As a grandparent and an old geezer who attended my grandson’s third grade orientation two weeks ago, I was appalled at the degree to which bureaucracy has taken over public education today. We heard about weekly exams, signing nightly homework forms, educational goals, state NCLB exams and exam preparation. I kept thinking of Miss Geary, my third grade teacher in 1953, who kept us interested and taught us so much about reading, writing, and arithmetic. And somehow, we managed to have fun once in a while. I fear that what they are training my grandson to do is to function as a functionary in a cubicle. It’s scary.
Home school or school vouchers for private schools [including parochial] are the only viable way out of this quagmire. The lawyers have tied the system in knots such that now, not only are the public schools disgracefully inadequate, their expense is ruinous.
The Department of Education needs to be eliminated
.
Well, I have a different point of view. Before the NCLB law, I recall my oldest in public school. Reading was by the “gaze and guess” method, and by “silent reading”. This meant that children were encouraged to sit quietly with a book in front of their nose. Reading was not assessed, and if it was grossly below par we were told this was “developmental”. Math was by the Chicago method, meaning that algebra was begun in kindergarten along with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and percents and we were told that if they didn’t get addition in first grade, then they would certainly get in in 7th.
My kids did okay, because we did several hours of tutoring every night at home. Other kids grew up illiterate, but getting As and not even knowing how far behind they were until years later, when they either graduated not knowing how to read their diplomas or (in a “tougher” school system with a state exam, when they were told they were mentally retarded (nothing like a poor education to dumb down your scores) or ADHD.
Now, thanks to NCLB the schools actually care how their kids do. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a different sort of gaming the system. Now, what I see is a stream of kids who need discipline, or tutoring being brought to me for a diagnosis of ADHD, bipolar, OCD or Aspergers other such, so as to permit them to have extra time on tests, and to permit their schools to get extra funds for tutoring, or to permit their parents to get “disability” so that they can presumably spend the funds on their education.
The important thing that NCLB brought was universal testing. Teacher’s unions hated it because it exposed the failures. There is now some accountability, however. What I don’t like about the testing is that it tests for minimum standards. Teaching to the test then entails the basic basics. I would like to see a test for the bare minimums and one for excellence.
#7 School Choice would assist parental responsibility.
Those parents who wish their children to be taught in a cocoon of self esteem, and labelled OCD if they failed to get past question three in their homework would be welcome to the public schools.
Those parents who felt their kids would benefit from a quasi-military boot camp atmosphere, or a single sex atmosphere, or a Christian atmosphere, or a curriculum that involved play therapy or one that involved weekly tests could choose the school that best served their children.
Right now we pay for fairly dreadful public schools, and “responsible parents” spend time and money making up for the public schools deficits.
robroy is right, there exists a real need to identify schools that are not adequately educating students and find ways to improve them. While there are certainly problems with nclb, it is a step in the right direction. There is a reason colleges use ACT and SAT scores: there is tremendous variability from school to school. I’ll give you one example. I had a student last semester who was struggling to keep up in the college class I teach. I talked to her and found out she had graduated 8th in her high school class and couldn’t understand why she was having difficulty; she had been an A student in high school, but (she felt wrongly) had been required to take remedial courses in college. She gave me permission to check her test scores to see if she had been advised incorrectly (she had already passed at least one remedial course by the time I had her as a student). I was floored by her ACT scores: they were 17s and 18s. 20 is the minimal score to enroll in college level courses; 36 is a perfect score. Many state universities have an entrance minimum of 24. Then I thought, maybe she graduated 8th in a class of 12 or 25 or something like that. No. She graduated 8th in a class of about 250 students and could not meet the minimum requirements of any university without remediation. She had probably about an 8th grade level of competency. Just imagine what her fellow students with B or C averages were like. It is these schools which the nclb was trying to address.
the difficulty in attempting a “one size fits all” evaluation on schools is the assumption that, then, things would be fair and equal…but things aren’t fair and equal….communities aren’t equal, opportunities aren’t equal, funds aren’t equal, teachers aren’t equal and the expectation that a test is going to make all of that fair is not changing what needs to be changed
[blockquote]there exists a real need to identify schools that are not adequately educating students and find ways to improve them. While there are certainly problems with nclb, it is a step in the right direction.[/blockquote]
The biggest problem is that the end state of NCLB is to define success as having 100% of the students meet the standard, and no school with a normal population of school-age kids will EVER meet that standard. Even if the students all actually know the stuff, some will have missed class, or had a bad day, and will not pass the test.
(Further, it defines progress by comparing this year’s students at a given grade level to last year’s students at the same level–not to the same students at the start of the year. So variation in the student population is indistinguishable from variation in the school’s performance.)
A cynic would say that the real purpose of NCLB is to guarantee that all public schools will eventually be labeled as “failing”.
The problem is that most teachers, the NEA, and others would be happy to wish away the lack of accountability for progress by minority students required by NCLB. What’s the problem? Are the failure of minority students not worthy of attention by our education system? should we not do better by them? What are the solutions proposed by those by those in opposition? Its much easier to be a protester than be part of a viable solution.
“…there exists a real need to identify schools that are not adequately educating students and find ways to improve them.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No, we should identify those schools and close them. Give the money [in the form of vouchers] that is saved by closing the failing school and laying off the staff, to the parents of the children and let them either home school, place the children in a parochial school, or place them in a private school. If there is a public school that is actually educating the children and it is near and has room, they could even transfer their children there. Stop proping up failure at the expense of the children. How many years of failing education can a child recover from? One? Two? How long should a child suffer under a failing school’s incompetence?
School choice is the only answer that will actually fix the problems in our education system.
#10, “fairness” may be your assumption, but I don’t know that it was the assumption of nclb. Fairness is not what nclb was about. It was about improving education for those not getting a decent education. It was about making teachers accountable for their teaching results. No one size doesn’t fit all. But without attempts to have standards, there are no sizes at all, so that there was no fit at all. Is nclb perfect? Heck, no. What is? Is it a start to try to improve public schools? You bet it is. Can more be done … yes, obviously. But can it be made fair … hardly.
NCLB was a terrible idea. Yet more evidence that the federal government should not be making education policy, period.
Agreed. It needs to be at the state level. The Feds are doing too much.
As a grandparent and an old geezer who attended my grandson’s third grade orientation two weeks ago, I was appalled at the degree to which bureaucracy has taken over public education today. We heard about weekly exams, signing nightly homework forms, educational goals, state NCLB exams and exam preparation. I kept thinking of Miss Geary, my third grade teacher in 1953, who kept us interested and taught us so much about reading, writing, and arithmetic. And somehow, we managed to have fun once in a while. I fear that what they are training my grandson to do is to function as a functionary in a cubicle. It’s scary.
Home school or school vouchers for private schools [including parochial] are the only viable way out of this quagmire. The lawyers have tied the system in knots such that now, not only are the public schools disgracefully inadequate, their expense is ruinous.
The Department of Education needs to be eliminated
.
Well, I have a different point of view. Before the NCLB law, I recall my oldest in public school. Reading was by the “gaze and guess” method, and by “silent reading”. This meant that children were encouraged to sit quietly with a book in front of their nose. Reading was not assessed, and if it was grossly below par we were told this was “developmental”. Math was by the Chicago method, meaning that algebra was begun in kindergarten along with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and percents and we were told that if they didn’t get addition in first grade, then they would certainly get in in 7th.
My kids did okay, because we did several hours of tutoring every night at home. Other kids grew up illiterate, but getting As and not even knowing how far behind they were until years later, when they either graduated not knowing how to read their diplomas or (in a “tougher” school system with a state exam, when they were told they were mentally retarded (nothing like a poor education to dumb down your scores) or ADHD.
Now, thanks to NCLB the schools actually care how their kids do. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a different sort of gaming the system. Now, what I see is a stream of kids who need discipline, or tutoring being brought to me for a diagnosis of ADHD, bipolar, OCD or Aspergers other such, so as to permit them to have extra time on tests, and to permit their schools to get extra funds for tutoring, or to permit their parents to get “disability” so that they can presumably spend the funds on their education.
I have a simpler suggestion.
School Choice.
The important thing that NCLB brought was universal testing. Teacher’s unions hated it because it exposed the failures. There is now some accountability, however. What I don’t like about the testing is that it tests for minimum standards. Teaching to the test then entails the basic basics. I would like to see a test for the bare minimums and one for excellence.
Two words: parental responsibility.
#7 School Choice would assist parental responsibility.
Those parents who wish their children to be taught in a cocoon of self esteem, and labelled OCD if they failed to get past question three in their homework would be welcome to the public schools.
Those parents who felt their kids would benefit from a quasi-military boot camp atmosphere, or a single sex atmosphere, or a Christian atmosphere, or a curriculum that involved play therapy or one that involved weekly tests could choose the school that best served their children.
Right now we pay for fairly dreadful public schools, and “responsible parents” spend time and money making up for the public schools deficits.
robroy is right, there exists a real need to identify schools that are not adequately educating students and find ways to improve them. While there are certainly problems with nclb, it is a step in the right direction. There is a reason colleges use ACT and SAT scores: there is tremendous variability from school to school. I’ll give you one example. I had a student last semester who was struggling to keep up in the college class I teach. I talked to her and found out she had graduated 8th in her high school class and couldn’t understand why she was having difficulty; she had been an A student in high school, but (she felt wrongly) had been required to take remedial courses in college. She gave me permission to check her test scores to see if she had been advised incorrectly (she had already passed at least one remedial course by the time I had her as a student). I was floored by her ACT scores: they were 17s and 18s. 20 is the minimal score to enroll in college level courses; 36 is a perfect score. Many state universities have an entrance minimum of 24. Then I thought, maybe she graduated 8th in a class of 12 or 25 or something like that. No. She graduated 8th in a class of about 250 students and could not meet the minimum requirements of any university without remediation. She had probably about an 8th grade level of competency. Just imagine what her fellow students with B or C averages were like. It is these schools which the nclb was trying to address.
the difficulty in attempting a “one size fits all” evaluation on schools is the assumption that, then, things would be fair and equal…but things aren’t fair and equal….communities aren’t equal, opportunities aren’t equal, funds aren’t equal, teachers aren’t equal and the expectation that a test is going to make all of that fair is not changing what needs to be changed
[blockquote]there exists a real need to identify schools that are not adequately educating students and find ways to improve them. While there are certainly problems with nclb, it is a step in the right direction.[/blockquote]
The biggest problem is that the end state of NCLB is to define success as having 100% of the students meet the standard, and no school with a normal population of school-age kids will EVER meet that standard. Even if the students all actually know the stuff, some will have missed class, or had a bad day, and will not pass the test.
(Further, it defines progress by comparing this year’s students at a given grade level to last year’s students at the same level–not to the same students at the start of the year. So variation in the student population is indistinguishable from variation in the school’s performance.)
A cynic would say that the real purpose of NCLB is to guarantee that all public schools will eventually be labeled as “failing”.
The problem is that most teachers, the NEA, and others would be happy to wish away the lack of accountability for progress by minority students required by NCLB. What’s the problem? Are the failure of minority students not worthy of attention by our education system? should we not do better by them? What are the solutions proposed by those by those in opposition? Its much easier to be a protester than be part of a viable solution.
“…there exists a real need to identify schools that are not adequately educating students and find ways to improve them.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No, we should identify those schools and close them. Give the money [in the form of vouchers] that is saved by closing the failing school and laying off the staff, to the parents of the children and let them either home school, place the children in a parochial school, or place them in a private school. If there is a public school that is actually educating the children and it is near and has room, they could even transfer their children there. Stop proping up failure at the expense of the children. How many years of failing education can a child recover from? One? Two? How long should a child suffer under a failing school’s incompetence?
School choice is the only answer that will actually fix the problems in our education system.
#10, “fairness” may be your assumption, but I don’t know that it was the assumption of nclb. Fairness is not what nclb was about. It was about improving education for those not getting a decent education. It was about making teachers accountable for their teaching results. No one size doesn’t fit all. But without attempts to have standards, there are no sizes at all, so that there was no fit at all. Is nclb perfect? Heck, no. What is? Is it a start to try to improve public schools? You bet it is. Can more be done … yes, obviously. But can it be made fair … hardly.