VOTE: Send Message to Obama to Replace NCLB

To vote, you can go to my blog at http://aplacetorespond.blogspot.com/

My understanding (and you can do further checking) is that Change.org is a website for Obama’s transition team where members of the public can submit proposals for his administration to consider. The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. The first round of voting to determine the top 3 ideas in each category will end 12/31. Wish I had known about this sooner.

'Tis better to vote than not. A couple more hundred votes and we could be in the running in the education category. Spread the word.

to cross post this at General Discussion? Or even General Discussion-Presidential?

I did go ahead and cross post this last night at GD.

The worst part is the teach to the test curriculum. They gut half the curriculum and replace it with this garbage. Certain testing and technology companies make money off this while the kids get screwed. And say bye-bye to research, social studies, science, art, music, critical thinking, ethics, and development.

With this teach to the test curriculum, kids learn less than ever before. And it eventually shows up in high school or college when freshmen in college enter writing on an 8th grade level that the state claimed is a 12th grade level.

Now here's the dirty secret. The tests have been manipulated by state educrats the past few years to increase the scores by simply making the tests easier and easier each year. In a couple of cases scoring systems were changed but by and large this is done by simply making the questions easier. I taught 10 years in public schools. I now teach once a week on Saturdays and my kids have pretests every week. I could write up a test for them on the material where the avg grade is 50 and I could write up a test for them on the material where the avg grade will be a 95.

"The tests have been manipulated by state educrats the past few years to increase the scores by simply making the tests easier and easier each year"

I realize this is very true in some states. However, in my state the tests are difficult and even some of my special education students, with IQs in the 50s and 60s, must take the same grade level tests as their nondisabled peers.

The manipulation you speak of is the inevitable consequence of NCLB's absurd mandate of 100% proficiency of all students, as David Berliner points out in his book "Collateral Damage".

Campbell's Law:

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

High-stakes testing is indeed undermining and corrupting public education.

People, please take 5 minutes, sign in and vote.

Please vote and spread the word!