First of all, I am an 18 year old senior. I am not happy at all with the "No Child Left Behind Act" which was put into effect by our current President, President Bush. The act says that in order to protect students from failing school systems, teachers must do all they can to ensure that students pass. Although this sounds like a good idea, all it really does is bog teachers and students down with state testing. It gets to the point where, at our school, students take 4 tests a year, plus the normal state testing, which is a lot of extra stress because you cannot graduate until you have passed the test. This means that students sometimes have to take the test more than twice in order to graduate. Teachers also take valuable time away from teaching subjects that are actually needed for the next school year.
It really frustrates me, I have learned from a teacher that they are not allowed to fail students that don't do their work or participate in class, teachers must do everything they possibly can to make sure that these students pass, and that often means that schools lower the curriculum so that all students pass without trouble. On the other hand, teachers are allowed to fail "normal" students, the ones that participate in school, and do their work. I don't quite understand this, it seems to me that students that get good grades normally would need guidence if suddenly they began doing poorly in school, as opposed to failing them without question.
All in all, the "No Child Left Behind Act" is a fantastic idea, but, not all students are alike, and I faithfully beleive that students should receive the grade that reflects their work. Students cannot be grouped together generally. Although this program might work well for schools without any government funding, this is not the target group that President Bush wants to help. In fact, he is proposing that we get rid of small and struggling schools, as opposed to helping them.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
They discuss "No Child Left Behind" in the book "Freakonomics", written by NY Times writers and economists. In this book, they talk about the desperation within the school system because of this act. Teachers are helping their students with answers to standardized tests in order to receive federal funding. Students are passed along to the next grade for fear of teachers losing their jobs or money for the school. Check out this book if you are interested in hearing a different perspective on several current issues. It is an incredibly easy read and hits the points you mention in your post.
I go to an minority school and we're losing half of our after school programs because all of the students that would normally be in them are forced into remedial classes, because they are fail our state test, FCAT, because no one cares about it. And because the school board cares so much about us they created the "benchmark". It's like the state test, but smaller and we have about 5 a year. I wish all of the nation's students could band together to abolish this act. Maybe then we'd be allowed to learn in school.
All the focus on standardized testing is just stupid. Some kids do awesome in their classes, but can't do standardized tests. So why do we still have these tests, I wonder? Thanks a lot George Dubya Bush. This is more like "Every Child Left Behind". (Like a blog entry I wrote quite a while ago.)
Just this Tuesday, the seniors who didn't pass the PSSAs last year (either Math, Reading, or Both) had to retake the test. They had a slight review before the test (which I didn't get: If they didn't understand the material enough LAST YEAR to pass the test, how is a 15 min review going to teach it to them NOW?)
One (well actually three of the three people I talked to that had to retake the test, failed in on their second testing and had to retake it AGAIN), told me about the "behind the scenes" of the test. Once she knew she "failed" it (you could only miss 7, I think the percent was 75), for a second time, she learned that she didn't really have to take it over again, she just had to fix enough questions so that the total number wrong was 7.
(ex: she missed 8, so she only had to fix 1, her total wrong is now 7, and that's all she needed to fix in order to "pass" with the lowest allowed score)
I forget how many my friend had to fix, but it was something like 3 or 4. She actually told me, "I guessed on like two of them, and the teacher gave me the answer to one of them."
I highly doubt this is what President Bush had in mind when he created this. (I'm not standing up for him by any means, but there is NO way that somebody could look at this and call it "effective", or "progressive".) Kudos to him for trying to fix the problem, but it JUST ISN'T going to happen with the signing of a name, and the generalizing of an entire group of people. Each school needs to be evaluated individually, and given money, tests, funding etc, for THAT particular schools needs.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't hiring people to do this evalutations on schools create more jobs? Isn't everyone complaining because there aren't enough jobs? Is it possible that the fact that we don't have enough jobs is because everybody trys to take care of the problems of millions of DIFFERENT people by creating ONE solution?
Thanks again!
i think it's pontless.i mean most of the year is spent in listening to teachers tell u over and over how important these tests are. And whats worse there are a lot of teachers who just give their students answers just so they can pass the test. and what's the point in that?and besides standardised tests are no way to measure the students knowledge. many just crac under the pressure and performe poorly.