What is it that people are so mad about with the No Child Left Behind act? Is it the fact that teachers are held accountable now, whereas before there were so many atrocities in the education system that it was ridiculous? I don't really think that's what is making people mad . . . the way that states choose to handle No Child Left Behind in their schools may be the difficulty here . . . how can we improve it? Are the tests wrong, too hard, to rigid, are the requirements unreasonable, unclear, or just off the mark? Why do we always criticize the idea behind the programs and not the execution of the programs? I'm not saying who's mistake it is, but really, what do you think is good and bad about the system?
11 comments:
The no child left behind act encourages teaching for the test instead of developing critical thinking skills. Part of the problem with teachers has been that they have already been doing that and the No Child Left Behind Act does not improve that. Also because of the No Child Left Behind Act in cooperation with funding cuts for school systems, my younger sister is facing larger class sizes due to teachers being laid off because of "no child being left behind" and teachers not being rehired to take the spots because money is not available. So it is not that teachers are being held responsible, my problem is that the act is having the opposite effect on the school system, allowing for many children to be left behind in large classroom settings.
Here's some good reading on the subject (the whole blog is good reading in general):
For Teachers and Educational Critics AlikeI'm in agreement with Val- standardized testing creates an environment where objective achievement is everything, and individual, creative endeavors are cut of funding and marginalized. True, not every student is a musician, but not every student is a writer, or a mathematician. If we value as a society the production of unique art, literature, and thought, then we should see the reliance on standardized testing as limiting our society's potential for growth.
Also, standardized testing carries within it a racial and class bias- more affluent, caucasian communities will see better results on test scores because the tests are geared with their strengths in mind- sitting still for long periods of time, focused concentration, following directions closely. Of course, no good comes from a rowdy classroom, but there should be a happy medium in learning between free exchange between teacher and students and strict, conditioned regurgitation of facts.
Hi everyone, by the way, it's lifeguard/Billings Point Lauren from last summer. Weren't you looking for another liberal persepective? :)
The problem with this whole discussion is that most of america has already bought into this lie of "holding teachers accountable." First, NCLB has no provisions for teacher accountability. What George bush is referring to when he says teacher accountability is raising the amount of college courses and/or standardized tests that a teacher has to take to get and keep certification. Can anybody explain to me how passing more standardized tests 1)hold teachers accountable and 2)makes them any better teachers. Anybody who's ever taught anything knows that simply knowing the subject matter does not mean you can be an effective teacher. There is absolutely not provision in NCLB that has to do with actually evaluating how a teacher performs in the classroom. A fellow teacher of mine (who happens to be a registered republican) has taught special ed. for 8 years. Because of NCLB he may loose his certification because under the new rules he is not "highly quallified" because he teaches three subjects and does not have college degrees in them. All of his collegues and all the administrators that have observed him agree that he is an excellent teacher, but NCLB looks at his transcript and all of the sudden says he is no longer fit to teach. Teachers would have a lot less trouble with the whole accountability thing if it actually was based on our teaching, and being evaluated by an expert teacher in our field. Furthermore, even if teachers evaluations from administrators were used to "hold them accountable" that is still unfair because most administrators have no clue how to teach your subject. Please tell me how my principal who used to teach P.E. for a few years and hasn't actually taught a class in 10 years can effectively evaluate how well I teach music!!! Maybee the bottm line though, is this: I go to work at my 35 student class size California Public school every day and work really hard. I am accountable to my students, and their parents. No one has to make me teach.
Wow, I was so caught up in the whole unfair to teachers thing, that I forgot why NCLB is the most damaging piece of education legislation ever passed: IT RUINS KIDS EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE. If you've ever looked at the tests the students take, you know that they are either way to easy and a joke, way to hard and a waste of time, or (and this is usually the case) irrelavant to what they do in school. So.....to compensate, teachers basically have to gear their teaching to bad tests. Wonder why kids don't seem to care these days? They go to overcrowded schools where they don't get enough individual attention (I have almost 200 students in my grade book), take classes in which the teacher is literally forced to teach to stupid tests, and all the fun activities have to be cut because so many of the mandates in NCLB are unfunded or underfunded. Yes, money is taken away from music, sports, art, and other extra curriculars to pay for more testing. We are forced to spend money we don't have on tests we don't need whose results are meaningless.
Are you aware that if every school met the requirements in NCLB every year, that in 2020 every student in every demographic in every subject would be at grade level proficiency? How assinine is that!!!! Lets apply that to police forces. If they simply reduce crime at a ceartain rate every year, there will be no crime in 2020 and if they don't, they are failures. And what does NCLB do to help us meet those requirements? NOTHING!! Well Bush says that it raises standards. I think raising standards would mean smaller classes, better paid teachers to atract better qualified teachers, better facilities, and good supplies. Its not rocket science--If you want to raise standards, then give the scools a higher standard of support. Kids need small classes, good teachers, and enough books--testing doesn't give them that. If I want a car to go faster, testing it over and over again won't make it go faster. The only way to improve student learning is to improve their education--Testing is just an inaccurate measure of student acheivement, not a way to improve achievment. A bad thermometer can't make it hotter outside.
Maybe the saddest thing about NCLB though is this: Teachers can't even choose what or how they are going to teach. All curriculum and methods are literally prescribed on a daily basis. If a math teacher has a bit of a slower class, they can't slow down and make sure that the kids understand it, or even change their method of teaching. No, they have to leave their kids behind and move on so they can cover all of the materials that will be on the test. I did some math tutoring last year and realized that these kids haven't been learning anything for about 3 or 4 years because at some point they fell behind and were never given a chance to catch up. Funny, isn't it, how the "one size fits all" policy of (No) Child Left Behind leaves so many kids in the dust.
What a grand idea. Make sure that the teacher is prepared to teach thier field of choice. Make sure they have spent the time studying the topic that they have to be experts on in order to focusing on what actually happens in a classroom, teaching. The myriad of things happening in your classroom each day cannot be handled if you are not sharp on your subject.
Being as much of an expert in your field as possible allows you to be 10 steps ahead of the students at all times. It allows you to be flexible, and it allows you to become a good teacher of your subject. When teachers are allowed to hold jobs without college degrees in their area, they bring our profession down. It fuels the myth that teaching is a job "anyone" can do. Teachers are very good at complaining about the negative press our profession recieves, and how much we get shit on. Very rarely are teachers willing to work to make that negativity go away. If we want to be held on the same esteem as doctors and lawyers (which is where we belong) then we need to set the same high standards for our profession.
All well respected professions require at least a Master's Degree. Law and medicine being the biggest. Yet, as teachers, most of us are not even required to obtain a Master's degree, only the "equivalent" of 36 hours of post-undergrad, which can be fulfilled in a multitude of ways, most of which never see a graduate classroom. The Union doesnt help here either. Our union is back in the stone age. We are represented as if we are working in industry, like auto workers or electricians, fighting for fair wages and work practices. What should be happening is that the union needs to be elevated to professional status equal to the Bar Association or the AMA. We need to work for ourselves, and we don't. We let idiots like Reg Weaver lobby for any damn thing he pleases, further lowering the public's perception of our profession.
NCLB helps us to obtain a little of that respect. To be able to say that your school is staffed with qualified teachers, who have done the requisite study to actually know their subject, and who are required to obtain higher education degree's and are compensated for it. In my district right now, if I continue working in graduate school, completing my master's will net me another $2000 a year, and they will pay for 75% of the tuition. Great deal. Yet, if I want to go further and obtain a P.H.d in my field, making me the most qualified teacher possible, I recieve no tuition assistance, and only an additional $500 a year. The person who is the Asst. Intramural Sports Director will make an additional $789 dollars this year. Figure that one out.
As far as "teaching to the test", that's what our profession is!!!! Are standardized tests evil, HELL NO. Do they need to be constantly improved and worked on, HELL YES. Sitting around and complaining about having to take tests is childish. A good teacher can run their classroom, create an incredible learning experience for thier kids, and HAVE THEM WELL-PREPARED TO TAKE A STANDARDIZED TEST. I know, I do it everyday. The "experience based" education revolution of the last 15 years has had serious pit falls. Come visit my district, where kids were not required to memorize multiplication tables or spelling words, or ANYTHING when they were in elementary school because that was considered only regurgitation of facts and not allowed. Now I have 8th graders who don't know their times tables, cannot do simple math without a calculator, can't spell, and CANNOT TELL TIME ON A NON-DIGITAL CLOCK.
You must test kids to know what they learned. Very simple, you teach it, you test it, you analyze to see what they didnt learn, they you re-teach. If you never test it, you never know what they learn.
For those of you working in districts that have "scripted" curriculums, that is not the fault of NCLB. That is the fault of your superiors who made a bad, bad decision as to how to respond to NCLB. FIght the system, show them you can teach what you think is best AND that your kids will still do well on tests.
Let's stop running away from testing and start using testing to make our public schools better.
jason
As I understand it, and please correct me if you have heard differently, many teachers rebel against NCLB because, to borrow Jason's phrase, they are "teaching to the test." Much of their curriculum has to be abandoned or cut drastically because high scores on the test are such a priority. Tell me, does a high score necessarily mean total comprehension? In college when you crammed for a test, how much of it do you still remember now as opposed to what you remember from a class that engaged your interest?
I'm not against testing. I think there's a time and a place for it, and I agree that there should be a level of comprehension among students and teachers alike before progressing to higher levels. After all, I've been known myself to take a sort of warped pride out of a test I aced, and knew I was acing whilst taking. But testing can't be all we expose our students to, and it can't be the end-all, be-all standard by which they are judged.
So help me out- I'm not a classroom teacher, I don't have to deal with NCLB in any form- as a teacher do you feel like you can teach in your style and your curriculum and still prepare students for the tests, or is there a standardized curriculum you're required to follow in order to procure high results? A happy medium?
For the record, NCLB does not dictate curriculum, nor does it dictate what happens in a classroom on a daily basis.
Most states have a set of standards for all subjects, and either had them completed or in the process of being completed before NCLB was even up for debate. These standards allow for organization of the basic items students need to know about each subject they encounter. NCLB piggy backs on this idea and says that we need to make sure our students are meeting those standards. Many states had comprehensive exams in the making long before NCLB. And these tests are not merely multiple choice fill in the bubble anymore. Writing components are being added, most of which are quite challenging, which a good exam should be.
The problem occurs when those in charge of setting curriculum go overboard and focus to much on the getting that sought after score. They overexposed students to these exams, so much so that the students learn to hate the very idea. A lot of curriculum writers go as far as scripting every word a teacher says during a lesson so that they are sure every student is getting the same experience. This idea is INSANE. Yet, teachers do not focus their arguments in the right place to fight this. They immediately run to the steps of the White House and say NCLB did this to me. WRONG. Your district superiors did this to you because you were to lazy to volunteer to be on the curriculum writing commitee.
If more teachers would fight the fight correctly, more of them would have better control over what they teach. My district is a prime example. In Maryland, students take a series of exams throughout thier high school years in many subject areas. This year's 8th grade will be the first that must pass all 4 tests to graduate from high school with full diploma. Focusing on science, since that is what I teach, they have to pass a biology exam during the spring of 10th grade. Our science curriculum county-wide is standards-based focusing on all areas of science, not just biology. It gives the teacher freedom to teach however they choose, as long as the students are achieving the set standards. Since implementing this curriculum success rates have jumped over 25% to a near 80% pass rate.
It can be done, just fight the fight in the right place.
jason
Does the fact that more students are passing a standardized test mean that they are now comprehending the subject matter, or does it just mean that they are passing the standardized test. If a student is very knowledgeable, but doesn't test well, its not fair also. My brother, for example scored far below me on SAT and ACT type tests, but both of us know that we are about equal on intelligence and had similar grades. Also, we still haven't answered the question about why teachers are not evaluated on teaching, they are evaluated on credentials. Take that logic to any other feild and its ludacris. If I can pass a test about how to play football, now I'm a great football player. If I got a really high score on a criminal justice test, now I'm a great detective. Because I scored really high on my psyc. tests, I'm a great psychologist that understands my patients. Come on!! Also, do you really belive that it is necessary to get a masters degree to be an effective teacher? Think about the good teachers that you had. Did they all have masters degrees? And what about the funding issue. Wouldn't smaller classes and better funding make a lot more difference than more testing? Lastly, even if the specifics of NCLB don't script curriculum, tell me how basing the evaluation of a school solely on test scores doesn't make districts focus too much on test results, which makes districs take the easy way out and force teachers to teach to the test.
Intelligent debate is about finding solutions.
Stop the liberal rhetoric and come up with a solution. I am tired of reading the same old comments. If you can't develop a solution, then don't debate.
And saying that a master's degree is not key in becoming an effective educator is ridiculous and a slap in the face to the very profession that you think you are a part of.
Okay--Here's three solutions
1. Smaller Class size.
2. Increased pay to attract better teachers.
3. Better facilities and supplies.
Here's why:
1. Smaller classes move faster and more effectively because there is more individual attention and fewere students that have problems learning the material for each teacher.
2. How many really smart people do you know that decided not to become teachers because of the poor working conditions and low pay.
3. If you don't understand why better facilities and adequate supplies makes for better schools, you're a moron.
Good point, but my only concern as a music teacher is being evaluated by an administrator who doesn't know anything about teaching music. Just being a principal doesn't make you a good teacher. In my district at least, being a principal means you were "next in line" for the job. We have some awesome principals, and some boneheads. I never felt slighted being evaluated by my principal because he had a great appreciation for music and was a former elective teacher, but I wouldn't feel so sure with some other administrator in there. Teachers, just like anybody in any other profession, need to be evaluated by people that are proven in what they are observing. The most helpful advice that I've ever gotten from being observed was from other music teachers. If I was CFO of a big tech. company because I was a financial guru, I wouldn't go evaluate the software progammers, I'd get a software programmer to do that. I have no problems with higher standards, but the best way still to raise standards is to provide better working conditions and support. Higher standards are meaningless unless the resources are there to meet those standards. Class size reduction, better compensation, and better facilities need to be part of raising the standard.
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