Parenting Teens

Today, I’m going to climb up on my soapbox. After five interminably long years, the federal No Child Left Behind Act is up for reauthorization. My opinion, in no uncertain terms, is “Let’s scrap this thing now!”

At the U.S. Department of Education’s website, you can find a document in pdf format titled Building On Results: A Blueprint for Strengthening the No Child Left Behind Act.. Read this document for yourself and decide how you feel about it. I’d love to hear from parents regarding their feelings on the No Child Left Behind Act. Here are a few of my opinions, in regard to how this act has affected my daughter and others that I know.

First, I’d like to say that I’ve talked to a great many teachers about this subject. I’ve talked with teachers at my daughter’s high school, with other teachers in her school, other schools in our district and state, and, via e-mail, with teachers in other states. Not a single teacher with whom I’ve talked has approved of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The most common thread among all their complaints is the fact that they were required to gear all their teaching toward the passing of standardized tests. Teaching outside the box is not allowed. Many of them spoke of projects they would have liked to assign, field trips they would have liked to take their students on, etc., which they felt would have raised their students interest levels in the course materials. But special projects would have taken up time which they could not have afforded in the never-ending quest for higher test scores. Never mind that students might have done better on those tests had they had more interest in the subject. As far as field trips, setting aside the fact that money was often not there for them due to budget cuts, they could not afford the time out of the classroom-again due to that quest for higher test scores.

Several teachers have mentioned to me that they had thought of giving up teaching because NCLB had made conditions in the classroom so rigid and inflexible that neither they, nor their students, could enjoy learning any more. My sister, who has been an elementary school teacher for years, moved to teaching a private pre-K class this year, because it was not bound by NCLB rules. She has told me that she will move back to teaching in public elementary grades when NCLB is repealed. Is this the way to improve our schools? By losing good teachers who are so put off by that this act that they are ready to quit teaching?

Another of my problems with this act has been that, while it has concentrated on lower grades, high school students have suffered. As the report freely states, reading and math scores among 17-year-olds have fallen. And here are a few other statistics in the report:

*”Our 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 29 developed nations in math literacy and problem-solving…
*”The U.S. has fallen to ninth place in the world in high school graduation rates among young
adults…”
*”Less than half the students who do graduate are ready for college level math and
science coursework…”

Basically, this tells me that, while we have spent five years attempting to raise scores on standardized tests, which most teachers to not feel adequately represent a child’s progress anyway, our high school students are going out into the world unprepared to make a living for themselves in what is a highly competitive world even when you are well-educated! This should bother all parents of teenagers!

How is NCLB proposing to change the problems among high school students? First, with more standardized testing! This act pushes assessments and data to the limit and beyond. Scores on standardized testing and the data collected from said tests has become the holy grail of our nation’s public education system. As long as your student performs up to a certain standard on a test, all is well. If not, a monkey wrench is thrown into the works and, so this act would have us believe, the machinery either comes to a grinding halt or is, in some way, not performing up to standard.

Our children are individuals. Individuals do not necessarily all perform at standard levels. My daugher is in the gifted program at her school. She can make good scores on standardized tests if she does them in her sleep. She has friends who are equally intelligent who make low scores on standardized tests. She’s not smarter than they are. I’m not trying to brag here. I’m simply pointing out that standardized testing is a very poor way of assessing students’ abilities, since, regardless of their intelligence level, many of them will simply not perform well.

The No Child Left Behind Act is an attempt to push all students into a standardized group. It focuses so narrowly on every child meeting standards that it does not take into account the individuality of our children. It wants to push some children into areas into which they are not capable of going-and I’m talking about both children with learning problems and gifted children. It is a grand attempt at mediocrity.

No Child Left Behind Act, U.S. Department of Education, standardized testing, school, teens, children, parents