teacherken's musings on everything

that has no real purpose except to destroy public schools. NCLB = "No Child Left Behind" which is the title use for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act rrewrite done under this administration. I could offer all kinds of details -- how the testing scheme as set up up is already causing schools at the elementary and soemtimes middle school level to drop time and funding for subjects that are not tested -- this currently includes science, which will be added in a few years, but definitely any kind of social studies, and art, music and PE. I could explain how the requirements for Annual Yearly Progress guarantee that every school will eventually be found wanting -- no school will be 2014 be able to reach 100% proficiency in each disaggregated category for each grade, and it will only take one group in one grade for that school to be found wanting. I could further explain how as currently drawn NCLB allows for shifting of resources to private tutoring companies with no requirements for accountability on their part, even as the justification for the shift of funds is based on a regimen of testing as the only measure of accountability.

I can do all this, and much more. I will not, at least not directly, because I have written so often, both here and elsewhere, on the subject of education, and much of what I have written has in some way addresssed NCLB. Instead I will be grateful that at least for the present it looks like the Congress has a little sense and will not at this time expand the testing regimen further to high schools.

I will then offer you links for a number of resources -- that is, diaries which I have posted, sometimes here bu always at dailykos (which is why I will give links for the posting there) that address NCLB and other issues. Click, read, and then think about your responses. If you wish to comment, or to contact me, do so by posting a comment to this diary here. Thanks.

I have done many education-related diaries at dailykos. The best single place to go for them is for my Education Meta Diary 3, which includes imbedded in it a recursive set of links - to metadiar#2 which has a llink for the first metadiary. For each educational diary listed in each metadiary, you will find some annotation as to the contents and purpose of that diary.

Since Meta Dairy #3 was posted on April 30, I have added the following additional educational-related diaries.

What's Wrong Wtih Education, which contains the contents of an email sent to a listserv of people with concerns about high stakes testing -- itself a major issue even independent of how much it has increased under NCLB. I think you will find it useful.

High Standards from Virginia, from another email to that same group. In this case someone who is a mother (and herself a former Virginia teacher of the year) explores some of the problems with the high stakes tests in Virginia -- the title is ironic, as you will see.

If you truly care about education contains a series of annotated links for learning more about educational issues. It is quite worth going through. Let me just list several particularly appropriate to this post:

- No Child Left Behind grassroots organization
- NoChildLeft.com - which describes itself as "a site advocating a sound approach to school improvement."


I do hope you take the time to explore these links. I do not see how you can educate yourself about the law and its impact on real education in this country and still remain in any fashion a supporter of the law.


This diary has been posted as my effort as part of the Progressive Bloggers' Union -- it is the 19th joint effort (I have not participated in many), and thus I put in this code for technorati and other methods of linking: PBU19