I am also a 4th grade teacher, MEd, 20+yrs in the classroom. NCLB is a huge mistake. It forces teachers to teach all students the same thing at the same time in the same way in order to make the highest possible scores on the same test. This is insanity. No two children even of the same age have the same interests, abilities, or learning styles. We were told NOT to teach science or social studies, and our students were not allowed even one minute of recess all year. After school tutoring and Saturday school further added to the boot camp atmosphere. Principals and teachers are fired if less than the required number of students fail the test and are promised huge bonuses of some undisclosed number of students make high enough scores. This kind of pressure caused good teachers to get out and bad teacher to be tempted to cheat. Of course it produces student progress AS MEASURED BY THE TEST but is this really progress? Does it make sense to require ALL students to take algebra? NCLB does. Think about it, how many times a day do you actually use algebra? Whole schools are "closed" if the required progress is not made not only by the whole student body but by the required percentage of each and every 'at risk' ethnic, racial, and income subgroup. So a 4000 student high school can be closed because a half dozen students of a particular subgroup fail to pass one section of that year's test. Closed means that the building is closed, the students are reassigned to a number of other campuses, and the teachers must reapply for jobs on other campuses. How on earth does that help anyone? Did those few childred fail because there was something flawed with the bricks and mortar at their old campus? NCLB crushes creativity, both of teachers and students. Instead of fostering a love of learning, it creates an oppressive climate inwhich the test is not just the thing but the only thing.
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Mixed Grades in a New Education Report
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It wasn't supposed to work this way. When the No Child Left Behind legislation was passed in 2001 it required schools to ensure that all students reach proficiency in reading and math by 2013. Schools where children fail to reach grade level in those subjects face penalties. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars went to support reading instruction in poor schools in the early years. The idea was that children who were exposed to the right kind of reading instruction, and plenty of it, would "get the basics" and then go on to show sustained gains in achievement as they matured. And while that theory appears to hold true with mathematics, schoolchildren don't seem to be building on their success in reading. If we want to see sustained gains in reading, experts suggest, the reach of the already controversial law may need to be extended—forcing middle-school teachers to put the same kind of focus on reading as teachers have in elementary schools.
Which would be fine with Spellings. Last week she traveled across the Midwest on a tour bus painted school-bus yellow, drumming up support for No Child Left Behind from parents, teachers, principals and business leaders. The Department of Education data supports the notion that the law is closing the achievement gap, she says.
"Is it a perfect law?" she asks. "No. Can we improve it? Yes, we can. But we can't back away."
Administrators from poor schools like Watterson-Lake in Cleveland, which is charged with educating the children from a poor community in a ravaged city, say that No Child Left Behind—and the high-stakes testing that comes along with the state testing, is helping. Teachers understand what material they're responsible for covering in the classroom, and rigid standards force them to intervene quickly when a student begins to struggle. "Yes, testing is a huge part of our curriculum. Yes, we teach to the test," says principal Caren Geissinger. "But I don't have negative feelings about that. I think we do a better job of educating kids. Ten years ago you couldn't ask kids about the function of government or the names of the presidents. They didn't know. Now Ohio demands we teach social studies, and you better believe it, all our kids know it!"
The only thing that will stop the controversy, though, would be a straight-A report card for the nation. And that, it seems, is far in the future.
© 2007
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