[IP] "NCLB: The Implausible Dream"
Begin forwarded message:
From: Brett Glass <brett@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 11, 2005 12:01:02 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: For IP: "NCLB: The Implausible Dream"
NCLB's implausible dream
Jennifer Wilmetti
PERSPECTIVE
While the intent of the No Child Left Behind Act was praiseworthy,
the means
put in place to achieve the goals are flawed in several ways.
1. This is an under-funded mandate. We are told to perform miracles
for every
student with a lack of necessary resources. I am supposed to make
sure that
all of my students read up to grade level, but yet I can't buy any
books to
help me do it!
2. We have been told "all means all." In other words, when the act
said that
100 percent of students would have to be proficient by the year 2013,
they
meant all. This includes students who have disabilities that make this
completely impossible. By simply enacting a piece of legislation, it
won't get
rid of the fact that we have students with mental retardation,
cerebral palsy,
fetal alcohol syndrome, Down's syndrome, etc., who are never going to
be able
to achieve this. Period.
3. Many people have started to call this act "No Child Left
Untested," as that
seems to be the focus of our teaching these days. How are we supposed
to get
these students up to proficiency when we never have a chance to teach
them
because we spend so much time testing them? We can test them until
the cows
come home but that doesn't change the fact that as it stands we haven't
increased the amount of time that students spend in school. We have
to find
the time to test them somewhere, and that time is coming from our
instructional time. Thus, we are teaching them even less than we were
before
this act.
4. Finally, this act holds all school staff members accountable for
student
achievement (or lack of student achievement). But we are missing two key
pieces of the puzzle: students and parents. Teachers can do everything
imaginable to increase learning but if neither of these groups buys
into the
package, nothing will improve. In Wyoming, none of the mandated tests
are used
to hold students accountable. Students learn this very quickly and
fail to
take these tests seriously. A couple of years ago, I was speaking
with a class
that included the valedictorian at our high school about the WyCAS
test. When
asked, the students, including the valedictorian, said that they
hadn't taken
the test seriously! If this young man, who was obviously bright and
driven,
didn't take it seriously, how many students did? And yet, this is one
of the
measures of whether we as teachers are doing our job or not!
As for the parents, if parents don't care about education, students
usually
don't care either. Parents who don't read to their children, don't
attend
school functions, don't participate in parent/teacher conferences,
fail to
provide safe home environments, etc., are not doing their job as
parents. The
schools can try to educate them on the need for these things, but
sometimes
there is just no reaching them. Sometimes they are worried about
making enough
money to keep food on the table. Others are caught up in a web of
drug abuse.
The reasons are as numerous as the students who aren't making
proficiency.
Because no lawmaker wants to try to enact a piece of legislation that
would
hold parents accountable for their child's achievement in school, the
law was
passed that made the educators solely accountable. This isn't fair
and it
isn't realistic. Education needs to be seen as a table with four legs:
teachers, school administrators, parents and students. If any one of
these
legs doesn't hold up its weight, the table will fall over and there
won't be a
flat surface for the education to build on.
While I can agree that we do need to do something to reform U.S.
education,
"No Child Left Behind" is not the tool to do it. Let's repeal this
act and
start fresh with realistic expectations. Let's include everyone in the
conversation, not just lawmakers. And we need to realize that we
aren't going
to be able to reform society through the schools. Reforming society
as a whole
is a different conversation.
Jennifer Wilmetti of Rock Springs is a teacher.
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2005/06/11/editorial/forum/
e223ef748e82be328725701c006ee83d.txt
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