TX First State to Blow Off Bogus NCLB -- Sick of the Charade. Yee-HA!

Feb. 26, 2005, 10:58AM

State defies U.S. rules on grading schools
TEA maneuver cuts number of failing campuses but may endanger federal funding
By JASON SPENCER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Faced with the prospect of tagging nearly half of the state's school districts with failing grades under the federal accountability system, Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley instead changed the rules to reduce the number of failing schools sixfold.


The move, described by some as a direct challenge to the U.S. Department of Education's enforcement of the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, sets up a potential showdown between Neeley and the Bush administration.

National education observers said Neeley's move makes Texas the first state to outright refuse to follow the law's requirements.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3057839

That's a bush move if I ever read one. If you can't meet the bar, change the height.

I will love seeing how bushco deals with this one.


Cher

And the fact that Texas is doing it, well, let's just say I love the irony :D

LOL. I wonder what the democratic leaning talk show hosts would say about this. LOL. Too hilarious!!!! :silly:

the recruiting of kids down to 8th grade by the pentagon without parental guidance for the military thats in nclb!!

the nclb is a draft tool for lower income kids!!

its dispicable!!

fly

How interesting.

Yes, Texas is the so called "pilot" of the NCLB SNAFU. Here's what most people don't know. Rod Paige worked in the Houston school district, and put a lot of these things into place before moving on with *. About a year ago, it came out that HISD was falsifying reports of drop-out rates, listing the students as moved with no forwarding instead of as drop-outs. Houston schools were busted for "helping" students with the TAKS test (cheating) in order to get the rating they wanted for their schools. You see, in Texas, after the TAKS tests are graded, based on the overall performance of the school, nice big lettering goes on the building proclaiming it as exemplary or accredited (not as good, but still ok). The funding that the school gets is directly related to their TAKS test scores.

I live in the Houston area. I can tell you that for the last few months, my children have been "taught the test". Homework assignments are nothing but test preps. Students whose report cards are fine, but who didn't do so well on the practice test are sent to in school tutoring, and notes are sent home asking permission to keep them after school for more tutoring. The note basically implies that if you don't let your child stay after school, and he/she fails the test, it isn't their problem. You provide transportation home, tough shit if they normally ride the bus. My daughter is an A-B student who didn't do so hot on the practice test for math. No one thought she needed tutoring until then. TAKS testing was this last week. Tutoring ended the Friday before. When I questioned her teacher as to why she needed the tutoring, she told me that my third grader seems to have test anxiety.

So, while we are leaving the children farther and farther behind, we are also stressing them out and making them feel like it's their fault. It is not my nine year old's fault that she's not being taught. She's very intelligent, in the gifted class, but all she is learning is the test.

They are there to learn, not to be performing monkeys, not to be used by a system they can't possibly comprehend.

I remember when I was in school, they figured out that the athletes were not learning much of anything. So, they put in the "No Pass, No Play" rule. If you were in sports, band, choir, orchestra, whatever, you had to proove that you were passing before any game or competition. So, the kids who couldn't make it just quit the extracurriular activities. There was always the state test, but it wasn't mandatory to pass it in order to advance. Now, an honor roll student who is just not a good tester will be sent to summer school (money for the district!) if they don't pass the TAKS test. Makes sense, right? The teachers hate it, the parents hate it, the kids hate it...someone tell me why we have it like this?

My immediate thoughts:

1. It's no surprise that Texas is the first to fight back, since largely thanks to W as governer, they were the first to get this b*llsh*t thrown in their faces in the first place.

2. I happen to know (being from Texas and on good terms with some teachers there) that a lot of the time, kids who aren't really special ed but are likely to score low on the TAKS (or TAAS in the past) are labeled as special ed simply in order to exempt them from taking the test. I guess I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, but school districts DO cheat in order to make themselves look good.

3. I wish, I wish, I wish that someone in the mainstream media would point out that standardized test scores are completely irrelevant when it comes to rating how good a school is.

Welcome to DU! I like your insights on what's happening w/NCLB in Texas. So often people elsewhere don't have any idea what's going on outside of their own neighborhoods. (If there!) You'll like DU, I think. Lots of very intelligent folks here. Have fun posting!

She just very rarely ever posts.

I know because she's my wife.

Thanks for your good thoughts anyhow. :)

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

:D :D :D

it'll never be on MSM. It'd make Bush look more like a failure then he already is. I still think this is pretty funny. I'm glad they're trying to fix their school system though. Good for them!

calling it an "underfunded Washington mandate," which is exactly what it is, along with window dressing and a way to discredit public schools, in general.

Funny how this stuff is starting in the reddest of the red states.

is a very interesting read: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/

Take the 'who is good enough' test and see how you would do as an admissions person.

<snip>

Here's your chance to play the role of a certified reader for the University of California, Berkeley. It's your job to recommend students for the incoming class, not an easy task. The school received over 30,000 applications, but will only accept 8,500 applicants. Of those students selected, only 3,500 will enroll.

On the following pages are five actual applications to Berkeley for the 1999 freshman class. Based on the information provided, you must decide which of the students deserves to attend Berkeley. You may choose all, none, or some of the five applicants. After you've finished each application, you can find out whether the applicant got in or the school turned them away. You will also be able to see what an experienced admissions reader thought of each application.

You should know that according to University of California policy, each application will be read by at least one other reader before a final decision is made.

Read each application carefully. Each application should be reviewed in less than 10 minutes (most readers take about 6 minutes.)


Some insight into why we have the SAT test standard and how it affects or society:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/lemann.html

What was Conant's intent?

He had what he considered a kind of vision of radical democracy in the United States. There was a group of people who constituted the establishment at the time, and in the book I call them the Episcopacy. They were all male, all white, all Protestant, most Episcopalian. They were kind of high Protestant white men, very high-minded and decent people, but it's a very closed world and they're descended from basically the Puritans who came and settled this country. And, especially from Conant's point of view--that's who ran America, and they had it in a tight grip and nobody else could get any power in the country.

So he wanted to unseat those people and replace them. The idea he had in mind was an idea of Thomas Jefferson's that Conant had picked up on -- the idea of a natural aristocracy. He believed you would look out across America and you would find just out in the middle of nowhere, springing from the good American soil, these very intelligent, talented people. You would find a way to find them and let them run the country instead. So that was the quiet coup d'etat that he had planned, to engineer this natural aristocracy--identify them, train them, organize things so they got the power instead of this old group of people descended from the original settlers of America.

Can you talk a bit about Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson, after having retired as President, struck up a correspondence with John Adams who was, of course, also a retired President. Jefferson is in Virginia, Adams is in Massachusetts. And they wrote these really remarkable long letters to each other--very scholarly. Parts of them are in Greek; parts of them are in Latin. You can't imagine ex-Presidents writing this stuff today. Anyway, there's a famous letter, written from Jefferson to Adams in 1813, and Jefferson says "I propose to you that there is a natural aristocracy among men, made up of people who have virtues and talents." And then he contrasted it to what he called a "tinsel aristocracy," based on wealth and birth. And he said America should be run by the natural aristocracy.

I don't know exactly when Conant found this letter, but it's clear that when he found this letter he just thought--bingo, this is what I believe. And it's more than just that Conant found this letter that he loved. Conant had a lot of power and it's very clear he thought, "Thomas Jefferson had this idea, but he didn't have the means to put it into effect; I, Conant, for various reasons, do have the means to put it into effect". So he really thought of himself as the person who was lucky enough to be able to carry out, in the last half of the twentieth century in the United States, Thomas Jefferson's idea about a natural aristocracy. He referred to this letter again and again in his writings and it's quite clear that he thought he was the person who was putting into place Jefferson's dream.

without the funding it's meaningless bullshit that forces the financial burden onto states while Bush can look good and cut taxes for the wealthy at the federal level.

I think the GOP is actually scared in Texas this year. Remember, the Democrats actually picked up 3 seats in the November elections which was the first time Dems picked up seats in like 30 years. The GOP has a choice of pushing more of a regressive property tax burden onto poorer school districts to make up for the gaps or do this and take their chances next year in the mid-term elections. Education is the GOP's Achilles Heel in Texas this year and they will wear it around their necks next year if they don't do something like this.

by getting contracts to go in and fix the problems in school districts with "bad schools."

:kick:

or whatever they are called. Lots of pressure on them also. Thank goodness someone is smart enough and brave enough to see the naked emperor.