Reply #7: overall, bad

[whalerider55]

first, its packed to the gills with garbage like being forced to allow miliatry recruiters into middle schools.

it was never close to adequately funded, but the rolling deadlines for meeting standards have never been amended, which has forced a lot of states (weho have their own financial problems) to pick up the slack, and where they haven't local towns and cities are being buried by educational costs to meet the stips in NCLB

there have been standards set for achieving certain levels of progress- so in true republican fashion, each state sets their own standards... so, if say, missiissippi sets low standards, and massachusetts had high standards to begin with, then there is much mnore pressure (because there is not as much to improve overall) on MA to meet the regs.

in MA, we had developed a statewide test to examine our curriculum and teaching strategies- that is what is was normed for. but when NCLB was enacted, rather than design a test that would actually measure student growth and accomplishment, the rep gov just decided that the MCAS test would be the law of the land for NCLB compliance- kids now have to pass a test that wasn't designed to measure student progress per se as a barrier to graduation.

and the tests are so poorly designed that one year they asked third-graders to write several paragraphs about what they would do on a snowday- when the kids across the commonwaelth blew the quetsion, someone did some research and discovered that this particular cohort hadn't ever experienced a snow day in the four years they'd been in public school.

Kennedy was snookered by Bush, and the implementation of NCLB, in addition to underfunding, has been gawdawful. For example, look at houston and rod paige- red states have been fudging test results for years.

just my two cents- then again, i am a school board member....


whalerider55