Football version of NLNCLB

[GrnBay007]

If NCLB has standardized curriculum how they can label kids in honors classes?

[texaspackerbacker]

Milwaukee Public Schools, that all I need to say, horrible, sad, and horrible. The sad thing is they get teachers, but the end up leaving the turn over is sad, but expected and understood.

Demographics there too--you could say the same for almost any big city, almost mission impossible.

007, here in Texas, and I would think elsewhere, the curriculum is standardized for the minimum to be taught/learned. They have TEKS--Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Honors and AP in high school and TAG in elementary and middle school is over and above that. When I was a teacher, I had no problem teaching the TEKS--what some disparagingly call "teaching to the test"--and still having plenty of time for creativity and fun stuff, etc.--using the more interesting extras as incentive for them to learn the required stuff.

Thus, IMO, there's plenty of flexibility in NCLB--if the teacher is good, and if the students are not too horrible for whatever reason.

[MJZiggy]

Ziggy, my kids were out of high school before NCLB came along. I do, however, have grandkids in the system, and I have both been a teacher and a substitute teacher during the NCLB scenario.

I say again, the three most important elements of NCLB are standardized curriculum, standardized testing, and judging of teachers by objective standards--the performance of their students. Do you have anything against any of those things?

Sure, there are lesser elements of the program that people could oppose--the leaving out of parents, the control passing to the Federal government.

What exactly do you have against the program?

As for the DC schools, no, I'm not even going to get into that except to say one word: demographics. Talk about mission impossible, I doubt anything could make that school district successful, and it has nothing to do with teachers or NCLB.

My problem with NCLB is that my kid is not at the bottom of the barrel. He's swimming at the top and because he's not being left behind because he's one of the bright ones, he's not allowed to soar. The NCLB curriculum does not offer an adequate amount of differentiated learning--it panders to the kids at the bottom and fails to challenge the kids at the top.

It also fails to give kids a well-rounded education. Art and music education has suffered. You've heard of teaching to the test, well, kids are learning rote math and reading without being taught adequate problem solving skills and they're not being taught how to learn on their own. You haven't noticed how incurious children have been lately? great they'll be able to read and answer multiple choice questions, but how do they figure out life when that's an essay question to say the least? They've finally come to realize that they need to add physical education back into the curriculum because kids weren't moving all day and simply can't concentrate that long.

Parental involvement has been entirely discounted as if it counts for nothing and your problem with the DC school system is not demographics. There are some seriously rich folks that live inside the beltway. They just have a failed school system (which you said there are none, or is it only certain demographics who deserve a decent education?). You simply cannot hold teachers accountable for things that are beyond their control--and the punishment is to cut their funding? That'll make it easier for them to bring their performance up.

[texaspackerbacker]

I sympathize with your situation, but I still say, it isn't because of NCLB. Lots of places, including where I am here, it isn't like that. There is easily enough flexibility in the system that a good teacher can find time and resources to do justice to the better students. Not to rub it in, but those of us who were/are more conservative teachers (there are a lot here in Texas, probably not many there) tend to try harder in that area.

When I taught 4th grade, I had no problem incorporating art, music, etc. into teaching core subjects. That really didn't apply when I taught charter high school, but as a substitute teacher, I know that here, at least, the non-core stuff--art, music, etc. is flourishing as much as ever on the high school level too.

As for "rote math", have you seen the tests they are teaching to? In the Texas tests, at least, there is an abundance of problem solving.

As for taking the parents out of the equation, it ain't that way down here, but to the extent that it is up there, I say again, it isn't NCLB, but the fact that you have a whole lot of liberal thinkers in education who tend to prefer government to family. If you are objective at all, you know that's true.

And the problem indeed IS demographics in DC. Anyone who has ever been a teacher knows, it doesn't take very many rotten apples at all to spoil the barrel--and you have a LOT of rotten apples in DC. I would think it is an extremely tiny percentage of those rich folks inside the beltway who actually send their kids to public school--and the ones that do stand a strong probability of being dominated by the bad ones. Here again, if you are objective at all, you know this a a problem completely disconnected from NCLB.