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Why No Child Left Behind Should Be Scrapped
America's schools have fallen into a giant trap. This trap is epic in its dimensions, because the people capable of leading us out of it have been silenced, and the initiative that could help us is being systematically squashed.Policymakers and the public have been seduced by a simple formulation. No Child Left Behind posits that we have troubled schools because they have not been accountable. If we make teachers and schools pay a price for the failure of their students, they will bring those students up to speed.
But schools are NOT the only factor determining student success. Urban neighborhoods are plagued by poverty and violence and recent reports in The Chronicle show that as many as 30 percent of the children in these neighborhoods suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Fully 40 percent of our students are English learners, but these students must take the same tests as native English speakers. Moreover, a recent study provides strong evidence that family-based factors such as the quality of day care, the home vocabulary and the amount of time spent reading and watching television at home account for two-thirds of the difference in academic success for students. Nonetheless, NCLB holds only the schools accountable.
Teachers are realizing that this is a raw deal. We can't single-handedly solve these problems, and we can't bring 100 percent of our students to proficiency in the next six years, no matter how "accountable" the law makes us, and no matter the punishments it metes out. But if we speak up to point out the injustice and unreasonableness of the demands on our schools, we are shouted down, accused of making excuses for ourselves and not having high expectations for our students. Thus, teachers have been silenced, our expertise squandered.
The fatal flaw of NCLB was that it assumed that teachers were obstacles to change; that we had to be coerced to set higher standards for ourselves and our students. As a result we have state-mandated standards, standardized tests - even scripted curriculum to tell us what to say in class. All of this has demoralized teachers by making us into the problem, rather than a big part of the solution.
But educators have not been completely immobilized. We have been learning in spite of the hostile conditions, and have discovered that:
-- Although student success is heavily influenced by other factors, an effective teacher can make a huge difference.
-- Teachers who are able to skillfully assess student learning on a daily basis can promote rapid growth by giving timely feedback and tailoring instruction to meet students' needs.
-- Teachers who collaborate together to develop common assessments and share techniques can build powerful learning communities that allow them to push their students to make great gains.
-- Teachers are capable of developing assessments that reflect the values and skills desired by their local communities - and this yields a much higher level of student and teacher engagement, as can be seen in Nebraska ( www.nde.state.ne.us/focusstars/ index.htm).
-- Teachers must be deeply involved in educational policy decisions - without our insights and support, policies on paper will not translate into real-world solutions.
While the recent proposed revisions of NCLB contained some improvements, the law remains fundamentally flawed, and does not deserve to be reauthorized. We need to step back and create a new vision of accountability - from the classroom up. Teachers are willing to be accountable for making a difference - that is why we entered this profession. But we must have reasonable goals that reflect the realities we face. We need to be given a much bigger role in designing the measures by which our students and schools are judged, and we must have the conditions and resources in our schools that allow for the high quality collaboration we need to succeed.
When we are asked to lead, we will be ready to help show the way. We are still teachers, after all.
Anthony Cody, a member of the Teacher Leaders Network, is a National Board certified teacher who works as a science coach with the Oakland Unified School District.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
39 Comments so far
Show AllWhen education becomes just another political battlefield, or merely a forum for political agendas, the system loses ground and children are again short-changed. Governments of every ilk, but most assuredly right-wingers, benefit from this foray into the classroom because it provides for them an opportunity to villainize those with whom they differ. In this case - liberal minds. It also lends credibility to the private school movement which thrives on bad-mouthing public institutions.
In Canada the same scenario plays out with frightening regularity. Over 3 decades in the classroom in 3 countries (but mostly in Canada), I witnessed this cynical decimation of good education. Religious, economic and political fundamentalists of the 'right' never tire in their concerted efforts to advance their own agendas at the cost of education that facilitates fine teachers and serves children.
The best tools for construction are designed by those who use them, workers in the industry. The same is true for teachers.
As a Congress Rep, I will work to scrap the NCLB laws.
Not only is the law flawed because of the brilliant analysis above, but it is flawed because:
It was conceived to "dumb" down our children so that they could be funneled directly into the war machine. I have spoken to teachers and members of the Teacher's Union who tell me that all they have time to do is teach to the tests and enrichment classes like drama, music and art are totally gone.
Universities are complaining that students are not ready to enter university or college because of NCLB.
It is a Bush plan (nuff said?)
One of the main components of the statute is military recruitment. Schools must provide directory info to the military recruiters or lose federal funding, unless parents exercise the little known "opt-out" features.
Presidential brother and known criminal, Neil Bush sells tests that some school districts use.
It is just another Orwellian named BushCo program: Like the Clean Air and Clear Skies Acts: the act leaves Every Child behind except the children of the establishment who can afford to send their children to exclusive and expensive private schools.
Love
Cindy
as a parent with a child in public school, i agree, scrap it. my school is excellent, providing many opportunities for my child. however, my district(formerly the top under the old ranking system) is ranked at the bottom now, because of all the somali refugees and illegals who don't know english. and they are only 6% of our district!!!!!
The Bush family is making millions of dollars on the program, the company is owned by Barbara Bush, one of her sons and and a brother.
This is all well layed out in Gregg Palast's book, Armed Madhouse.
I have worked several stints grading these tests out in Longmont Colorado. The tests I have graded include those in the NECAP- New England program as well as Kentucky, etc. The company involved with the grading is called Measured Progress. I wonder if any here on CD have heard anything about just who is profiting from this company and just where they are in the Dubyuh regime.
They picked Longmont b/c being near Boulder, there are lots and lots of unemployed college graduates- Just the situation Dubyuh's policies have amplified. At $11/hr it pays better than a starting job at Walmart.
There should be a system of standards and accountability, but NCLB does nothing but blame teachers and public schools for achievement gaps. The deskilling of teachers' work and the privatization of schools are on the unwritten agenda of conservatives. NCLB must be opposed by a broad coalition of parents, or else we'll be stuck with it for a long time. Students will learn how to take tests but not how to think critically, and they will be the future voters who do as corporate rulers tell them.
marxymark--I was about to make approximately the same point. To my mind, NCLB is a Rovian strategy to make public schools and union teachers appear so incompetent that they need to be dispensed with entirely.
All the incentives are negative, naturally, because public schools with their Democratic-leaning teachers need to be punished. Private schools are outside the pale of this law. So parents (presumably with vouchers) will escape to their local privates to get their kids educated.
cindysheehan--put that in your campaign literature, and good luck in the upcoming elections.
Education industry decision-makers, not teachers, decided a long time ago to disable large segments of the population by withholding reading and language instruction from their children. Today, nearly half the kids promoted to third grade can't read, and there are two and three generations of functional illiteracy in too many families. Closing schools and punishing teachers won't change that. The existence of a vast, ignorant underclass makes the rest of us grateful for the crumbs and crusts that our keepers leave us, but the dumbing-down has been so pervasive that it seems to have cost us our republic and our way of life.
Now let me tell you what I see is the result of NCLB and perpetual standardized test taking as they have been employed in Texas for at least the past 10 years or so. I teach college students at the sophomore through senior level. It is amazing how compartmentalized these students are in their thinking. They know how to do certain tasks. However they don't seem to understand how the tasks that they have the ability to perform connect to solving real problems. They don't seem to see how things in life are interconnected, and how if "A" occurs then it will impact "B-Z", either directly or indirectly. I am always instructing them to rise at least one level of abstraction above of their current viewpoints and take a bird's eye view of the subject matter. In other words, I want them to look at the big picture. You can't begin to solve real problems if you are too compartmentalized in your thinking. And really many of my students are very uncomfortable with anything other than a multiple choice exam. If you want to see panic, just mention that the exams will be all essay. Also many are not comfortable with the idea there are a range of answers that are acceptible, some are better alternatives than others given the situation at hand. The whole idea is that you can justify and support your answer choice using the concepts that you learn in class. There seems to be distress if there is not one "right" answer and eveything else is wrong. I don't teach a math course were that is expected, but I teach in a college of Business were many different ideas should be exchanged.
HOWEVER....
Maybe that's the whole idea as Sister Cindy Sheehan alluded to earlier in the posts. Perhaps we only want to educate the masses to perform tasks and not to do any real or deep thinking. In Texas, kids in public schools are bombarded with standardized tests. The curriculum is based on these tests (TAKS). They are constantly benchmarked before the actual tests are given to see how their scores are tracking. And now I can see how it's ultimately affecting their college work. At this rate, 95% of the deep thinkers, system designers, and visionaries will come from private schools. Many people I know are hip to this notion, therefore we sacrifice to send our kids to private schools. The kids at my children's school are actually encouraged to think, conceptualize, design and imagine. The decision to go this route was tough because I attended public school and got a great education. But something sinister is at work here and it's different for kids today.
BUT just because I can scrape the nickels together to send my kids to private school doesn't mean that I don't constantly worry about public school education. Anybody with good sense can see that it is in the best interest of everyone to see that there is a strong public school system. The citizens coming out of these schools will be the same people we entrust the planet to. We have to make sure they are successful, that they can solve problems and not just do tasks.
Sorry for the rant, but I have been trying to tell everyone I know that we have to address this issue.
-"These three, but the greatest of these is love"
"We need to be given a much bigger role"
No, we need to TAKE a much bigger role.
why not mention the fact that lawyers are running the schools through lawsuits which keep disruptive students in the mainstream institutions?
Folks there are real, tried and true alternatives to standardized testing. Thousands of public schools around the country that deemphasize test scores and focus on real accountability from performances, exhibitions and portfolios. These are better measures. Test scores belong in the sports pages.
go read about them:
essentialschools.org
performanceassessment.org
Oh, one more thing: John Edwards supports these alternatives.
Get the federal government out of education.
Poverty.
Cindy--
You have said it all--almost. It's not just the"war machine" that needs feeding but the prison industrial conplex (drop outs make so much more compliant workers since their options are so limited) and the big box retail, fast food, and stoop labor complex (such workers only need strong backs and weak minds so why give them anything else?).
What galls me as a former public school teacher is the voluntary submission of today's kids and their parents and extended families to such servitude knowing what the outcome will be and that it doesn't have to be that way. Call it "voluntary servitude" to the mass media. pop-culture of time wasting.
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., WEB DuBoise, Marcus Garvey, Frederick Douglass, Sam Gompers, Mother Jones, Jane Addams, Walter Reuther, John L. Sullivan, Eugene V. Debs, and a whole host of others would be disgusted and heart-sick at what America has become and the almost total lack of any organized resistance to it.
First of all, I am a fifth grade teacher, so I know a bit about NCLB. I've posted most of this before, so bear with me if it's old hat to you.
When we were first introduced to NCLB by a PhD. from the Minnesota State Department of Education, I listened along with the rest. In the Q. and A. period following, I replied, "I understand our (teachers') responsibilities, but what are the responsibilities of the students and the parents?"
She replied, "None. It's all up to you."
Wow! A child's education is all up to me, or I get fired. If they choose not to read, I get fired. If the parents won't help, I get fired. Some program.
Let's apply this standard to a few other professions. If a smoker refuses to quit and gets cancer, the Doctor gets fired and the hospital loses money. If a drunk driver refuses to quit driving, the police officer gets fired, and the department loses money. If illegal immigrants enter our country, the Border Patrol in the area gets fired, and the district loses money.
Absurd? Yes. But you get the drift. As a teacher, I can encourage a child to read, but I can't FORCE her. Why should my school district get penalized?
But wait, there's more!
The "canonized" tests compare this year's fifth graders in my school to last year's fifth graders. That used to be called "apples to oranges." Worse yet, we teachers have been clammoring for a glimpse of the test results, but we are denied. Our curriculum coordinator tells us that there is no way to disaggregate the data. WE CANNOT USE THESE TESTS TO EVEN MONITOR OUR OWN TEACHING.
I'll change. Just tell me what I can do better. I'll make the change. So will my colleagues.
For now, we are all teaching to the tests. It's called survival. That's the reality in Bush's Republican America, 2008.
Weep for your country. Then get mad enough to demand a change. School boards are the MOST receptive of all political entities. They'll listen to you. They just won't listen to teachers.
Nobody does.
Thanks for the information, skeezyks. You made a lot of sense to me, anyway.
One thing that I find interesting about the "No Child Left Behind" thing is that despite the Bush administration's avowed dislike of socialism they seem to be enforcing a form of socialism on the teachers and schools of America, forcing them to all adhere to the same program, with no allowance for differences in neighborhoods, school districts, income levels and teaching styles. The message seems to be, "Conform, and turn out a bunch of drones, or you're out of there."
Actually I think we are all to blame for the abysmal failures of American education, because sometime beginning in the 1970's we let the ball drop, by which I mean that we abandoned the process by which older generations inspire in the younger generations a real curiosity to learn and equip them with the tools to learn. We all got too lazy in the 70's, and then Reagan came along and said "Its morning in America" and people got lazier still, I mean intellectually lazy. The culture as a whole entered one of its intensely anti-intellectual phases--they're common enough in American history aren't they. Pop culture was elevated while inculcation in high culture became restricted to an elite minority. Americans older than 60 will remember times when high culture actually was promoted in the mass media and the schools. The dumbing down of America had something to do with the traumatization of the country in the Vietnam and Watergate era. The problem in the schools is really quite simple: the students who come from families that have books at home and in which the parents read on a regular basis are the students who do well in school. Those from families who don't read and are hooked on pop culture generally perform poorly in school. Nothing will change here until the grip of pop culture is loosened and replaced by reading and critical thinking again if that is possible.
I've been a teacher for 18 years. I was at one school that was forced into "restructuring" because of the scores our English language learners and special education students. There was no way we could make the benchmarks with 50% of the students being at-risk. We had all sorts of expensive consultants hammering us with force-fed curriculums, and the line that we didn't need more classroom help (like aides or lower class size), but rather better classroom management and instructional skills. We got rid of art, music, and other electives to make room for double-dosing kids on scripted and deadening reading programs. The staff morale tanked, and I kept wondering when the district would say F-you to the Feds. But apparently the 10% Fed subsidy to special educatio is worth the hassle. I think otherwise. The feds are supposed to be paying a third of the sped cost, as per the original 1974 IDEA legislation, but I guess war and tax cuts for the rich are more important to our overlords in government.
Studies have shown that the schools that need the money the most are getting less now with NCLB in place. Congress says they didn't intend this. But I believe that WAS the intention. The difference is now going to fund vouchers of $3K or so that are in effect tax rebates to parents for whom this $3K is not a deciding factor, with most other parents not being able to afford private school with or without the voucher.
Private schools are not evaluated, don't have to take standardized tests, don't have to educate ELL or SPED kids (that's what public schools are for...), and don't have to be EO/AA employers. Private schools that have taken the tests have actually done WORSE on average than the public schools.
I think the overall agenda is to dismantle public education, and the progressive unions that accompany it. Let ETS, the Blackwater of the educational system, run everything...until this nation collapses.
As well, NCLB is an intentional dumbing of education so as to create a vast slave class of expendable workers for the upper 10% of income earners who will manage us.
"I think the overall agenda is to dismantle public education, and the progressive unions that accompany it."--dcb 11:41 pm
Right you are, dcb. NCLB was a concerted effort to punish teachers for having the temerity to vote consistantly Democratic.
The best use of the NCLB tests would be to administer them to Republican congressmen and to post their scores online.
Greg Palast called the program "No Child's Behind Left"; a much better, more accurate label.
bakunin
I totally agree with your analysis.
When a student at a 1960s HS, I was given free cello lessons and free cello to play.
We had hands-on science classes that required us to apply the scientific method.
The visual arts, music, and the dramatic arts were thoroughly supported by parents, teachers, administrators and the local government.
All the males were required to take shop classes. (The 60s were sexist.) That gave those were not particularly scholarly one way of being successful in class. And it required the bookish types to actually make things with their hands.
If kids were regularly troublesome, they were expelled. There was no legal recourse.
The parents or caregivers had to deal with it.
Last, I have taught in elementary schools in Oakland, and recently in an inner-city (though small town) school in Florida.
The intellectual and cultural poverty of the kids and their caregivers is beyond belief. The kids are into making smart-ass comments to each other and, in some instances, they do the same to teachers.
And there is very little you can do.
If you aren't from the community, nor a representative of the kid's ethnic background, and you aren't interested in mass-produced "popular" culture, you will usually find it difficult to establish much rapport with the kids or their caregivers.
The only time I could actually develop any rapport with students is when I kept a few afterschool and I could step out of my "classroom" management mode.
Before coming to teach in Jeb Bush's Florida, I had been teaching in Honduras for a couple of years. I knew nothing about NCLB or the whole language Language Arts program that's promoted in this state.
In CA, we used a totally scripted LA program entitled Open Court. It was (and is) heavily phonics based and required repeated readings of the same mostly boring stories.
As the only white male teacher in my elementary school (I was also the only white male teacher in the Oakland elementary school), I usually faced lots of distrust from parents/caregivers.
In addition, many of my students spent hours looking at the boob tube, playing gameboy/nintendo, computer games, etc., that they were constantly exposed to violent Social Darwinist solutions to interpersonal differences or social problems.
Because of most of my (the majority of my)students lived in impoverished, segregated communities, they had very little dealings with people such as myself.
Include the above with the fact that content of many of my students' favorite TV shows, movies, songs, etc., tended to present white males as uncool buffoons, and/or dangerous racist bastards.
Last, many of the students' caregivers/parent/parents tended to look upon school as a babysitting center. If they gave a teacher feedback, it was only because they were worried about the incovenience caused if their child didn't pass FCAT.
The grades we gave kids weren't important; recieving passing FCAT scores is what is used as the main criterion that passes kids from the 3rd grade on.
This FCAT orientation makes it difficult to actually give good feedback about how each child will do on the mandated tests.
Several times a few of my students earned mostly A's and B's, but they don't do as well on the many mock tests we had to give them. How well did the mock tests really tell a teacher about the kid's actual learning?
The tests are given in Feb./March. What do we do with our students after early March until late-May?
Our grades don't mean much. There are no more constant barrages of mock tests. The kids have been hammered by constant, always improvised, unthoughtout methods that will overcome their lack of desire to read, learn math, or think.
The basic problem is that the main social institution -the economy- is increasingly dysfunctional. Schools are only a secondary institution and they reflect the economy's dysfunction. The other social institutions also reflect our dysfunctional economy: religion, family, media, polity.
In fact, the economic institution is permeating and swallowing the other five institutions.
Folks,
As a teacher of 14 years I like to use the following analogy to show the idiocy of "standarized" testing (including district wide "common assessments" that are the current rage.)
If you want to make a lot of money become a McDonald's franchise. It's guaranteed that you will make a lot more money in one year than I will as a teacher. As long as you follow the "standards" that McD's imposes on your franchise you will be able to put out a product that is the same as all the other McD franchises. Will you be offering a gourmet meal to your customers? Of course not! The meal will be fast, cheap and perhaps quite filling.
However, if you want a gourmet meal you would be better served by going to a restaurant that has a chef that creates the menu and sees that everything is just right. It won't necessarily be fast or cheap, and it may not be quite as filling as the super-sized portions at McD's.
So what do we want in public education, a gourmet meal or McD's? Standarized testing and its accompanying regimes is to public education what McD's is to a gourmet restaurant. Of course the quality of education will not be great with any standardized testing.
I urge you all to read "Educational Standards and the Problem of Error" by Noel Wilson. It can be found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v6n10/.
In the ten years since it was written I have yet to see a rebuttal to this devastating critique of educational standards and standardized testing. (When those in power are challenged by critique and information that exposes the flaws and inconsistencies of their positions,they will ignore it until it goes away. Which is what the public education authorities and politicians have done with this study.)
Well, my "planning" period is over so take care.
OYE
Well said, everyone. It is refreshing to see and read teachers talking like we have a brain in our heads. Here in Seattle, our public education union is run by people who have never moved outside of the feel-good nostrums of the early 1970s, even as the generalized attack on public sector education grows in pitch. No one wants to hurt anybody's feelings, it would seem. Consequently, teachers work themselves into a lather trying to close something the Microsoft padrones call the "acchievement gap", which is a process driven by high stakes test scoring.
I'm currently serving on the union board, which is dominated by "in-house" union thinking. We hope to put up an opposition to their next candidate for president, the current Vice President Olga Addae, who would be an absolute disaster for the largest public sector union in the state if she gets elected. We need a lot more of the energy that went into these postings here in Seattle.
"America's schools have fallen into a giant trap. This trap is epic in its dimensions..."
Speaking as a former-teacher, I can assure all that it indeed Has. But it was NOT accidental or unwelcome by those responsible for a once-effective 'Public Education'. Public-schooling, long over-focused on conformity/consumerism rather than any 'education', is now upon the same 'Path into the Slaughterhouse' that Social-Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and all the other (and, frankly, 'expensive') "Entitlement Institutions" are following. They, all of them, were never more than 'regretful and unintended-consequences' after the Depression/War/New-Deal staved-off the American Public-Demands for a "piece of the pie". And, all may now be 'sadly withdrawn' as soon as a compliant-Democrat is 'in place', and "has to deal responsibly with the aftermath of a prior-Administration's 'mistakes'." [Just like it took a ex-Rhodes/neo-Lib-Clinton to install NAFTA and 'save us all' from Welfare...]
The standardized testing racket is designed to take control of the curriculum away from the schools and teachers and give it to capitalist central planning in Washington. This facilitates the social hierarchy, leaving the masses at the bottom, dumbed down and unable to think critically.
The No Child Left Behind racket is designed to give capitalist central planning in Washington coercive control over public school teachers by holding them accountable for students' standardized test scores. The teachers are thereby blocked from inspiring the students to think and imagine, and the profit-driven media further squelch the kids' minds and imaginations. This facilitates the molding of mindless consumers of the capitalist mass production.
These threads about public schools always seem to draw such excellent responses from Common Dreams readers who are involved with education in some way.
THANKS and keep up the great work! Here's some remaining questions I have:
Wasn't No Child Left Behind authored by many factions, including the likes of Ted Kennedy? It was NOT simply the brainchild of George Bush and his minions, correct?
Doesn't it state in no uncertain terms that teachers and those on the front lines of student contact should have as much say as anybody as to how a school will go about with a plan of action to improve their testing percentages?
When I see posters like 'DCB' above, who state that highly-paid consultants are coming in and force-feeding a curriculum to experienced teachers, I have to ask these particular teachers:
How have you let this take place? Why have these teachers allowed others to come in and take these important decision-making powers away from them? What set of circumstances has led them to so readily give up their voices? Why are they acting like so many cowering sheep? Don't they have a tenure system, which is designed to prevent political and 'retaliation' firings and the like?
I am speaking from an experience as a former single parent, with a principal at a public school when I was called in to "discuss" a "concern" about my son. It was more than a mere oddity when I realized just how "involved" the educators deem themselves to be in their student's lives. This was NOT about "academics" or of the progression of it at all. In fact the principal expressed her "concern" with my son's socially "quiet, reserved, and bashful nature implying that it may cause problems in the future, as she went on to assure me of her recognition of the fact that my son was one of the top scorers in academics. This made me more concerned about the agenda and motives of educators with this NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND bunk.
Now I am not ignorant of dealing with children's behavior problems or in the awareness of any since I am a working/mother of 4. Especially when it was put to me as she was trying to explain how free inschool counciling services were available to deal with behavior difficulties and the minor petty matter that Grades don't matter. I was not confused, I was furious with the meddling tactics, because I have common sense. What I "learned" from that was this. Some educators believe themselves to be more apt and concerned with "social work" and that they take it "all" upon themselves with the FREE SUPPORT and OKs of Government agencies to dive deeper into the homelife where they have no business waltzing into. Parents who don't have time to attend the boring PTO meets and Single parents are considered-if so-as ,unknowing,uninvolved unaware,and low class sheep, among othe degrading terms to put it nicely. When I place my child into a school, I expect my children to be able to learn without Major Social Service Agendas and or Burocracy BS. I had a difficult day in time waiting on customers while there are and I quote one: "2-sort-of kinda- like-social-service-workers", standing by waiting to see if they can make arrangements for home visits because...my son's grade point average and behavior doesn't appear to be "normal"(my quote) like a snobby little prep. In public,out sourced and under prepared. As usual, the way most Leaders of some Big hair-brained scheme of things to do, expects their "victims" to be.
It sounds more like NTLB. Our public schools hold endless site based decision meetings.I'm still trying to listen and learn about the affects that the program NCLB directly has on the children. Up to now, most of what I see here and about those necessary school meetings is all bout how tough it is on the teachers to put "it" NCLB in motion. Some educators have a hard time treating the parents like we have any brains to begin with and IF it weren't for them, the educators, the possibility of sufficient learning would not ever exist. NCLB...PaLeeze...for orphans, okay, I have no say on that, I am not "incharge" of any...but allow the parents to choose WHAT their child will be taught before this over extended-classroom bell begins for its next session. We all have our limits. Whether we recognize them or not...doesn't mean they aren't there. Another thing I've learned about Educators and their unavoidable tasks: One doesn't have to ask a child "How was your day at school?" anymore. There's no need, we are inevitably forced to experience everyone's involvement in it,daily or else be considered apart of the "unaware or uninformed or worse, the uneducated." Sorry so long...I have to quit now and think about something else that gets my goat.
"enrichment classes like drama, music and art are totally gone."
The reason classes of this nature are GONE is simple: Most students who take them actually Enjoy the subject matter. And, in order to continue to enjoy them, are willing to work harder in the "Core Subjects" so that their participation in these "Fun" classes is not jeopardized.
This happens because the "Fun" courses have always been underfunded and rationed. Few schools have ever been able afford more that a couple Drama classes. Same with Art and Music.
These classes are expensive to offer and consume large amounts of Extracurricular time and commitment on the part of both Students and Teachers.
They also compete with the "Religious" program (AKA Football, Baseball & Cheerleading) for funding and facilities.
Most problematical, they appeal to the Worst segment of the student population: The ones most likely to grow into adults who Think For Themselves. A practice that is anathema to the Political Class.
Even worse, these Art & Music programs often offer the students who major in them an alternative to a McJob as a Future: While the Starving Artist is a fundamental stereotype, in truth, many of these students have gone on to build themselves successful careers in the arts. Or in Business when their accomplishments in the "Core" subjects stimulated by participation in "Fun" classes allowed them to perform better in mainstream employment than they would have if they had Not had their ability to Think stimulated.
The Repubdamentalists KNOW this. They HATE this. And they have been working for the last 40 years to take over the public schools and reduce them to a state where the public education system can be "Drowned in a Bathtub".
"Why have these teachers allowed others to come in and take these important decision-making powers away from them?" --Sunny Jim.
Because: A) They never had "these powers", and B) Failure to follow NCLB mandates results in a cut off of federal funds: something that almost no school district can afford.
You're quite right that Ted Kennedy--to his everlasting discredit--hopped aboard the NCLB bandwagon. His hope was that federal funding to school districts would be increased. He took W at his word. How stupid is that?
WmC,
NCLB mandates that any school which cannot meet certain minimum levels of proficiencies be placed on probationary notice for several years, culminating in a possible cutoff of certain Federal funds, as you and others note.
To my knowledge, though, it does not dictate a prescribed curriculum to any school. It leaves it up to the district 'on probation' to implement plans to improve any failing school.
An 18-year teacher noted above that in his/her district, a paid consultant was brought in to give to teachers a curriculum that replaced the existing one. I cannot find anywhere in the pages of No Child Left Behind any such requirement.
I was asking how this could possibly take place in a district staffed by certified professionals, many of whom have done graduate work in their field of teaching. I assumed that the district, in finding the best teachers it could over the years, entrusted to their staff the responsible carrying out of their teaching duties. Teachers at the very least enjoyed a degree of empowerment over the hows and wherefores of carrying out these duties.
How, all of a sudden, would unprecedented powers be bestowed on one outside consultant? How would tenured and job-protected professionals let this happen? Are these Wal-Mart employees? (No offense to any reader presently employed by that fine retail establishment.)
NCLB came into effect well after I left teaching, Jim, so I'm not fully apprised on all its ins and outs.
However, I've taught in three different states, and in none of them did the teachers have any real discretion over the curriculum. In the case of New York State, the regents exams were very confining, limiting discretion even further. I can only imagine that NCLB tests would be even more of a straight-jacket.
I assume any consultant brought in would instruct teachers in how to better teach to the test. Woe be to any teacher who resists taking the consultant's advice.
The only way I know of for a school district to escape the NCLB trap is to refuse federal funds.
If you want to know how the current system of schooling came about, read John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education.
(found here: http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm )
"The new mass schooling which came about slowly but continuously after 1890...became like school in Germany, a servant of corporate and political management.
The secret of commerce, that kids drive purchases, meant that schools had to become psychological laboratories where training in consumerism was the central pursuit.
Since bored people are the best consumers, school had to be a boring place, and since childish people are the easiest customers to convince, the manufacture of childishness, extended into adulthood, had to be the first priority of factory schools. Naturally, teachers and administrators weren't let in on this plan; they didn't need to be. If they didn't conform to instructions passed down from increasingly centralized school offices, they didn't last long.
In the new system, schools were gradually re-formed to meet the pressing need of big businesses to have standardized customers and employees, standardized because such people are predictable in certain crucial ways by mathematical formulae. Business (and government) can only be efficient if human beings are redesigned to meet simplified specifications. As the century wore on, school spaces themselves were opened bit by bit to commercialization.
As the twentieth century progressed, and particularly after WWII, schools evolved into behavioral training centers, laboratories of experimentation in the interests of corporations and the government.
School became jail-time to escape if you could, arenas of meaningless pressure as with the omnipresent "standardized" exams, which study after study concluded were measuring nothing real.
the new purpose of schooling—to serve business and government—could only be achieved efficiently by isolating children from the real world, with adults who themselves were isolated from the real world, and everyone in the confinement isolated from one another.
Only then could the necessary training in boredom and bewilderment begin. Such training is necessary to produce dependable consumers and dependent citizens who would always look for a teacher to tell them what to do in later life, even if that teacher was an ad man or television anchor."
If the government forces school districts to have a program, they should fund it entirely.
Anyway, it is sensless to determine any student's learning ability or achievements upon tests alone.
quietwriter2
After teaching a few years, all I can say is if your child is something like what you described, I don't know why the f**k any teacher or administrator would complain.
What standardized model of student deportment, personality traits, etc. did they have in mind?
As a teacher, I would love to have a class was built on your child as the norm rather than having to deal with the loud disrespectful louts, ass-kissers, TV/nintendo/Ipod/computer game/hip hop-rap-heavy metal, goth, etc. dazed kids that tend to fill up today's classrooms.
Anyway, most of the bored, unmotivated and consumer/status/mall possessed kids filling our classes would do better if they lived a year with a typical Honduran campesino family, and attended their 50+ kid classroom with nary a computer in sight...much less electrical fixtures, indoor plumbing and glass windows. The whole thing is build out of cinder blocks.
Of course, for dinner, well that's provided at home after school. No lunch. Most parents' can't afford it. The family shares one meal a day which tends to be increasingly overpriced corn tortillas, frijoles and salt (Sorry, Hondurans don't share the average Mexican's taste for hot spices and burning chiles). The liquid to chug down after dinner -bilge from a polluted stream, mud puddle or a faucet.
Let's face it. Most of our kids are unbelievably spoiled and live in plastic/electronic bubble that separate them from the reality many kids their age face in today's global economy.
And I'm not even mentioning the kids that have to work their asses off starting from 10 to 12.
One simple fact ...
Tests have never helped a student learn.
Tests only help the institution.
KITTY -- Well said "Tests have never helped a student learn,"
in fact, I suspect it's all about eliminating careful matching of proper teaching techniques with individualized instruction, which does aid the students to become better people and excel.
Maybe it's my burden to think this way, but I also suspect that big PHARMA really like$ to keep these exceptional students drugged up and dumbed down.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
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NCLB is what you get when you allow the real problem, a bloated and self-serving administrative layer, to define and implement a "solution.
The real solution is to all but eliminate administrative staff, hire more teachers, pay them as much as we pay doctors, and let the teachers (not bureaucrats) make the decisions on how to teach.