NCLB - EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE
NCLB is a full-frontal assault on public education. Democratic politicians are bad on public education, Republican politicians are worse. Follow the money. The money is going to test creators like McGraw-Hill (John McGraw of McGraw-Hill was one of the very first overnight guests of the Bush White House), to outside agencies to provide tutoring (doesn't matter if they help kids learn, it just matters that the money ends up in the hands of a person of the private sector), and funneled to select companies for Reading First grants (the scandal of these grants going to "politically" friendly allies of the Bush Education Department is easily documented - just Google it). And about the money, especially in D. C.: the Washington D.C. school district has one of the highest expenditures for administration of the 100 largest school districts in the country, and one of the lowest actual classroom expenditures per student of the 100 largest school districts in the country.NCLB has absolutely impossible goals. AYP disaggregates test-score data for any group with a pre-determined number of students (30 or 40 is the usual, but unless you have a group of at least 70 you have too small a group for any reliability). EVERY single group must demonstrated AYP in order for a school to stay off the list of "failing schools." That means if a school district has 68 groups, meets AYP in 67, it is considered a failing school, even if that group is identified as "special education" students. But teachers being teachers will attempt the impossible. But when there is failure to have EVERY student demonstrate that they can earn a successful score in a standardized reading, writing, and math test for every grade from 3-10, the creators of NCLB (see the Business Roundtable) will step and say, "See, we told you public education is a failure. Therefore, we must privatize public education." They will then be looking to put as much of the $800 Billion spent on K-12 education in this country into the smallest number of corporate CEO pockets as possible.
If teachers were required to take an oath as doctors are, they would have to decline to implement the tenets of NCLB (particularly District 6 teachers) because they would be violating the first part of the oath: “Do no harm.” NCLB does tremendous harm. It is bad legislation from the top down. It has narrowed curriculum, raised the dropout rate, and done absolutely nothing to encourage students to become active participants in their learning, or able participants in our democratic republic. NCLB is a failure for the United States and its public school students.
Labels: EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE
posted by Sean Black @ 11:50 AM
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