No Child Left Behind inflicts curse on public schools

http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1065268816154690.xml

A Portland teacher of bilingual education finds the law doesn't recognize his qualifications

10/05/03

JONATHAN STEINHOFF

Last year I was a finalist for Teacher of the Year. Last year the National Geographic Society awarded me a $5,000 grant to help build an outdoor classroom with natural materials. Last year the Portland teachers association and school board asked me to mentor new teachers. Last year I trained a group of Portland teachers in the Tribes process, which nurtures supportive classroom communities.

Last week letters went home to the parents of my students telling them I'm not a "highly qualified" teacher. How can I fall so far in one year? Easy. I've been afflicted with the No Child Left Behind Curse. "No Child Left Behind" is the Bush administration's catchy yet hypocritical name for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that President Bush signed into law.

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We've come under the curse. It's the same one that's afflicted Gulfport Elementary School in St. Petersburg, Fla., and thousands like it. Gov. Jeb Bush says the school did so well academically last year it's due for a state bonus check of about $40,000. But Jeb's brother George says Gulfport performed so poorly parents can pull their children out. Which Bush is right?

This is the curse that forces students who haven't learned to speak and read English as well as students with severe disabilities to take high-stakes standardized tests they can't possibly pass. Those scores are then used to judge school performance. This is a curse on our public schools. What else can you call it when arbitrary standards are imposed on schools, curriculum is twisted and distorted into test preparation packages, and "failing schools" are subjected to state takeover and charter status?

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But let's not confuse what's taking place in our public schools as "accountability." No Child Left Behind is a curse on both teachers and students. Jonathan Steinhoff is a third-grade teacher at Atkinson Elementary School in Southeast Portland. He has 14 years of teaching experience in Oregon and Illinois. He says the Oregon Education Association is arguing his case. "In another irony, I can take a test to show I understand (teaching methods)." Steinhoff lives in Northeast Portland with his wife and two children: jsteinhoff@pps.k12.or.us

:kick:

that doesnt even read the newspaper...

Spread this far and wide.

With all of the rest of the destruction waged by *, NCLB is small potatoes, on the surface. Folks may disagree with it, but it is not a priority.

The privatization of public ed should be a priority, folks. So should the corporate ownership of curriculum. We're talking about the education of the people who will be voting in another dozen years. Learning to listen and bubble the test where you're told is not a garden of intellectual prosperity, but it's great training for learning to vote the way you're told.

This should be read by all.


No Child Left Behind is designed to make even successful public schools look like failures.

Someday, enough people will notice. Until then....work is not a healthy place to be.

is the beginning of the end of public education as we know it. IDEA is up for review and the children who are so needy, so disabled that they cannot take TEKS will be tested. When they fail, as they must, the school will be considered "non acheiving" and vouchers will be issued. Now these private schools are not required to teach science, nor must they meet standards, nor help the visually impaired, the deaf, physically disabled etc. So public schools will become warehouses where "normal" kids never see a child who has disabilities and vice versa. Money will be diverted to private schools. The poor, and many of us are becoming poor, will find a lousy 1-2 thousand dollars doesn't cover costs, guess what, back to public schools and the circle continues.

I am caught in a terrible situation this year. We underwent massive redistricting to squeeze kids into available campuses; there is never enough money in the construction fund to keep up with population growth. Over half of my class is new to our school; they've come from all over, including out of our district. Their records have not yet arrived, so I can't check their histories.

Here's the situation:

25 out of 30 kids are well below grade level. On all initial assessments, test scores, etc. Some have already been retained.

I am under the gun to teach those mandated grade-level standards that we will test them on. I am required to use only the aligned text books and materials that my state and district have pronounced acceptable. We are getting random room checks by administrators. When they walk in, they have to find evidence of compliance. Including kids who can recite the standard they are currently working on.

This means that I'm not given the time or support to give them what they really need. I can't slow down; we have quarterly testing schedules, mandated district wide, as an accountability measure to prove we are keeping to the mandated schedule. I can't be caught teaching them something not in the standards. So I can't "catch them up." This is the districts response to sanctions because we've had schools not meet their test score improvement goal. When the state or the feds come in to audit, they want documentation that they are mandating everything the state says they have to do.

What's the result? Instead of making steady progress towards where we want them to be, 25 out of 30 are failing. And if I covertly try to help them by teaching something not in one of those damned books, I am sanctioned. If I get caught. Let's hope I don't get caught.

This artcile couldn't say it better.

No Teacher Left Standing.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

This thread should be filed under the heading "Be careful what you wish for....". We have been sold a bill of goods in public education. We have been told to leave education to the "professionals" and this is what we get. We have lost track of one important truth: The education of my kids is MY responsibility, not the government's. If my kids are not getting a good education, then it is my responsibility to fix the problem. The reason that "public" education is in such a mess is that the federal government is involved (which it is not authorized by the constitution to be involved in.) The public school system was designed to get everyone to thing alike. That is the only thing that it is doing well. So instead of turning out people who know how to think, it is creating millions of "sheaple" (people + sheep), who mindlessly go to work each day, pay taxes, gripe at the government, watch the news on tv, go to bed, and wake up the next morning to do it all over again. A wise man I met one time told me something that has had a profound effect on me: If you keep doin' what you been doin', you gonna keep gettin' what you been gettin'.

This is DemocraticUnderground you found your way into.

I'm a proud, thinking public school graduate from a country that puts far, far tougher federal and provincial (the equivalent to state) guidelines on its curricula than does the US. Guess what? That means I don't have to take a standardized test to get into university or college, nor for graduate school. Several of my teachers also helped write the curricula for their subject areas. The problem with Americans and government projects is that they don't trust the government enough to have high expectations for it, so it ALWAYS fails to deliver what it ought to.

Yes, you have a responsibility to help improve your school, but you don't do that by starving the school of public money; you do it by volunteering, by writing letters to the school board, and by generally getting involved.

Also, just remember that if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're ONLY going to get what you had gotten before if EVERYTHING ELSE STAYS THE SAME. So if someone or something changes something else that affects you're situation, you may get a completely different result without changing your behaviour a whit.

Smarter monkeys, please.