticized a lot of times by the teachers union as
well as the social conservatives. He nevertheless was at all times
supported by the president Barack Obama.

Mr. Duncan adopted the common core assessment in the year 2010, in
which the courses of K-12 were pre-determined and would be same
throughout the country to ensure that when students are out of their
high school they are prepared to enter the workforce or carry the
burden of credits. This approach of Mr. Duncan was highly criticized by
the parents and the conservatives. On the contrary Mr. Duncan saw a
strong support of the president Barack Obama on same issue.

He is currently serving as the senior fellow at the University of Chicago,

Harris School of Public Policy. He also is one of the board members for
Communities in Schools.

He is the alumnus of Harvard College. He did his senior thesis which

was entitled as “The Values, Aspirations and Opportunities of the Urban
Underclass.”
 ANALYSIS

Clara Hemphill

Ms. Clara Hemphill has made life easier for parents and students to
choose a school. Motivated from her personal experience she opened
an online portal and helped many people.

A perfect scrutiny of schools and an honest review helps parents to

have a clear picture of how the school runs. This further helps parents
to finalise which school they want their child to be in. Insideschool.org
saves a lot of time and energy of parents.

Ms. Clara has always been an innovative person and she looks forward
to help work hard and innovatively for the betterment of education
system and the lives of the students.

Anant Agarwal
Mr. Anant Agarwal has been very keen in helping the students all across
the world. Coming from India he knew that there are many students
who are talented but because of the lack of money they cannot afford
to study in the University abroad.

Having the opportunity and privilege of helping those students who

have the desire to learn he started EdX which uploaded the course
material of Universities like Harvard and Massachusetts. After the
contribution of these two big universities EdX also attracted the course
materials of other universities. People now across the globe have
access to the study material from which the students of these world
famous universities study.

Anant is working really hard to give a platform to every single aspiring

student to do best in life. EdX now has the option of doing the online
course of which the students will get certificate. People now can easily
earn certificates sitting at home and studying on their computers
through EdX.

Salman Khan
Mr. Salman Khan is someone who has changed the definition of studies.
There are people who look up to him in every regard. As an educator,
entrepreneur, social worker he has done excellent in every field. He has
changed the pattern of teaching.

Children all across the world thank him to start something as beneficial
as Khan Academy for them. There has been likely a shift for betterment
in education quality after the launch of Khan Academy.

Salman has left his job as a financial analyst to work full time in Khan
Academy. His dedication and perseverance has brought Khan Academy
where it is today.

Arne Duncan
As the secretary of United States Education department, Mr. Duncan
has done fairly well and has earned a lot of appreciation from the
president Barack Obama. His adoption of Common Core Assessment
was highly appreciated and liked by the president himself. It is said that
Barack Obama has said that Mr. Duncan has changed the education of
United States for better and they expect a roaring and kicking entrance
of education in the United States in the 21st century.

Mr. Duncan even after so much opposition kept on doing things for the
betterment of the education system of the states.
 CONCLUSION
Education has always been of utmost importance from the beginning of
the human civilization. Be it the knowledge of understanding the sign
language or the knowledge of making others understand as to what you
are saying. As the time passed the difficulty level also increased. People
started to learn more and more things. They started to keep
themselves updated of what all was happening around them.

Now, in the 21st century we see that even the biggest economies
collapse if the members of the government are not well informed and
educated. Queen Elizabeth II after becoming the queen took classes
and gained knowledge on subjects which are important to know to run
a country. If Queen Elizabeth II can learn things from a tutor after being
in the position she was and with less exposition to internet. Why not
us?

In the 21st century people are more aware of the importance of

education. There has been a considerable increase in the recipients of
education. With the increase in the recipients there has to have a
steady growth in the benefactors of education as well.

With the same notion we see that there is a high increase of innovative
educators in the world. USA has seen a number of great educators who
are doing exceptionally well in the field of education.

The more educated the people of the country are the more prosperous
and developed of the country. A person should never leave an
opportunity to learn and gain knowledge from every possible thing on
this planet.
 FUTURE PERSPECTIVE

This research paper will give the reader an insight of what educationists
in USA are doing for the betterment of the country’s education system.
They are not only working towards their country’s development but
also towards the upliftment of the world as a whole.

The readers can further research on the different policies of the USA
government in the field of education department. A few of them being
No Child Left Behind policy, common core assessment, race to the top.

The readers will get an idea of how education in USA works out and
what all innovative things are being done by the people living in
America.

The readers can further carry out their research on more such
educationists who have done great in the field of education.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obamas-education-
secretary-lets-boycott-school-until-gun-laws-
change/2018/05/19/5ce3ebb0-5bab-11e8-8836-
a4a123c359ab_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.86cb675da4ba

https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/conversations-
with-sal/v/lets-teach-for-mastery-not-test-scores-sal-khan

https://www.edx.org/about/leadership

https://clarahemphill.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU2jslrMKsA