Leaving "No Child Left Behind" Behind

[teacher gal]

New article from researcher Richard Rothstein, of the Economic Policy Institute:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=leaving_nclb_behind

[madeline_con]

1. I have never met a teacher who likes it. n/t

[teacher gal]

2. And for good reason.....

For 16 reasons why the law should be scrapped, please go to www.educatorroundtable.org. And that's just 16 reasons - we could add more. It is worth your time reading the petition found at the Educator Roundtable site. Thank you for the response.

[teacher gal]

3. Must

grade papers this evening but if anyone out there is willing to help me get this diary some attention, that would be great!

[teacher gal]

4. thanks for the rec

somebody!

[Frustratedlady]

17. I just sent it to my daughter and 3 granddaughters who teach.

They will pass it on to their fellow staff members.

[teacher gal]

19. thank you!

[madeline_con]

6. You're new! Welcome...

I work as a Teacher's Assistant. I cannot BELIEVE that supposed "education experts" did anything other than run the other way from legislation like this.

I wonder if Laura Bush:

A. Was never asked her opinion by DUH-bya Darlin'.

B. Was such an abysmally BAD teacher and librarian that she actually endorsed it. :eyes:

[teacher gal]

5. another dig for this

before I leave for a bit.

[ChazII]

7. k&r.

eta" #4.

[teacher gal]

8. thank you

Hope some DU people will actually read the Rothstein article!

[teacher gal]

9. Hoping for comments

to help keep this issue up there. I've got to go grade papers....sigh.

[teacher gal]

10. I hope that people are increasingly realizing

that NCLB undermines democracy in favor of corporate takeover and domination and that it is the very children the law purports to help that are being most harmed by it.

[LWolf]

11. I would like to highlight this section:

The bolding is mine.

<snip>

SCHOOLS AND SOCIAL POLICY

In one respect, NCLB betrays core Democratic principles, denying the importance of all social policy but school reform. Inadequate schools are only one reason disadvantaged children perform poorly. They come to school under stress from high-crime neighborhoods and economically insecure households. Their low-cost day-care tends to park them before televisions, rather than provide opportunities for developmentally appropriate play. They switch schools more often because of inadequate housing and rents rising faster than parents' wages. They have greater health problems, some (like lead poisoning or iron-deficiency anemia) directly depressing cognitive ability, and some causing more absenteeism or inattentiveness. Their households include fewer college-educated adults to provide rich intellectual environments, and their parents are less likely to expect academic success. Nearly 15 percent of the black-white test-score gap can be traced to differences in housing mobility, and 25 percent to differences in child- and maternal-health.

Yet NCLB insists that school improvement alone can raise all children to high proficiency. The law anticipates that with higher expectations, better teachers, improved curriculum, and more testing, all youths will attain full academic competence, poised for college and professional success. Natural human variability would still distinguish children, but these distinctions would have nothing to do with family disadvantage. Then there really would be no reason for progressive housing or health and economic policies. The nation's social and economic problems would take care of themselves, by the next generation.

Teachers of children who come to school hungry, scared, abused, or ill, consider this absurd. But NCLB's aura intimidates educators from acknowledging the obvious. Teachers are expected to repeat the mantra "all children can learn," a truth carrying the mendacious implication that the level to which children learn has nothing to do with their starting points. Teachers are warned that any mention of children's socioeconomic disadvantages only "makes excuses" for teachers' own poor performance.

Of course, there are better and worse schools and better and worse teachers. Of course, some disadvantaged children excel more than others. But NCLB has turned these obvious truths into the fantasy that teachers can wipe out socioeconomic differences among children simply by trying harder.

[teacher gal]

13. LWolf

Thank you so much for highlighting this important section of the Rothstein article. Incidentally, he is one of the most respected researchers in the nation.

[LWolf]

24. I wish my superintendent were reading this.

I like her, and I do believe she wants to support us while we are struggling to comply with NCLB, but for once I'd like to hear politicians, school boards, and superintendents referencing this and similar material, instead of what we DO get.

[southerncrone]

12. NCLB has created a group of non-thinkers.

I teach HS & we are now getting students that have been largely educated under the NCLB model. We are having a terrible time with them. They don't have any real, usable study skills. They cannot think for themselves. They think they must have a "study guide" for EVERY class instead of being able to make their own. They don't have good deductive reasoning skills. They expect to be "spoon-fed" the information & regurgitate it back, like a tape-recorder. They don't want to be bothered with anything "hard". They do not know how to research, compare, and create a hypothesis based on a group of data. They are very robotic in their learning techniques. And worse, they can apply little, if any, of the knowledge they possess in a constructive & useful manner. They don't have LIFE SKILLS!

The sooner this disaster is dumped the better off the entire country will be!

NCLB came at a critical time for America--we are facing more competition for our jobs from other countries, so this has doubly crippled American youth in competing for future jobs. Instead of creating better thinkers, we created robots with fewer thinking skills. All so someone in an ivory tower could "measure" something they thought was intelligence to justify paying teachers our "HUGH" salaries. :eyes:

[teacher gal]

14. Yes!

NCLB and high-stakes testing are an excellent way to dumb down our children. They don't even know what they are missing.

[teacher gal]

15. Come on people!!!!!!!

This issue warrants lots of attention. A nation that does not value its children cannot remain strong or endure very much longer.

Consider all the huge and growing gaps that contribute to the achievement gap - a gap which opportunistic corporate/politicos love to decry while ignoring the poverty gap, the housing gap, the incarceration gap, the health-care gap, and a whole host of societal problems that contribute enormously to poor academic performance among our most at risk children.

It is shameful that the richest nation on earth treats and neglects its children the way we do.

That achievement gap has been a Golden Goose of profit and opportunism for big business interests.

[teacher gal]

16. Determined to keep this up there

for a few more minutes. I hope someone will help me out here.

[southerncrone]

18. K&R

[teacher gal]

20. Last push for the night....nah, probably not

[cmd]

21. retired, but still kicking

RIP NCLB

[LeftishBrit]

22. Most interesting

We have equivalent stuff in the UK, introduced at around the same time (who was the big genius who invented it all?) and it's had a very negative impact and is being somewhat modified.

Here's a post I made on a thread on a similar topic a few months ago:

Market-style competition in the public services, whether between individuals or between institutions (as in our 'league tables' of schools in the UK), may sound like a good idea, but tends to prove disastrous. Schools become factories, teachers become assembly line workers, and children become processed peas.

Merit pay and league tables in education are usually based on test scores, sometimes supplemented by school inspections. This encourages 'teaching to the test'; the neglect of subjects or parts of subjects that are not tested; undue pressure on children who are seen as close to a test grade boundary; neglect of children who aren't; and reluctance to teach children who have special needs or are for other reasons unlikely to perform well in tests. And while some school inspections are necessary, lengthy school inspections, on which a teacher's or a school's funding depends, are likely to distract from actual teaching and prove counter-productive. A study in the UK showed that children did worse *on the government-required standardized tests* during and just after OFSTED inspections than at other times.

If test scores are not to be the criteria, then what are? The only likely alternative is ratings by pupils, parents or superiors - any of which can be corrupted easily.

At the beginnings of state education in the UK in the 19th century, teachers in state schools were paid by 'results'. This almost strangled state education at its beginning.

Here are some fascinating excerpts from the 1867 'General Report' by Matthew Arnold, well-known English poet *and* school inspector, referring to the effects of this system, introduced in 1862. (Part of the report was reprinted in Stuart Maclure's "Educational Documents"; Chapman, 1986.)

'The mode of teaching in the primary schools has certainly fallen off in intelligence, spirit and inventiveness during the four or five years after my last report. It could not well be otherwise. In a country where everyone is prone to rely too much on mechanical processes and too little on intelligence, a change in the Education Department's regulations, which by making two thirds of the Government grant depend on a mechanical examination, inevitably gives a mecahnical turn to the school teaching, a mechanical turn to the inspection, and must be trying to the intellectual life of a school...

More free play for the inspector, and more free play, in consequence, for the teacher, is what is wanted.In the game of mechanical contrivances, the teacher will in the end beat us... by ingenious preparation (of children for tests).'


Some things never change!

[teacher gal]

23. Thank you LeftishBrit!

I'm off to school this morning but hopefully can return tonight to discuss these issues more. Thank you so much for contributing.