No Child Left Behind Law....

[veraca]

Article Here
So I read this article on Wii-News a few minutes ago and was wondering what everyone thought of it? Are the requirements of 100% efficiency and teaching for tests realistic and helpful to students in middle-through-high school, or are they crazy?

I was lucky enough to graduate in 2007 never took the SATs or anything related to that. I did take the dreaded WASL state test, and never found out how I did. I don't really care because I can shop and do math and percentages fine, as well as taking the local test for the community college I had tested right into college-level literature without having really learned anything new since 7th grade. (Minus vocabulary I'd never use anyway. that's what I have dictionaries everywhere for.)

My point is, what do people think of it? Is the 100% goal pretty unrealistic? It's nice to be optimistic but I really think pressuring teachers to teach to tests instead of real-world math is pretty ludicrous. I mean, really. Who's going to use Algebra 2 unless they're planning to get a Bachelor's of Science? You do need to take math and have math classes, but from my experience of witnessing all the schools closing and making bigger classrooms, it doesn't seem like this law is helping at all.

Shouldn't they be more geared to helping students of any issue succeed? I know students who couldn't manage the workload of homework in high school plus extracurricular activities, and a job. I watched these students wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, get to school early for their studies, then stay until 5 or 6pm after school doing more the activities, or go to a job or go to one after 6pm, and then get home and work until 1am and later doing homework. And this was in 2005-2007 and before.

I could go on and on about how important sleep is for a person with a developing brain. We had a lecture assembly once where the guy told us about brain development and how important sleep is for us to keep learning in my sophmore year of high school. However, getting this new knowledge didn't effect us (the students or the faculty) in the least. We still had our homework and no freetime lifestyles. There was no effort changed on either side. The students didn't stop their activities and didn't go home and do homework until 10pm solid and then sleep until 6am and wake up for the next day. They kept functioning on their schedules of 3 hours of sleep, and less, and took the bullet.

I myself, and some other students, did what a good amount of high school students do. We stopped doing our homework and just relaxed. While it's easy to argue we weren't pushing ourselves, and that's probably true, at least we weren't dying over stress of getting an assignment done instead of sleeping when we were run ragged.

[Gryffinclaw Princess]

Personal opinion here...

No Child Left Behind has been in effect for a while now. I think they are just really starting to push it now.
This all started when I was in Middle School and they cut classes to make new ones that focused around state testing. No matter how advanced we were, we were ALL forced to take these classes. I was in ELP (Extended Learning Program [Aka: higher level classes than regular students]) and still had to take learning classes on how to READ because one of the state tests was about reading and how you gather information. Really!?

This only inhibits students. I was advanced in Math in HS and my Sophomore year I was in Pre-Calc/Trig where one day my teacher blatantly told us, "The stuff I am teaching you today you will only need to learn if you are a math teacher so you can teach it to your students... There has yet to be a great need for these equations because easier ones can take its place. I have to teach you because it's in the curriculum." It was stupid beyond belief.



As for kids who are up until 1am with sports, job, and school...that's their own damn fault and has nothing to do with NCLB.
You choose to do things after school and they are not forced upon you. If it's too much for you, drop your extra curricular. I balance college, theater, and a job without issues. But if I get stressed, I can easily drop theater because it's a hobby. People can't say, "I can't do that! I can't drop such-and-such!" Yes you can. You don't need it to live or go to college unless you are on a sports scholarship.
Even in HS I had theater! I didn't have a job but I was a part of student council and had AP classes. I could easily be at school until the dark hours of the night and then head home to do Homework. I know how to handle myself and my time. If people put themselves into that pain, they can't complain. They need to stop bitching and realize what they can and can't do. Again, they did it to themselves. You can't blame teachers for homework they are supposed to assign. It is their jobs to make sure you understand the curriculum and make sure you can pass state testing. It's the kids who slack off on projects they have months to do that are at fault.


Also, school isn't about what you need for YOUR life. It's about what you need for ANY life. So down the road if you choose to change your mind on what you want to do, you have that basic knowledge in that field to help you so you aren't starting from scratch. People think they always know what they want to do in life and that is not true. Some people? Yes. Most? No. A lot of kids go to college without knowing what they want to do and so they take General studies. Some even change half way through their schooling from one major to another.

[MiriaRose]

No Child Left Behind is insanely unrealistic.

Not everyone needs to know calculus. Not everyone needs to read Hamlet. Not everyone needs to learn about pre-Raphaelite art and not everyone needs to know a foreign language.

These are nice things and all, but not everyone is inclined towards these sorts of things. Not everyone has the same interests, and most people aren't going to use these things.

As for teaching the tests. . I was a GATE student. Gifted and Talented Education. They've begun dropping those programs in attempts to teach the tests to lower-level students. Dunno how it works for other people, but when I'm in a class that isn't challenging in the least bit, I tend to do worse. In middle school, I didn't have the option to take advanced classes, and the normal work was boring. So I didn't do it, and I was a worse student. In high school I was in slightly more challenging classes, and I actually did my work, did it on time, and got As and Bs.

Because of these "teaching the test" type things, I had to learn how to use semicolons in an advanced placement junior English class. That's right. 11th grade and we had to learn to use semicolons. I've been using semicolons since 6th grade. It was disgusting.

Another thing that bugs me about American education culture and may or may not be related to NCLB is the need for EVERYONE to be in AP classes. The problem is, when you let lower-level students into AP classes, it seriously lowers the standards of the class. People in the aforementioned English class had to read out loud to understand short stories, and they didn't understand books until the teacher explained it to them. Similar instances occurred when I took a college English course through my high school the following year. These people clearly weren't ready for AP English 12, but they had been pressured by parents and society to be in it.

[oslapedo]

words

I agree whole heartedly with every thing you just said. Catering to the students that don't care whilst ignoring the students in need of a challenge is the greatest crime of the public education system.

[superjaz]

Sometimes its out of the child's hands how much time they have to study at home.  Think of the amount of single parent homes. 
Some one is picking up the slack.
I think back to years where I was a middle school student/ high school student, where I was the mom at home, my younger brother would sometimes accidentally say "thanks mo- I mean Jaz"

[Washougal_Otaku]

Are the requirements of 100% efficiency and teaching for tests realistic and helpful to students in middle-through-high school, or are they crazy?

I think they're closer to being evil than crazy, myself.

[DancingTofu]

I've disagreed strongly with the "No Child Left Behind" act since it's inception.  It's a whole system of standardization, and standardization is what's killing the US economy.  The act was put in place because our students were performing poorly on standardized assessments compared to students in Europe, India, Japan, and South Korea.  Instead of fixing the root of the issue (AKA abolishing cultureless American lifestyle) they spiked basic learning requirements to meet standardized tests.  I hated high school because for the three years I was there I watched excellent teachers get slowly transformed from stellar educators to powerless pawns in a string of trivial information as the Federal Government and School District cracked down on these requirements. 

I, like others here, was in AP and other advanced learning classes from 2nd grade to 11th grade.  Watching these classes, which allowed students who worked hard and enjoyed learning and exploring the beautiful world of academia, get choked out to make way for these standardizations, was sickening.  By my senior year, only 3 AP classes and no honors classes were offered at my high school, so I left and enrolled in a charter high school co-enrollment program working with the local community college and completed my high school education and a decent chunk of my college education there.  Limiting the ambitions of good students to allow bad students to keep up is like reducing the speed limit on all public roads to 15mph so that bicyclists can ride as fast as cars.  The only country that I know of which bases its curriculum off test-taking and actually puts out good students is Japan, and that's because there's a HUGE focus on extra-curricular activities there, whereas extra-curricular activities are very limited and being reduced throughout the US due to budget limitations.

[Prinz Eugen]

Limiting the ambitions of good students to allow bad students to keep up is like reducing the speed limit on all public roads to 15mph so that bicyclists can ride as fast as cars.  The only country that I know of which bases its curriculum off test-taking and actually puts out good students is Japan, and that's because there's a HUGE focus on extra-curricular activities there, whereas extra-curricular activities are very limited and being reduced throughout the US due to budget limitations.

The opposite situation is what happens in real life. Look at the Oregon Trail - they didn't do "No Pioneer Left Behind," right?

Has anyone been following the test scoring scam in Atlanta, where 100s of teachers would fix bubblesheet answers of 'certain' students so the schools could graduate them?

[veraca]

The whole lecture you get before the test is crazy. It's like "be sure of your answer because a #2B pencil is a pain to erase when you push REALLY hard and darken the bubble completely like they want."

I try to forget how many mistakes I know I had from stupid erasing issues and trying not to rip the paper in the process.

I also have noted that since this standardization the honors, AP, and extra classes are being cut. My school alone had cut French, so we only had Spanish to learn, and were going to cut Psychology the year after my friend took it. They also cut out lots of the health classes requirements, as well as advanced art classes. Even our "home economics" class was cut before I even entered 9th grade.
And that was purely one or two years after 9/11.

My school board was too busy batting around the ideas of test numbers, changing the high school and junior high to a tinier building to save on electricty costs (and making the class rooms, hallways, everything smaller). And if wasn't that there was the dreaded "let's enact a uniform in a public school system in a poverty rural area of high % of seniors and young parents!" Oh yes, it was amazing~

[bunny_jean]

While I disagree with the No Child Left Behind policy, I do not think it's unrealistic to have 100% passing rates. The problem is that a lot of teaching pedagogy has changed in the last 10 years, but there are a lot of teachers who have not been exposed to this new thinking. I am enrolled in the UOTeach program right now, and from what I've seen in classes, heard about the system, and what I've read in my classes is that teaching to a test is a TERRIBLE idea because students do not really learn that way. I believe that it is not the law that is particularly the problem, but the teaching system. Teachers rarely have the chance to communicate across subjects and/or grade levels, so what students are prepared for isn't necessarily what they are expected to be prepared for. Also, many of the teaching methods used in school are not as effective as they could be. Students need a place where they are given a chance to succeed in schools, and often times, this is not the case. Students that drop out of high school are more than likely to really have been pushed out by the system.

[veraca]

Drop outs are different. There's a huge number of differences for drop outs. Teen pregnancy, moving, family issues, the area the student is located, religious or family beliefs, and even not being pushed hard enough. There's also teachers playing "favorites".

My grade class in particular was grouped into 4 groups based on favorites by teachers since 6th grade. Meaning the people you become friends with are the ones in your group. Most of the sporty teachers pets kids were located within in the first two highest groups, while students who weren't being pushed hard enough and just ignored were located in the 2nd lowest. And that left the lowest group being filled literally 100% of boys that didn't care about trying in the school system and also had mentally challenged students. This classification of students literally didn't change from then to high school. If we wanted into a different class it was hard work. The only reason we got mixed up in 9th grade from these classifications was based upon what our single electives were (language, choir, band or art). But the damage had already been done. It was great I got math at the end of the day. But I only had one other friend in that class and they were put on the opposite end of the class room from me and I was stuck with all these other students who did more talking than when I was ever next to my single friend.

It's great to get students to branch out and have friends, but odds are that never happens in high school. My grade class was pretty interesting that no one held hard grudges against each other. Instead it was the pure act of ignoring each other that stopped us from getting into fights. We only still acknowledged people as our friends and gave them the breath of life if they had been the people we interacted with when we had been stuck in those classifications from earlier grades. We never worked together well in group projects in 9th grade and on. It was that the "higher class" would take advantage and slack off expecting the lower to do all the work and they would get the credit for it. Which is what happened. Only a few of us "lower" did not do the work so either the "higher" would have to do the work, or we'd all go down like the Titantic. But the system was still geared against us. If the "lower" did the work, the "higher" would still get credit for it. Switch it around so the "higher" did the work, and the "lower" would not be given the credit of having done anything.

It was an unfair teacher's favorites. And that was the case for almost all of the 20-some students at the alternative school. We fell under one or more of the categories I had first listed. In some cases, the students would actually try to hold an intelligent debate or conversation about their education with the teachers and they were punished for it because they questioned what they were learning and the authority.

[bunny_jean]

When I say students are "pushed out" I do not mean in a purely academic way. Students are pushed out through social pressure to conform, which comes from both other students and teachers and administrators; they are pushed out because the school does not have an adequate way to help students with family issues; they are pushed out because of a lack of tolerance of students and teachers of different peliefs; etc etc. It's not the student's fault that his or her school cannot accommodate his or her needs. No Child Left Behind only tries to get students to move through school by passing standardized tests, but this process is what is creating the system that is pushing students out to begin with. The government doesn't realize that its not pure academics, most of the time, that holds children back in school.

[Higuma]

No Child Left Behind is insanely unrealistic.

Not everyone needs to know calculus. Not everyone needs to read Hamlet. Not everyone needs to learn about pre-Raphaelite art and not everyone needs to know a foreign language.

These are nice things and all, but not everyone is inclined towards these sorts of things. Not everyone has the same interests, and most people aren't going to use these things.

This the reason why every engineer in the company I work for is from another country. Everyone says we don't need to teach all kids everything. Like learning is a bad thing. Other countries seem to be able to do it but in this country we won't. If you took students from our high schools and sent them to other countries like Japan they would be behind and not be able to catch up. Dont ever lower standards, learn everything for the rest of your life.

[@random]

This the reason why every engineer in the company I work for is from another country.

That might have had more to do with the fact that openings in science jobs mostly disappeared for two generations, leaving a lot of science majors to find low-paying jobs in their field or none at all. People eventually learned and started going for the tech jobs, or into business fields... then companies started wondering why they couldn't find them any more when they started looking again.

[veraca]

I'm all for education and learning things.
I read an article years ago about some nuns in a country around Europe that were all in their 80s and 90s that their brains were very active and healthy because they picked up a new hobby every 2-4 years. They would learn the flute for 4 years and then go and learn how to paint, something like that.

[MiriaRose]

No Child Left Behind is insanely unrealistic.

Not everyone needs to know calculus. Not everyone needs to read Hamlet. Not everyone needs to learn about pre-Raphaelite art and not everyone needs to know a foreign language.

These are nice things and all, but not everyone is inclined towards these sorts of things. Not everyone has the same interests, and most people aren't going to use these things.

This the reason why every engineer in the company I work for is from another country. Everyone says we don't need to teach all kids everything. Like learning is a bad thing. Other countries seem to be able to do it but in this country we won't. If you took students from our high schools and sent them to other countries like Japan they would be behind and not be able to catch up. Dont ever lower standards, learn everything for the rest of your life.

lolwhut? When did I say learning is a bad thing? What I said is that people don't need to know everything. You do realize that in Europe they send kids to specialized high schools, right, so that they just learn what they need to instead of trying to teach future plumbers the works of Goethe?

So how many European engineers do you work with?

Please tell me how often you use all the skills you learned in high school. Please tell me how important semicolons are to your job security.   Because I can tell you this much: I won't be needing to use what I learned in AP U.S. History in my job. If you need to use what you learned in AP U.S. History in your job as an engineer, I realize why the stock market is going down.

[Higuma]

So what your saying is that I should not bother to learn history unless I work as a historian of some sort? I may not use what I leaned in my Shakespeare class at my job but it has changed and enriched my life all the same. If I had denied myself the chance to take that class in high school just because I would never use it in my job I would not be the person I am today. It is a very short sided view to think you will never use what you learned in history in your whole life. Life is not predictable. You may have a plan for your life right now and may think there are subjects you don't need to learn but it rarely ever works out that way. 

[MiriaRose]

Again, never said that. I said that students shouldn't be forced to learn about that- They should be given the choice. If they don't take the choice and miss out because of it later on in life, then that's the consequence. But students shouldn't be forced to learn it if they don't want to. It takes away opportunities from the students who do want to learn.

[reppy]

Does anyone in high school really know what they're going to be?

[@random]

I think most of them think they do - I know I did. But I think most of them turn out to be wrong later... sometimes, because they change their mind. Sometimes, because life changes it for them.

I think that may be one of the greatest tragedies of the vocational-school approach. Don't get me wrong, I think it does a lot of good in a world where realistically only a small fraction of students can get jobs that require a college education. But I think it's wrong to ~make~ someone pigeonhole themselves at an age where they hardly even know who they are yet. Until you know who you are, it's hard to know what you would enjoy doing for the rest of your life.

[veraca]

Likewise, students need to be given the chance to experience all forms of education. Some students learn visually and others literally. Some learn by hands-on and some by examples given and drawings in a book. For students to realize if they want to do something like metal working, wood working, arts like paint and clay, singing, band instruments, or other languages, odds are the only way they can be exposed to these things are in middle to high school. For schools to cut these out in favor of testing classes is not the right thing to do.

It's also generally the only way their families can afford it. If they care to become serious about something, like violin or piano, odds are their parents started them on it at an earlier age and are in private lessons. That means the parent is willing to make the sacrifice needed in some cases to pay for these lessons. For students who are stuck living in a family that can't afford that, they probably will be lucky to even get their hands on a trumpet or clarinet in middle school to start band. I wouldn't be able to say today I know how to read music and play some of the clarinet if I hadn't been able to take those classes in middle school, which allowed me to advance into choir classes and then into art. Now I know exercises for my lungs to be strong.

It might not be something students think of as skills they'll use, but knowing how to breathe deeply and properly is handy when doing various sports and exercise routines (ie. yoga, pilates...). That said, if they're given a class on how to manage their expenses and a check book (my school didn't offer that), that'd be great.

Students in my class specifically requested in our alternative high school to learn how to do our taxes and manage a balanced check book instead of be given lessons in math we only needed if we were becoming architects. Those who wanted that math, read the books and self-studied on their own.