No Child Left Behind

[Sarah Cassil]

I would love to hear everyone's opinions about the No Child Left Behind Act. I haven't met anyone yet who likes it the way it is--most people I talk to seem to feel it needs to be changed in some ways or dumped altogether.

What's your opinion? If you think it just needs to be changed some, what are the changes you suggest? If you think it needs to go away entirely, what sort of policy would you like to see? What about special education services? ESL?

I am hoping that together we can come up with a list of suggestions to send to Senator Obama as he works on his education policy.

[thecoolbreeze22]

We need a step up in education and it's expectations for our coummunity. NCLB is not a rise in requirements it is a dumbing down of expectations.

[Sarah Cassil]

That's a great way of phrasing it. I've met several kids who went through school thinking they're doing well, and once they got to college--where the standards and expectations are much tougher--they were shocked to find out they've been placed in remedial classes instead of regular or even honors classes.

It's truly a shame.

[Kristi Woolsey]

The May 21, 2007 issue of The Nation has a really good article on NCLB.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/darling-hammond

I think NCLB has done great damage to our already floundering school systems. Perhaps the intent was there, but it was not well-thought out or implemented very well. Now our schools are even farther behind, and a lot of students living in poverty have been over-looked and kicked out. NCLB also just doesn't make sense in regards to special education ond ESL students. Its sad and frustrating, and so much work needs to be done to ensure our children (and their children) have quality education. The whole educational system needs to be looked at carefully and thoroughly and changes need to be made. There are no quick fixes, I'm afraid.

[Sarah Cassil]

That's a great article--lots of good insight. I know that the intentions were good when the thing was written--I mean, who doesn't want to see our children succeed? If we want a great country, we need to make sure the next generation is great, too. Unfortunately, NCLB has been a weird sort of ostrich maneuver--if we change how we evaluate success, then the kids must be more successful, right? Wrong. It just doesn't work that way! We can't teach the kids the answers to the test; we have to teach them content and critical thinking skills. The test scores will follow.

Thank you for sharing!