I'll repeat this yet again. The No Child Left Behind Act, which in
Virginia lead to the SOL (Stop Our Learning) tests leveled the
playing field by putting the Finish line back at the Start line.
Nobody is left behind, just no progress.
The good teachers that use to use alternate methods to hook the kids
they either weren't getting it or had other issues are bailing due
to the fact that every minute is used as you said 'teaching to the
test.' My daughter make the point we could just create an SOL book,
let the students study that, self-paced and take each test as ready.
Not sure what we'd do with a nation of 10 year old High School grads.
But nobody would be left behind.
I do not want teachers unions to be gone.
I want to lessen their power to direct
education policy in this country.
No Child Left Behind is an example of how the union has less power to
direct educational policy. The unions were against NCLB, and we'll
just have to see how the Congressional direction of educational policy
will work out. I can tell you that 'teach to the test' drove my wife
out of the school system (teacher's aide). There's simply no time to
teach anything except what's going to be on The Test. The stakes are
very high for the student and for the school. Statistics are starting
to flow (reasonable ones, not just extrapolations) that indicate NCLB
doesn't help poor kids any more than the previous philosophy did.
Public or private, it also doesn't matter much when we look at the
economic status of the students. Poor kids don't do well anywhere.
The conservatives nailed this long ago when they noted with alarm that
the social fabric of our culture was unraveling. They are absolutely
right. Fixing that is not going to be simple or easy. Certainly, if
we could legislate morality, decency and common courtesy, we would
have by now.
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