The Irony of No Child Left Behind (and Untested)
Posted by elusivejustice on May 4, 2008
The Herald Leader ran this story about one ex-Principal, Peggy Petilli, allegedly (and believably) being driven to do questionable to downright crappy things to bring up her school’s test scores. The schools my own children go to focus so much on testing really high and the teaching is incredibly focused on “teaching to the test”. I have yet to hear a teacher say this is a good thing when they are in private and being more candid. Is it any surprise that kids are being MOVED BEHIND so the school can meet No Child LEFT BEHIND?
We have got to get off of this vicious circle of accountability gone awry. Let teachers teach the information and skills children need, give them the resources, and you will see them and the schools succeed. All we are teaching our children now is how to fake it and make it.
May 4, 2008 at 5:42 am
The question is this: How do you make teachers accountable? I agree NCLB has gone awry. However, the education field has not come up with any system of accountability.
May 5, 2008 at 10:18 pm
David posed a great question. But, prior to NCLB, were teachers held accountable? Wasn’t the system self-checking? I realize that measuring our students is a good way analyze the success of our education system, but sometimes things just cannot be measured. I can’t measure my own knowledge…how can we measure the nations?
May 13, 2008 at 8:27 am
I personally know of certain schools which encouraged learning disabled children to tranfer to other schools within the district to raise test scores.
The ctbs test did a great job measuring students thirty years ago. And the better school system used that test to check themselves. However, the CATS test does not have reliability or validity that the old ctbs test does. The question is this; does teaching to the test produce better wholly educated students? No it doesn’t. Moreover, because schools focus on the subject area tested that year, and ignore other areas; it hurts all students.