Thursday, January 04, 2007

No Child Left Behind, a rant and a petition

Imperfect Genius directed my attention to a petition against the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). If I told you all the reasons I don't like NCLB, which seems to leave many children behind, I wouldn't get to eat dinner tonight. I have seen third graders terrorized after being told that if they didn't "pass" the year end tests they wouldn't be promoted to the next grade, anxious kids that I was supposed to treat so that they could do better on the test, and too many kids and parents who are angry that their education has been preempted by a federal mandate to raise test scores without thought to the deeper educational issues we have in this country. Some idiot bureaucrat seemed to think that if inner city kids aren't getting a good education, why, make them study their little behinds off to do better on a test and if that doesn't work shut down their school and bus them elsewhere. Sounds like a plan to me. Also all the teachers and principals who might get fired if the kids don't test better should take it out on the children. Right. If you agree with me, join 22,000 other Americans who signed the petition.
For more reading on the issues check out the Educator Roundtable.

4 comments:

m.m.crow said...

thanks for that petition. i had no idea there was one floating around. my daughter is nine, first year back in public school after two years of homeschooling and i insist that she never sweat the "circle tests". it's all such bullshit.
i've not been blogging for a while. hoping to get back on track now..... wish me luck. life got crazy there for a while.

Booklogged said...

I am a teacher and I hate NCLB! So glad to see this petition. I'm off to sign it.

philip said...

i just wanted to say thank you for the support...we are having a free meeting in Atlanta on March 17th...if you can't make it there, you might consider lending a hand with a 50 state protest.

Kathe said...

No comment. (Meaning, don't get me started on a ranting about NCLB!)