learnteach | argh

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"Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of the day that I signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. And since that day we've come a long way, fewer students are falling behind. People are beginning to get used to the notion that there's accountability in the public school system. Look, I recognize some people don't like accountability. In other words, accountability says if you're failing, we're going to expose that and expect you to change. Accountability also says that when you're succeeding you'll get plenty of praise. "

President George W. Bush
January 7, 2008

I can't even begin to respond to this. Well, I can begin, but it's not very reasoned. 3 points: The administration load of the program, and the continual testing (4 times a year by the school) suck up any advantage. Secondly, the metric (the test) is incredibly poor. Testing of this sort doesn't really work. Finally, the amount of funds pledged versus the amount of changes and work, and the codicil requirements which require many extra resources to pull up the low performing students, mean that we're taking all the programs that reward intelligence and achievement to try and enact basic social programs in schools.

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Well, one thing about "No child left behind," it pretty much guarantees that no child will get much ahead either. Gifted kids are ignored. Not because the teachers don't care, but because this system allows them no time for anything but teaching to the tests, testing, filling out paperwork and going to 'trainings' and meetings.

I was so glad Kelvin missed out on this. I feel very sorry for the kids caught in this trap.

"In other words, accountability says if you're failing, we're going to expose that and expect you to change. Accountability also says that when you're succeeding you'll get plenty of praise. "

So.. Why hasn't Bush changed? ah yes.. because 'some people don't like accountability.'
*sneers*

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What makes you think he isn't? Just because he's got a diploma and an office in the White House doesn't mean he's not a spoiled brat with no interest in anything intellectual.

Seven years ago this spring I taught my final semester as a public high school teacher. California, ever the front runner, had implemented several of these features in the years leading up to my defection. I'm sorry to say that I'm glad I left when I did, because it only got worse.

Educators should make decisions about education. Period. End of story.

There is no capacity for my brain, at present, to continue my commentary without launching into foul and treasonous language. I can only hope that we haven't done irreparable harm to the students who are trapped in this system.

People who are paid tax money should be held responsible for what they're paid to do. Period. End of story.

I seriously believe that a lot of the idiocies going on in the name of NCLB are attempts by entrenched administrators to make NCLB look ridiculous, to generate pressure against it. NCLB doesn't require testing progress 4 times a year; but

learnteach's school implements quarterly tests, and blames it on NCLB.

On the other hand, a lot of the failures of schools can be laid directly at the feet of the "education leadership". Whoever came up with the idea that phonics is not necessary to teach children to read ought to be tortured, slowly, enduring the death of a thousand paper cuts with all the misspelled words they've caused. Similar torture ought to await whoever came up with the phrase "drill and kill", and at a higher level, the idiots who replaced courses which taught facts with "critical thinking" courses which leave the student with no factual knowledge, so that all their "critical thinking" decays into parrotting the platitudes current among their teachers and peers. The originator of the idea of replacing actual science content with environmentalist propaganda needs to be composted. Slowly.

Fixing any of these problems won't take money, which is a good thing, as additional money correlates with poorer results. We're spending more and more per pupil on education, and getting less and less. NCLB is a reaction to that, which says "You have to show that you are actually *educating* *all* your students. Not just the middle-class white ones."

If you're looking to engage me, or have me bite back, it won't happen.

Sure, you're right.

People who are given money of any sort--tax or otherwise--should be held responsible. Passing a standardized test, and basing all the funding on it, is a very poor way to promote accountability.

Administrators know they are paid on test results, and many companies come selling systems to improve them. If the students don't get used to being tested, how will they test well? If you don't test mid-course, how will you tag problem classes? The worst horror is that schools are tracked, not students, not by classes, but by general school. And when your student turnover is greater than 30% (any school in an area with immigrants will see this; we saw 60% year to year (and I'm speaking of within a class year, not the matriculation or graduation)) the statistics are based more on the random chance of economics. (The worst of this is trying to teach Chemistry to students who didn't speak English and hadn't passed Algebra. I'm guaranteed to fail there...but where else can you put them

Phonics is actually a poor way to teach spelling, used as the main method, for the English language. German, Japanese, sure, no problem. English? Enough, ghoti, own, Town, pool... The results from the years where phonetics were the main way? Not so good. Start there, move on...

As for actual science vs. environmentalist propaganda, I haven't seen that. I did see scientific theory versus religous belief multiple times. And, for the record, I did award extra credits for research presentations on global warming. I also awarded extra credit for cancer research (knowledge of, or personal stories) and for doing experiments. Do you consider global warming to be environmentalist propaganda?

The reason we're spending more and more per student will increase with NCLB. The classes must be mainline; problem students must be kept in class. In a 200 student school, we had 14 teachers and 4 special education staff, and the special ed staff had to have Master's level degrees. So, NCLB (which required this inclusion) is draining the budget for non-special education.

Given that you will have a direct interest in this, I recommend visiting schools. And looking into alternatives. I'm somewhat convinced that this law is a law by the privileged to break the system and force school vouchers into play.

Teaching reading without phonics is like teaching math without counting. Seriously - just because there are more rules for sounds in English than in most other languages, and there are more exceptions than in many, doesn't mean that most words don't actually obey the rules of phonics, nor that one can eliminate phonics from reading.

I had a teacher whose approach was "look at the shape of the word". Even in third grade, I thought that was bullshit - if I didn't already know how to read, I wouldn't have learned by trying to memorize thousands of words, instead of 26 letters and about 20 supplemental rules. Abandoning phonics in reading is the primary cause of dyslexia. Countries like France, which have letter to sound correspondence rules as complicated as those in English, but thoroughly use phonics when teaching reading, have dyslexia rates about 10% of ours.

I had lots of real science in school, but I also remember teachers pushing ideas like recycling would save the world (when the economics of most recycling were really poor), or that electric cars would save us all (where would the electricity come from?) and that nuclear power was dangerous because of its similarity to nuclear weapons, or that catastrophic meltdowns would kill us all. Oh - and air pollution might cause irreversible global cooling.

There are some significant flaws in NCLB, though many of its opponents would find some of those to be features. But I'd be willing to bet that in the long run, NCLB will be blamed for more things it didn't require or cause than even the Patriot Act.

I hope you are including parents in the term "educators"!

Of course. The primary group I had hoped to exclude would be legislators.

OK. Sometimes the professional educators try to cut the parents out of the loop which (speaking as the rabid homeschooler in the group) isn't ok with me!

Personally, I always wished the parents of my students had more opportunity for input than the administration provided. There's nothing more valuable than a parent invested in his or her child's education.

After my oldest daughter's 2nd grade teacher made her hate math, I volunteered to teach a "math club" the next year, which amounted to the only "gifted" program the town had. It consisted of my daughter plus 2 kids chosen by the teacher from each of the 6 classes in her grade. I was delighted to be able to put a bunch of smart kids in one room, because the way our schools work, these kids pretty much never saw each other.

The first year we met in the library. The librarian, after a couple months of listening in, told me she wished she could be in the class because we were doing such cool stuff.

The next year, there was a space crunch, and the assistant superintendent who had encouraged me had left our town. My group was put in the cafeteria, right before lunch, where our voices echoed, and the kitchen noises and smells were very distracting. After a maintenance person walked between me and the kids, pushing a cart of trays, without so much as an "excuse me", I insisted that we be moved to a more private location for the spring. We got the reading resource room, and a promise that no one else would be using the space while we were there.

Eventually though, the resource teacher began bringing in kids for tutoring during our time, on the other side of a divider from us. It was a bad mix, because I had enthusiastic energetic kids, and we played lots of games, while the kids being tutored were having difficulty, and needed a very quiet, protected environment.

One day, I was teaching factorials (using Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar), and the kids were practically leaping out of their seats with eagerness to do gigantic multiplication problems. I loved it, but it was too much for the reading resource teacher. She went to the principal and announced that my group was obviously not learning anything because they were making noise.

The following week, the principal came to the room and bawled me out in front of the children for making noise. Dammit, if she didn't like what I -- a volunteer -- was doing, she should have spoken to me in private.

I lost all heart for working with this absolutely wonderful group of kids, and soon after that I quit.

(It was a great class. Maybe I should start up a similar group with the homeschoolers, around my dining room table.)

You should.

And let me attend!

It's a short daily commute, after all!

It's worth pointing out, as I have several times over the last several years, that this system is quite similar to ones used in many south-east Asian nations: Vietnam, Singapore et al. Korea is, last I heard, mercifully getting away from it.

The problem is: by teaching exclusively to pass the test, you generate students who can only pass the test. This is one of several major reason why you don't have many major thinkers coming out of these countries (per capita), dispite their education being "competitive." Singapore, especially, is noted for having marvelous scores on science tests. . .and no scientists worthy of note.

Is this the example we want to follow?

The system of rigorous testing is also quite similar to that which is used in France, another country noted for its lack of major thinkers and noteworthy scientists.

Is this sarcasm, as Ms. Curie would say?

NCLB tests are not what I'd call rigorous or systematic in any case.

Woah, I had never thought of that before, but it's true!

The GATE program at my kids school is a joke. Because none of the kids in it are allowed to do anything on school time that will remove them from the other kids in class, because that would Leave those Kids Behind... sigh
So they get labeled GATE, and they may get a Summer program opportunity, but there is nothing during the school year.
Principal lectured all the parents who raised their hands that they'd be fine with their kids being pulled from the class for GATE activities, on how we'd be negatively impacting the less advanced students. Oh um, maybe the teacher could then give those kids some more remedial attention? nah, their brains apparently don't work as well if the brighter kids aren't there.

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

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good to know GATE is worth the label somewhere!
all day as in the GATE kids are put in a class track by themselves? or have a day or 2 a week where they are focused on? interesting.
at our school, they haven't even decided what will be done for the GATE kids this year... it's still in the planning stages.

I was about to say that NCLB reminds me of Harrison Bergeron! I'm glad I checked your link before chiming in.

"People are beginning to get used to the notion that there's ... an idiot in the White House."

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argh

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No Teacher Left Standing

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Parent involvement; volunteer abuse

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How dumb are we?

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