My Underground Secret Society
Another Guest Blogger on Teachers & The NCLB Act
posted Sunday, 11 June 2006
This one is by my husband, Vinnie, who is also a teacher.
Establishing accountability in education is a good idea, but the NCLB Act is a very poor way to achieve that goal. These are my major points of opposition:
- It makes the assumption that a child’s learning aptitude depends solely on the teacher’s ability. In reality, we can give the most qualified teacher to child A who grew up in a poor, inner-city environment. Then we give the most incompetent teacher to child B, whose college-educated, suburban parents have been sending him to summer camps, tutors and piano lessons since kindergarten. Child B is going to score better than child A. NCLB will penalize the most competent teacher of child A.
- It reverses the cause-and-effect of the problems in public education. Incompetent teachers do exist, but they exist because the system has made it too difficult for many qualified individuals to want to stay in education. When these qualified individuals leave, schools are desperate to find anyone to fill the positions. Now the NCLB Act wants to get rid of these underqualified individuals without taking a hard look at itself in the mirror, as if good teachers will come back to take more abuse from the system.
- Most importantly, it reduces the entire learning experience to a bunch of scores and stats. It makes our children, parents and educators focus solely on the destination and not the journey. The end result may be the only important thing for the adult world and corporate America, but not for our children. They have the right to enjoy learning. They should not spend all their tender years focusing on scoring techniques. They deserve to be children.
When I first heard about Bush’s NCLB Act, I made some predictions. Each of them has unfortunately came true. A number of teachers in California have been charged with helping their students cheat on standardized tests. Schools have been found ‘skirting the law’ to pull up average scores. These incidents are unsurprising when children and educators are forced, by NCLB, to focus only on scores and not on learning. Take a wild guess who created these problems. Teachers or NCLB?
Previous Posts on this Topic:
- The Reality of Being a Teacher in the 2000's (June 5, 2006)
- Are Teachers to Blame for our Failing School Systems? (June 4, 2006)
- So How's That "No Child Left Behind" Act Going? (April 17, 2006)
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