What do you guys think about the act? Personally, I feel as though if your kid is dumb, they should fail, until they're not dumb.

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This is epic failure.

The federal government shoud abolish the Department of Education, and leave that for the states.

If parents want their kids to receive a decent education, they should invest in it. This means paying for tuition in local schools that should be privatized, not socially publicized.

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Let's go Buffalo!

I'm going to ignore the previous comment.

With respect to NCLB, my friends that are in the education profession have a negative opinion of it. They generally say that it does nothing to actually help kids, and is more of a burden on the educators themselves.

That's kind of how I've been lead to think. The educators I've spoken with feel as though they're spending time coddling the idiots or the "don't-give-a-fuck" instead of actually educating.

I don't want my children to go through that.

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I am an educator. NCLB is a farce. It punishes poor performing schools and actually hurts them much more than it helps them. Schools labeled with inadequate performance actually are required to do more with less money under it. An under-performing school is forced to provide tutoring to students, but NCLB gives no $ for this. It also allows parents to withdraw their kids from the under-performing schools, which further reduces the budget these schools have because every student that leaves a school means that the school they're leaving gets less tax money. So essentially NCLB forces struggling schools (which often have the poorest students with the least involved parents, making the effort to succeed that much harder for the kids) to do more with less. Then it gives the benefits to schools already performing well, even though the students at those schools often have advantages at home that students from poorer schools couldn't dream of. It is a law that eventually will cause the gap between haves and have-nots to grow in this country.

This Times 10000000

Why in the world would you give under-performing schools less funding, and tell them to do more to get that funding back. I understand that it is to encourage teachers to do more, and care more, but what it really does is give them second rate materials to try to give someone a first class education.

Instead the government should dictate how that money is spent. If a school doesn't meet expectations, cut the money they can spend on sports, clubs, and other activities. Force students to work harder for the extras, prepare them for real life.

The way I see it, the harder the students work, the more reward they should get for the extras, but cutting funding from a school that doesn't do well, so they can't buy new books, and teaching aids, well it just doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm hoping NCLB is taken out soon, I'm finishing up my masters in education December 2012, and I'm hoping that I wont have to deal with this farce of a system.

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"She's like plan C after an 18 pack"

Squanto 7/27/2010

I've also heard (though friend rants) that the standardized test requirements also do more harm than good, since poor teachers start teaching kids to pass the test rather than actually learn anything.

And this is an important point. Schools are judged mainly by performance on a few high-pressure, standardized tests. You get the result you have mentioned in that schools teach mainly to the tests. But you also get the result of an increase in the "achievement gap", because minority students have a cultural disadvantage when it comes to standardized tests. So this just reinforces the cycle we've talked about because struggling schools often have large minority populations.

In what way?
Are there studies on this?
Who do you consider "minorities"?

/I'm not being a dick and baiting, I'm seriously asking.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

BINGO!

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I think the culture of some minorities doesn't breed or instill good learning habits. That's my take on what he said. :/

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I'll just cut-and-paste something from a google search to answer that, since I am technically at work and shouldn't have the time for an involved response of my own.

Standardized testing becomes a problem when the test itself is biased against some of the students taking it.

* One of the biggest faults of standardized tests is that they often do not take diversity into account. Too many of today's tests are written so that only white, middle-class, English-speaking Americans can succeed. Other aspects of diversity that tests often times don't take into account include:
+ Disabilities-These include physical disabilities, language delays, ADHD, visual impairments, mental retardation, and the list could go on and on. Often times these students need special assistance when taking a test or sometimes need to take a test that is maybe well below their physical grade level, but is at the appropriate mental grade level. (Haladyna, 178)
+ Test Anxiety-It is not an uncommon thing for students to get debilitating test anxiety. Debilitating test anxiety does not refer to the butterflies in the stomach or that moment of panic when the test is passed out. Instead it refers to the students who may freeze and cannot perform at all when faced with a test. Often times, this phenomenon is made worse when students think they will be punished in some way for a low score. High-stakes testing exacerbates test anxiety. (Haladyna, 160)
+ Cultural Bias-It is only common sense to assume that a test item including information specific to the American culture (as some items do on some standardized tests) will be harder to answer for a student not familiar with that part of American culture. Essentially a student is being penalized for not answering the question correctly even though they may know how to actually do the problem, they simply didn't understand the details given in the problem. In regards to bright students, who for some reason do not perform well on standardized tests (whether it be culture or some other reason), the Massachusetts state commissioner of education, while defending the MCAS graduation requirement says "There will be some casualties." (Nathan) Close to half of the students in urban schools (which have a much higher ethnic population, who may come from completely different cultures or just not be sufficiently familiar with aspects of American culture) are still failing the (MCAS) test. In Massachusetts, among black and Latino students, the failure rate is between 60% and 70% (Nathan)
+ Language Differences-Often students, who are not native English speakers, have trouble on timed exams because they need more time to interpret the English language. They cannot process written English and on writing exams need extra time to formulate what they want to say in English. Most standardized tests are timed and do not give students who have difficulty with the English language the extra time they need. One teacher said that "due to a rigid language testing system...we could not grant diplomas in June to three of our bright, resourceful, and courageous immigrant students" (Lala), all because these students did poorly on standardized tests.
+ Testwiseness-The idea of testwiseness is knowing different strategies to help one's performance on a test. Typically these strategies include knowing how to eliminate answers from a multiple choice question; knowing that on timed tests, skip the questions that will take up a lot of time, answer all the questions you can immediately answer with minimal amount of work and then going back to the harder ones; knowing how to pace yourself and make sure you have enough time to complete the entire exam for example; making sure you answer the question that is being asked on an essay exam in a clear manner, just to name a few. Students who are not familiar with standardized tests would not know a lot of these strategies. It is very easy for teachers to teach these strategies, but they do so at the expense of other (most likely more engaging) topics. It is also easy for teachers to raise test scores by teaching testwiseness, but if teaching these strategies gets the needed gains in test scores, what are the tests really measuring? (Nathan)
+ Gender-There is probably not so much an inherent bias within the test, but the expectations held for each sex is vastly different. Girls are expected to do better in language arts and english, whereas boys are expected to do better in math and science. Students who enter a testing atmosphere with these stereotypes in mind are more likely to perform at those perceived expectations. In addition, students who perform well in a non gender-appropriate subject are likely to be treated differently than a member of the opposite sex and conversely, a student who performs poorly in a subject they are expected to do well in will also be treated differently then a student of the same sex who performs poorly in a non gender-appropriate subject.

+ Socioeconomic Status-Standardized tests are also often biased against students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds. They may not have been exposed to these kinds of tests before or they may not be familiar with the aspects of a question. For example, a question asking about the nature of fresh-cut apples to brown in the presence of oxygen, may be biased against a poorer student because their parents couldn't afford to buy a lot of fresh apples. Examples like these are extreme, but bias against students from different socio-economic backgrounds is a reality.

not even to get into standardized testing and just how much bull-shit it is, my biggest issue when i was in school with NCLB was the fact i had military recruiters calling my house trying to speak with me, multiple times.



because i went to such an urban school for awhile, i felt like they were a presence in the school, and calling myself, and other students, as a way to say, "hey look, even though you're poor, you can actually do SOMETHING with your life."
now, don't get me wrong, i think that it's great to have recruiters around for kids to talk to if they decide that's something they are interested in doing, however i feel as though it was shoved down a lot of kids throats that it was their only option in life because we were going to a school where a lot of the kids lived at, or below the poverty level.

and for what it's worth, i was also still called after my parents and i sent in the opt- out form.

egh...none of those things seem very serious to me.
My wife moved here at age 5 speaking no English and she ended up at Pepperdine.

Test anxiety certainly doesn't target certain minorities, it's rather universal.

The most important factor is parent involvement...sure there's a strong correlation between some minorities and socioeconomic background and the level of parent involvement, but I don't see any form of "cultural bias" raising to that level.

I mean the tests would have to be pretty blatantly unfair (the examples used above seem just silly)....I haven't seen one but I really doubt that's the case.

The problem with NCLB is we're once again expecting the government to solve a problem it simply cannot.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

Food for thought from a recently released study: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40095887/ns ... york_times

It's not the standardized tests causing that gross disparity...we all know what's causing it...and it's not something the government can pass a law to fix.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

It was that bad before NCLB. In 1996, my high school required all students to take the ASVAB. Because I'm a dork, I scored in the 98th percentile in all sections.

Even though I had no interest or intention of joining the military (my old man was a Marine, and he scared me away from it at a young age.), I got calls from all branches of the military until I was almost 30. The word 'no' had zero meaning to them.

Sure they can. Just like hunting licenses, you should need to get a license to breed

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So working, tax paying, lower-middle class parents like me, who can't afford a private school or fancy 1-2 year prep preschools that some/most charter schools recomend, just get the option of shitty schooling for our children? Sounds like a one way road to keeping low income families poor for generations. Don't get me wrong, the most important thing in education is the parents taking an active hand at home but students from shitty schools have shittier opportunities later on in general. So, since we can't afford a private school, we don't have the right to good educational opportunities?

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This is where I agree with Displaced Fan, there is no reason for any child to HAVE to go to a private/charter school to get a good education. The Department of Education needs some serious reform, but shouldn't be abolished.

Everyone should have equal chances at education, and let the child's work ethic determine how well they do, not outside factors such as economic class, racial barriers, and regional differences. What ever happened to hard work = success? I think that's one of the biggest problems in America, the hardest working people, often struggle just to get by, due to the lack of opportunity for social mobility, and economic oppression.

Put everybody on the same playing field from the start, and let's see who succeeds.

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"She's like plan C after an 18 pack"

Squanto 7/27/2010

uh...sorry DF, but the Federal Department of Education has very very little to do with how shitty or awesome your local public school is.

They're bureaucrats that set standards and write tests. that's it.

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Hold my beer and watch this...