NCLB

I'm getting kind of tired of everyone always being so negative about No Child Left Behind.

I know there are many flaws in the program, especially in the cases of children who are English Language Learners (ELLs) and children with special needs. And there is no doubt that those flaws need to be fixed. But every time NCLB comes up in class, and it ALWAYS seems to come up in our Special Topics class, people just laugh about it and seem to write it off. The truth of it is, NCLB is the reality of our current educational system, and therefore we need to work WITH it. Complaining about how much it sucks really gets us nowhere, and I feel like people criticize and criticize without offering solutions. In my opinion, there are a lot of mistakes that teachers are making in handling NCLB, its not just the fault of the policy people in the Department of Ed.

I think that children should be given national standardized tests annually to determine how they are progressing. I like the accountability and the reliability of the data that (ideally) these tests provide. Scores should be evaluated for cohorts of children, and analyzed from one year to the next. If you look at the same group of children (a class of third graders for example) in 2007, then you should look at their scores again in 2008 and 2009 to see if they have improved. Granted, there are MANY ways to evaluate how a child is performing in school and whether or not he is learning - but on a national scale, a standardized test of basic skills is, in my opinion, the only realistic option.

It breaks my heart to see urban students in DC testing at such abyssmal rates, and then to see students in Northern Virginia, just a bridge away, testing so much higher. Children in DC are not dumber or lazier than children in Virginia. I feel angry and upset that DC children are not getting the same education. Public education in the United States is supposed to be the great equalizer, its supposed to give every child, regardless of race, location, and socioeconomic status, the foundation they need to succeed in life. It is clear that we are not providing that foundation.

I love it that M School, unlike so many others, uses standardized test scores very productively - the kids take the PSSAs and then at the beginning of the year, the teachers get lists of their incoming classes and breakdowns of how the kids scored. If I can see that Mi scored 89% in his reading comprehension questions, but only 20% on his open ended responses, then I can see that he's going to need some help with writing this year. Data is your friend. If you know the user name and password, its all there online for each school. Why don't more teachers use it? Obviously, children are infinitely more than their standardized test scores, but this data allows me to get a head start in knowing my kids strengths and weaknesses. If Mi doesn't increase his writing score the following year - then I would know that I didn't help him in the ways he needed. I would feel pretty sure that I'd failed him as a teacher.

Another complaint I feel like we keep talking about is how difficult it is for teachers to teach anything other than reading, writing, and math. I think that this arguement is complete crap. I know there are only so many hours in the day, and I know the math and literacy curriculum is intense, but each day there are SO many teachable moments to weave in history, geography, civics, biology, chemistry, physics, etc. It seems like a lot of teachers don't have the energy or expertise to do that - I don't want to be one of those teachers. Science is happening ALL THE TIME and it is a GREAT vehicle for learning writing and math and critical thinking. History is so crucial to understanding why things are going on in the books we read and in our world today. Plus, when curriculum is integrated, when themes loop back on each other and weave throughout all of the material, kids are able to retain SO much more of the information. It is contextualized, meaningful, and the kids see the value in what they're learning. It just takes more time, creativity, and flexibility to create a curriculum like this.

Maybe I'm naive. I'm not denying that I have a lot to learn about teaching and education. But I feel confident that if I teach my very best all year, if I work incredibly hard, if I don't give up on them, and I constantly encourage and push them to reach higher and achieve more, then I won't HAVE to "teach to the test" - they will walk in the door on test day feeling confident. They will know the material they needed to learn in fourth grade. I want my students to walk into the test without fear or anxiety - I want them to walk in and be like, " I am ON this! I am going to ACE this test!" And I think that attitude is mainly a result of good teaching, and of the atmosphere I create in my school and in my classroom. It is a basic skills test! If rich white kids in McLean, VA can pass it easily, then my kids in Anacostia sure as hell can too. And it is my responsibility and my job to make sure that they do.

I wish we did less complaining about NCLB and spent more time talking about ways to fix it and ways to use the data it provides in our favor. We are the next generation of leaders in education - and I really think that we can make things better for our nation's children. But we're not going to achieve that by whining every week about how much NCLB sucks.