Teacher's view on leaving children behind!

Thanks.! Er...I'd love to credit this to someone because I did not write it, but the email string was just too convoluted to figure out at 12:25 am. Anywho, more than you ever wanted to know about no child left behind....
The “No Child Left Behind” Act – A Teacher’s Opinion

I am a teacher and a member of the National Education Association. But my opinion on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act / No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) might surprise you. I think it should be abolished.

Several years before this legislation took effect, I began teaching. My favorite part of the job was inspiring students with a love of learning, getting them excited about their world and the events and ideas that have shaped it. I loved to see a student light up with the joy of discovery, feel a connection to something larger than the self, experience the satisfaction which comes with insight and newfound connectedness. This part of my job was the main reason I chose to become a teacher, but it has become nearly nonexistent since the passage of this disastrous piece of legislation.

The “No Child Left Behind” legislation mandated specific targets for schools to achieve, along with complex patterns of assessment. It has led to an all-pervasive emphasis on testing, proof of compliance, and numbers. The days are gone when teachers could teach a lesson just because the students wanted to learn about something specific, or just because the teacher had something unique to share. Now every lesson must be justified in terms of “standards” or “grade level expectations.” Every day is an exercise in acquiescence. Instead of helping students pursue their own interests as they master the essentials of a good education, they are taught that they must conform. NCLB has forced teachers and students to give up their own ideas about what is important in favor of what has been mandated. Individuality is suppressed, except as it applies to the learning styles by which students must master mandated curriculum. Creativity is dying.

Don’t misunderstand my point, because I know that standards are necessary, that there are certain things students should learn in each subject at each grade level. Standards are good. Obsession with standards is bad.

Ironically, the “No Child Left Behind” legislation has left many children behind. Have you noticed what is happening to the dropout rate? In most areas it is skyrocketing, as students who don’t fit the mold of what the government says a student should be abandon the education system altogether. I knew the problem was serious when I saw schools across the country canceling so-called vocational courses. Some students, in the days before this catastrophic bill became law, stayed in school because they loved shop class, or auto mechanics, or some other non-academic subject. But these are mostly gone now, as all the efforts and resources of the schools are being poured into one goal: compliance with academically-oriented government mandates. Instead of all children being educated, a permanent underclass is being formed. Was this the intent of the legislation?

Some students who are “improving” (according to the statistics) are casualties of this misguided effort, as well. By focusing on very specific learning goals, the school has become afflicted with a form of tunnel-vision. A mindset prevails which implies to students that there is one specific way to do everything. Even tasks as subjective as creative writing are reduced to a formula. Students who are creative without using the prescribed formula are told they are wrong, and they must change to “meet standard.” Micromanagement is the order of the day. And, another irony here, nothing is considered worthwhile unless it can be justified in terms of test scores. There is “zero tolerance” for anything other than approved topics and methods. Intolerance abounds: intolerance for different methods, opinions, intolerance for questioning of goals or methods, intolerance for those who are not like-minded.

Administrators, in fear for their jobs, have reduced teaching to checklists of topics to be taught, checklists of approved ways to teach. Variations from approved content and method are not tolerated. NCLB has reduced public education to a disjointed series of tasks to be mastered and measured.

The “No Child Left Behind” Act is essentially punitive. It would deprive schools which do not show statistical improvement in every area of funding. It would deprive non-compliant local communities of the opportunity to run the schools which their own children attend. If a teacher were to run a classroom in the same punitive manner, that teacher would be evaluated (rightfully so) as unfit.

NCLB is obsessed with statistics. Not everything in life lends itself to numerical measurement. The most idiotic thing I have ever heard a human being utter in seriousness is this: “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” The disbelief was palpable when I realized some people actually believe this, many leaders in public education among them. Let me ask… How can you measure whether a certain math lesson will help a child be financially successful later in life? How can you measure whether a lesson in literature will help a child understand the vexing questions which have bothered him for so many adolescent years? How can you use numbers to measure whether a particularly poignant history lesson someday in the future will give a student the courage to persevere in the face of adversity? How can you measure a student’s newfound joy of learning? How can you numerically assess whether a certain teacher, class, or lesson, has helped a student grow into a better or happier person? You can’t measure that.

Is all this teaching our young people to think for themselves? Of course not. The fact is, what passes for education in public schools today is not really education at all. It is training. Education produces a well-rounded person; training produces a worker who can perform a task. Education expands the mind, enhances creativity, leads to new thoughts and unique constructs, and is very personal. Training is impersonal; it equips the student to perform an assigned function. Creativity: not needed. Thought: optional. Personalities: irrelevant. Is this really how we want our schools to function?

The “No Child Left Behind” legislation was well-intentioned. Raising academic standards was, and is, a laudable goal. But how, and at what price? The elimination of all non-compliant curriculum, a pervasive attitude of intellectual intolerance, a generation of students who view learning as drudgery, the suppression of personalities, a productive but largely meaningless future for the next generation? The original intentions of NCLB are not being realized, and the cost of continuing down this path is too high. More students are opting out, good teachers are leaving or being pushed out of the profession, all involved are being trained to suppress their own opinions, voices, and creativity.

I concede that all these consequences are not directly created by the legislation itself. They are all, however, the product of a rigid educational culture centered on compliance and numerical proof based on flawed and limited assessments.

The “No Child Left Behind” Act does not live up to its name. It is rigidly intolerant of free thought, invasive in the forms it mandates and the micromanagement it inspires, arrogant in its promotion of a single vision of what education should be, obsessed with statistical proof, deadly to creativity, and at its heart, dehumanizing.

Please hear this teacher, and others who echo these concerns. NCLB was based on an idealistic but flawed vision. It is an experiment which has failed. Admit this, so we can move on. Do not renew this legislation. There is far too much to lose.