One Teacher’s Cry: Why I Hate No Child Left Behind

[marmar]

from The Progressive:



One Teacher’s Cry: Why I Hate No Child Left Behind
By Susan J. Hobart, August 2008 Issue

I’m a teacher. I’ve taught elementary school for eleven years. I’ve always told people, “I have the best job in the world.” I crafted curriculum that made students think, and they had fun while learning. At the end of the day, I felt energized. Today, more often than not, I feel demoralized.

While I still connect my lesson plans to students’ lives and work to make it real, this no longer is my sole focus. Today I have a new nickname: testbuster. Singing to the tune of “Ghostbusters,” I teach test-taking strategies similar to those taught in Stanley Kaplan prep courses for the SAT. I spend an inordinate amount of time showing students how to “bubble up,” the term for darkening those little circles that accompany multiple choice questions on standardized tests.

I am told these are invaluable skills to have.

I am told if we do a good job, our students will do well.

I am told that our district does not teach to the test.

I am told that the time we are spending preparing for and administering the tests, analyzing the results, and attending in-services to help our children become proficient on this annual measure of success will pay off by reducing the academic achievement gap between our white children and our children of color.

I am told a lot of things.

But what I know is that I’m not the teacher I used to be. And it takes a toll. I used to be the one who raved about my classroom, even after a long week. Pollyanna, people called me. Today, when I speak with former colleagues, they are amazed at the cynicism creeping into my voice.

What has changed?

No Child Left Behind is certainly a big part of the problem. The children I test are from a wide variety of abilities and backgrounds. Whether they have a cognitive disability, speak entry-level English, or have speech or language delays, everyone takes the same test and the results are posted. Special education students may have some accommodations, but they take the same test and are expected to perform at the same level as general education students. Students new to this country or with a native language other than English must also take the same test and are expected to perform at the same level as children whose native language is English. Picture yourself taking a five-day test in French after moving to Paris last year. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/mag/hobart0808

[ladywnch]

1. our education system (and our children) has been so damaged by NCLB. they've

dumbed down the curriculum to make sure as many students as possible pass the standardized test. it is just scary. My step-son is in 'advanced' classes including language arts. He wrote a paper last year that looked like it could have (should have) been written by a 6th grader which would be fine if he were in 6th grade. Unfortunately, he was second semester 8th grade. He has lousy reading comprehension. His vocabulary is equally limited and yet according to the standardized tests, he is 'above average'. In conversation he constantly uses incorrect vocabulary. When you correct him he just shrugs cause according to his test results he's doing just fine. He often has so many pronouns in play you can't even understand what he is talking about. It's almost like talking to someone from a foreign country with limited English skills. You have to stop and think hard to translate it all. There are no critical thinking skills being taught at all. These kids couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag! And this is one the better school districts in the state! Yet parents see their kids getting great scores, being placed in 'advanced' classes and think their kids are really doing great. They don't stop to look closer. They just walk around with their chests puffed out. I've come to realize that 'advanced' classes are what was considered 'mainstream' level material when I was in school. If the kid is in 'advanced' studies today he would be a general course work 25 years ago.

No Child Left Behind is designed to destroy public education and keep children, for lack of a better term, dumb. It is designed to create a permanent underclass to do menial work for the upper class. Unless you send your children to a private institution they will not get the education they need to excel and solve problems. No Child Left Behind is one of the most insidious plans ever devised to destroy the middle class.

[Doctor_J]

2. There were/are two main points of NCLB

1. Make some big GOP members rich. In this case the main culprit is lifetime ne'er-do-well Neil Bush, who apparently spent all the money he stole from the Silverado S&L in the 90's, and so had to be given another windfall from this disaster.

2. Ruin american schools. The GOP counts on the electorate being ignorant. As soon as US schools are upgraded to the level of those in Europe & the Far East, Repukes will be extinct.

[central scrutinizer]

3. Points 1 and 2 go together

Ruin American schools - make people clamor for better education - offer vouchers as the only alternative - use vouchers to create a tax payer funded system of private schools - break the power of teachers' unions to push wages down - get rich. Rinse, repeat

[katty]

6. yup, that is the grand scheme--GOP: tax $ for private schools

bailout Wall Street with Fed (our taxes) $ - for THEIR f/ups and deliberate swindling and obsfucation by banks, etal--let "the sheeple' be free to bail Uncle Sam out!

[rudy23]

4. The Orwellian name should be a giveaway--this program was set up to fail

The neocons are rabid ideologues who believe government is inherently evil. Any success on the part of any government entity would nullify their whole reason for being.

These ideologues hate public schools. They hate public anything, but public school is up there on their list of enemies. Isn't that language kind of indicative of their contempt for equality that is supposed to be supported by our government? They're not talking about who is getting ahead ("Head Start"), they're talking about making sure that the worst students hold up the entire educational process, so they aren't "left behind".

One of their number one goals is to get us to hate government so much, that we nearly abolish it---the only entity that represents "the people". Billionaires reaaaaally hate the concept of one person, one vote. Almost as much as they hate the idea of public schools.

[a la izquierda]

5. I have an interesting perspective I think.

I am only 31. I remember high school and middle school vividly. I am now a teaching assistant at a large university, working on my PhD. When I was in high school, there were students who had troubles with learning, with reading, with writing (and I stress that last point). But I saw C students become B students and many of my classmates my senior year in high school were not top tier in our freshman year. You don't get that way when teachers are consistently teaching to a stupid exam. What you get is stagnation, not improvement. Students with learning troubles still exist, of course, but it seems to me that in only 12 years, the numbers are greatly magnified.
I remember taking the CATs in elementary school and some stupid high school version of that. I don't test well at all on those things. Never have and I probably never will (though I don't have to take any more, really). Nobody cared, they knew I was smart, and that those tests, in the end, don't necessarily prove one thing or another. The biggest disappointment was that I couldn't take Spanish in 7th grade because I didn't do well on the CATs in 6th grade. Big deal. My mom's girlfriend has taught for twenty plus years. She has never stressed about district testing until the last few. My mom works in the school district and has even noted the teachers that taught me are much more unhappy today than they were only a few years ago.
My point? I can't tell you how many "honor" students I have every semester who cannot compose complex sentences. Teachers, it seems (and this is absolutely not their fault) do not teach writing. Students in my classes do not use proper grammar, and I am not talking punctuation, because for crying out loud, I forget how to use commas from time to time. They do not know the difference between "they're, their and there"; simple things like paragraph formation confound them. All they care about anymore is "what's going to be on the test?". I tell them, if you can't construct a solid essay answer, all the answers to "what's going to be on the test?" aren't going to help them. Critical thinking has gone the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo. Many do not know their own histories (US history), let alone the histories of other countries. It is a frickin' disgrace. Many smart kids have been absolutely FAILED by no child left behind and I cannot, for one, imagine the jobs our teachers must do daily. I surely couldn't do it.
I grew up in public schools. In less than two years I will have a PhD in history. I learned to write from an assortment of phenomenal teachers in the Hazlet, NJ public school system. I decided to become a historian because of where I grew up and because of several great teachers. My kids will go to public schools (unless I get a job somewhere where they teach creationism...then sorry, but no way).