NCLB: Parents are feeling our pain.

Mysterious Teaching — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 23:53:42 GMT

Here is a link to a blog from parents. I thought it was pretty good. What Your Child Won't Learn While

re: Will No Child Left Behind be Left Behind?

Rahab — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:41:41 GMT

Well, I know of exactly one teacher who does actually like NCLB. She argues that you need an objective standard to measure progress. What do you envision as a non-cookie cutter approach? The idea is that we supposedly need a standard for every student and teacher and a way to determine if they measure up. So, how would we make this determination on a case by case basis for the millions of students in this country? Do we scrap the whole thing and do away with yardsticks or try to fix the existing attempt to evaluate progress based on a firm standard?

The main complaint I have heard is that funding is tied to how well the students perform on the test. So if you have a school where a lot the students have learning disabilities that aren't being properly addressed or don't eat breaksfast everyday that could skew the results and that school would loose money. Who gets shafted when the school loses money? the kids do.

I suppose we could open up education to the market and parents could vote with their pocket books. The successful schools would thrive and the non-successful ones would be full of the students who couldn't afford the better schools.