NCLB was filled with good intentions on the part of George W. Bush to revolutionize and fix problems he saw in American education: unfortunately, the road to trouble is paved with good intentions. Bush's program involved "failing" schools and the idea that schools which met his line and passed would receive additional funding and schools which failed would lose funding and resources--ultimately, they would also lose students because if a school failed then parents would be allowed to move their students out of that school and put them in another school which had passed. Here lies the major problem with NCLB: schools which go below that imaginary line have very little to no chance of ever getting above it since they won't have enough resources or support to accomplish such a feat. As Angela and Steph suggested, and I agree with them, if we want schools to be great learning communities and achieve accountability for their teaching, then we need to be helping schools in distress by giving them funding to improve and resources to strengthen their curriculum. Also, why use the word failing? Eileen mentioned how that label angers her, and I got to thinking and agree with that because it has such a negative connotation. Instead, let's just say "Schools in need" and stop there, or consider whether we need to give them a label at all? Again, President Bush thought he had a good idea, but the implementation is all wrong.
Steph and Angela write "this law is based on testing and standards which is not what future teachers are being taught to stress in their classroom...they are learning about using performance tasks and hands-on learning...Bush takes all of what is being taught at the college level for future teachers and throws it out the window with all of his mandatory testing...standards are important and necessary, but all of the testing is just overkill on the teachers as well as on the students". I understand that testing has a place in the classroom, but authentic assessment does as well so teachers should not forget about this important assessment method. Standardized testing, it has been said, is discriminatory against multicultural students and so I am anti-standardized testing as it can't be a good measure of student development if it doesn't apply to all students. Here is another way in which Bush's intentions are good, but the wrong approach is taken to measure our students. I think it would be important to have a uniform assessment across all states if we needed federal regulations of education and needed to check American success at teaching...but here is my question that my group and I came up with: should education be regulated by federal guidelines? I tend to think not, there should be a chain of command with teaching in which teachers are not answerable to the federal regulations but instead only to school, which is to the state, which would be to the federal. I don't think we should have federal control of local schools, its not a good idea.
Steph and Angela write "this law is based on testing and standards which is not what future teachers are being taught to stress in their classroom...they are learning about using performance tasks and hands-on learning...Bush takes all of what is being taught at the college level for future teachers and throws it out the window with all of his mandatory testing...standards are important and necessary, but all of the testing is just overkill on the teachers as well as on the students". I understand that testing has a place in the classroom, but authentic assessment does as well so teachers should not forget about this important assessment method. Standardized testing, it has been said, is discriminatory against multicultural students and so I am anti-standardized testing as it can't be a good measure of student development if it doesn't apply to all students. Here is another way in which Bush's intentions are good, but the wrong approach is taken to measure our students. I think it would be important to have a uniform assessment across all states if we needed federal regulations of education and needed to check American success at teaching...but here is my question that my group and I came up with: should education be regulated by federal guidelines? I tend to think not, there should be a chain of command with teaching in which teachers are not answerable to the federal regulations but instead only to school, which is to the state, which would be to the federal. I don't think we should have federal control of local schools, its not a good idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment