Paul Cummins: Leaving Children Behind

[marmar]

from Truthdig:


Leaving Children Behind

Posted on Jan 30, 2007

By Paul Cummins

Recently I was asked to join three others in a radio interview concerning the pros and cons of the No Child Left Behind debate. The others were temperate, balanced and guarded in their judgments. One, from the Fordham Institute, offered several intelligent insights and speculated that it is probably too soon to render an accurate assessment of the program’s efficacy. The other two interviewees were public school principals who, I believe, were trying to be fair and politically careful in not leveling any harsh criticisms. When asked by the moderator, Warren Olney, what’s good and what’s bad about the bill, both stated that it was good to design clear standards and to identify, by groups, who is and who isn’t measuring up. When addressing the “what’s bad” question, they suggested—rather guardedly, I thought—that perhaps not enough resources were being allotted to enable the schools to really succeed, and that some teachers may believe that the test narrows the curriculum too much and forces them to teach to the test.

In the face of all this politeness, I felt compelled to fire away with both barrels—as best I could, given the sound bites that radio compels one to issue. So, unlike the other three, I intemperately, unguardedly and one-sidedly made the following comments about No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

1. In fact, NCLB does force the teachers to teach to test; consequently it squeezes the joy out of teaching for both teacher and student.

2. It narrows the curriculum to math and reading because those are the areas tested. The arts, human development, physical education, community service, environmental education, field trips and other electives are given short shrift, at best.

3. Several teachers I have spoken with even say they are so depressed by the pressure and narrowness of the test that they are about to quit the field. In reality, I have yet to talk to one classroom teacher who has had anything positive to say about NCLB. ....(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070130_paul_cummins_leaving_children_behind/

[Demeter]

1. Don't Confuse Them With Facts!

Little closed minds can't handle them....

[fasttense]

2. I have worked with teachers

and they rarely, if ever, say anything positive about the No Child's Behind Left.

My biggest problems with it is it encourages route memory and relies on tests instead of teachers. Guess what happens when a school does this? The classes get larger. You don't need individual teacher's time if you are just demanding memorization and regurgitation on tests. The class sizes keep getting bigger and bigger and this seems to concern no one. I'm glad to see Paul Cummins said it.

It is a know and proven fact that the more students being taught by one teacher, the poorer the education. Increasing the number of teachers, increases student's scores. But somehow the entire nation has forgotten this obvious fact, ever since no child left behind.