Worst piece of public policy I’ve ever seen . . .
As a professor of education, I’ve done a considerable amount of research on NCLB and have concluded that the following negative consequences are among its most serious:
-Narrowing of the curriculum to emphasize only those subjects that are tested
-Impoverishment of classroom teaching practices to “teach to the test,” neglecting higher-order thinking skills
-Labeling of experienced, successful teachers as not “highly qualified”
-A “diversity penalty” that puts schools with highly-diverse populations at a greater risk of being labeled as failures
-Failure to distinguish between effective and ineffective schools, and to provide real support to schools that are truly struggling
-Greatly increased federal control at the expense of local control
Among the causes of these problems are the [Read more...]
Get rid of No Child Left Behind
I think that we need to get rid of the no child left behind act. It is a hinderance to teachers who really want to teach. They get bogged down in testing and making sure that they are meeting the test standards that they don’t have time to be quality teachers. Teachers should not be teaching to a test. This is not the most effective way to get through to students and leaves a lot of students behind.
Also, teachers’ salaries need to be increased. With the amount of time and work that goes into being a teacher, if we do not compensate teachers properly, we will not get qualified teachers [Read more...]
