MollyJ - and so many others - thanks! You describe the situation.

NCLB is designed to shift the entire responsibility for improving education to the teachers and students in the trenches. It is meant to discredit public education, not improve it.

NCLB is just tests. Tests are not a program. Tests are meant only to assess the results of an actual program. If someone started a ballet program that consisted of making people perform a ballet without having had ballet lessons, it would be absurd.

NCLB provides only increased assessments, without any increases in the quality or scope of the educational program that precedes the tests. Improving education costs money (OK OK I agree the money has to be spent intelligently and that is not always the case).

I would like to see a social committment to give the next generation (and so many young people are smart, creative and idealistic) jobs, good working conditions and reasonable salaries and benefits so they can do the work that needs to be done in education, developing clean energy and so many other neglected arenas.

There should be no doubt that NCLB was designed to destroy public schools. The "results" in Houston, upon which the law is based, were based on fraudulent data.

The real "change" that has to take place is getting rid of the idea that the Federal Gov't should have anything to do with schools. McCrazy says "set standards". He's not alone. Give it up and let local schools do their thing. Otherwise, we will be the Soviet Union and love of The State will be more important than love of learning.

The effort to standardize costs the schools creative teachers and promotes mediocrity.

In Chapterhouse: Dune, one of Frank Herbert's characters says "Creative anarchy is the path to survival...".

MollyJ May 14th, 2008 10:54 pm

Your post was better than the article!

obmaj May 14th, 2008 11:41 pm

Very true. Especially the part about Teachers who initiate on site programs. Used to be the norm.

The blame lies with the people in charge of education. And it isn't the government friends. Though they sure add more problems trying to fix it when they can't even fix their own problems like Katrina.

"The theme of American public education has always been to educate every child."

Huge belly laugh!!! The REASON for the public education of every child was to warehouse them until they were old enough to be factory workers. The "Theme" was the propaganda that got them into schools and out of the factories. And hasn't that (warehousing) succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination; we have the most ignorant, half literate bunch of citizens on the Planet - given what they have access to - who are slowly turning their Libraries into free video/DVD outlets.
Those who somehow escaped the "dumbing down of America" are so burdened with debt, in brain dead, dead end jobs with bleak prospects, not to mention depression at finding themselves thus in what is supposed to be the "richest country in the world." Richest for whom???

No child left behind was never intended to be anything more than ersatz. Given who touts it, why would anyone be in doubt.

Public ed. has always been problem atic to the individual who learns differently. NCLB just confirms public ed will fail.

There have been many valid points made in this discussion. There is another problem with NCLB: the constant emphasis on testing crushes the natural enthusiam that children have for learning about and mastering new subjects and it virtually destroys the spontanity and creativity that animates great teachers under paperwork and rigid protocols.

Some of the most successful programs have been created by teachers working totally outside the box. Activities like chess, band and gardening have shown that even children from extremely impoverished backgrounds can accomplish great things once they see a purpose in what they are doing and know there are caring adults to support them. They not only win spelling bees and chess tournaments but improve across the board academically.

I am a school nurse in a public school. So I am sort of a third party observer to the education process.

We have some very good and very enthusiastic teachers. But the weight of NCLB exacts a toll, a price.

First of all, regarding the above article, I found it a little meandering and a little unfocused.

The sentence that resonated the most with me was point 5: "Tutoring. Always an informal part of the program, tutoring now became institutionalized and burdensome. Said one teacher "I tutor in the mornings, I tutor after school. I tutor at lunchtime. Whatever it takes." We are trying to find time out of thin air to give those kids that need it the skills they need to read. As my principal said the other day, "We know if kids cannot read, they cannot master a lot of information." So kids are clobbered with a ton of reading and a ton of math, because those are the biggies on the test."

But there is a dearth of emphasis on topics that might light the fire of a thirst for knowledge. Brought back after an absence this year was...science lab! We have kept PE, art and music in our curriculum. That is not true everywhere.

I am so impressed with my teachers because they work so hard to teach what "They" have decided is important. But I sometimes see them flagging and tired because of the demand of the extras--the tutoring, the meetings, the massing of incredible amounts of data (because the system is data driven--possibly to a fault), the tracking and implementation of highly variable teaching demands for individual students. This one has a behavior card. That one gets 8 spelling words, the other gets 10 or 12, the others get 16. This one leaves at that time for speech. That one leaves for a pull out. That one leaves for an onsite therapist visit. And don't forget to handle bad behavior positively. It's a lot of balls to keep in the air.

But all of this push has improved some things. I think the techniques for math instruction have improved. God, our teachers work to help kids read and they've (education) created a ton of tools with which to do it.

In the above article they said, "ESOL instruction. Before NCLB, regular teachers left most of the instruction of English to non-native speakers to designated ESOL teachers. But NCLB made them the teachers of record for all kids in their class so they felt obligated to work more with English language learners."

Now the problem with this complaint about NCLB is that the accountability, which provided an impetus for reaching these kids better was not all bad. I think we genuinely know more about helping English Language learners that we did previously. My mom and dad, born in 1917 and 1919 respectively were English Language learners. Both of them, "younger kids" in their family, benefitted from older sibs who picked up enough language to help them do okay in a school that didn't approve of their German. But without a doubt, due to strengths of the respective families, my mom was an adept reader and writer of English and my dad was not. It made a difference in my dad's actual earning capacity. So is it bad that after about 100 years, we're doing a little better by the English Language Learners in our schools?

On the other hand, having one teacher so pressured to provide "excellence" for 18 to 25 kids is simply a lot of pressure and it can blunt the joy of teaching.

I think rather than a chopping block approach to NCLB--kill it all--the challenge is to keep the good and get rid of the bad.

I have personally always thought that when we exhaust good teachers and have them drop out of public schools or flee to more protected environments, that the goals of NCLB is met. Create an impetus for mass privatization of education. Ultimately, the poorest won't get educated but who cares. They can be cannon fodder for the wars without end.

The theme of American public education has always been to educate every child. There was a recognition that some kids would master some bodies of knowledge well and others wouldn't but that there would be an effort to match education goals to the needs of the student. There is no doubt that this brave and large challenge has not always served everyone well. Inner city kids tended to get the very shortest of the short sticks. It is hard to educate children who are frightened, hungry, have physical and dental health problems and live with too much violence. Some teachers thrive on these environments; many eventually look for improved pastures. But what everyone agrees about is that when a child of poverty was able to climb out of poverty and move up a step or two OFTEN education was at the core of their success. I came from a poor family and education was core to my improved status over that of my parents. But in the most challenging of settings, the dream just simply didn't materialize _enough_.

But did NCLB with it's lure of privatization--ie charter schools and vouchers--really care about the lowest of the low? I don't really think so. It was an attempt to make a leveled education system where kids with money would get skilled care and if inner city schools died due to being further cash strapped and asphyxiated with kids with ability leaving them--well who would care? Not certainly Mr. Bush and arguably his Education Secretary. Tsk, tsk--you failed to meet AYP for this many years. We're pulling your funding. We'll give it some successful school (with a different demographic).

So I think that the lack of _focus_ of this article is in part what failed to generate discussion.

Interesting. This story has been posted for over 7 hours and there are only a few posts. That's how much Education matters in America, even among Progressives!

Shame, isn't it?

NCLB is doing exactly what it was designed to do...create a docile electorate unable to make decisions in the voting booth based on logic and fact. In the 12 short years Hitler was in power he accomplised that very thing and Bush has had almost as much time to do the same.
Linked with "faith based" school curriculum,
future voters will make decisions based on belief, not facts. Junk science like "intelligent design", which is presently being heavily promoted by right-wing ideologues
as a "balanced" presentation of ideas, will erode the already overburdened public school system. In my own state, there is presently an initiative favored to pass in the legislature
under the guise of respecting the religious beliefs of students that will enable children to opt out of any science course information they don't "believe" in, like evolution.
Students are now being subjected to idiotic exit exams that take up valuable course time in preparation and teach nothing. My wife's "honors" high school senior Biology students cannot even construct an intelligable sentence with subject and verb agreement...not one of them!
NCLB is a Trojan Horse just like the Patriot Act that strips citizens of their rights and "tax cuts" that favor only the wealthy while increasing the tax burden on the middle class; designed to accomplish the opposite of their misleading titles.

The problem with the educational system in the US has been the progressive devaluation of the teacher, along with growth and concentration of decision-making authority in the administrators. And now, the depth of the administration layer has grown all the way to the White House, all but crushing the people who are best qualified to make educational decisions -- the actual teachers.

Just like medical administrators are unqualified to make medical decisions, so are educational administrators unqualified to make educational decisions. It's not (necessarily) that the administrators aren't trained or qualified to practice medicine or education; many are former front line doctors, nurses or teachers. But the nature of their function, and especially the criteria by which administrators are individually evaluated, cause them to make decisions that are not in the interests of the patient or student, but in their own interests and that of the bureaucracy.

And the more removed from the front lines, the further from the interests of the patient or student are the decisions that are made.

And now we have the decisions being made in the White House. No wonder our educational system is for shit.

Well, what to do? Sure NCLB is a contributor, but so are the media moguls who control almost every bit of information that enters our children's heads.

Good point,whatfools, the NCLB act is a backdoor military draft into our public schools because it offers recruiters all the same info that college-recruiters are privileged to have.

Also, NCLB promises to flunk a lot of kids and whole school districts by 2014. Children with irresponsible parents who have lost their driver's license will not be able to take advantage of vouchers. The result will be that NCLB will leave behind millions of America's most vulnerable schoolchildren.

With college prices being driven up by the same folks who framed NCLB, access to college will be for the elites only by 2014. This is good news for military recruiters.

Also, NCLB is a way to privatize the "failing inner city schools." The bar has been set unreasonably high for kids with no cultural guidelines on education. For me, NCLB standards are low, but for struggling inner city families who have never had a family member graduate from high school, setting a "failure" bar anywhere near secondary proficiency with major consequences seems more like a punishment than an incentive.

I know. Let's take all the voucher and NCLB money and offer these city kids $5-10000 each for passing their "accountability" tests. I bet they'd find a way to get through the hoop.

Yes, but how much education does Bush need to make child soldiers out of our offspring?