Ok, I've been too busy to read the newsgroups but you guys are really nuts! No
Child Left Behind does NOTHING to improve student achievement. The schools
often have little to work with in the first place and I'm not talking $$. I
teach in one of the best schools in one of the best systems in the country. My
school has an upward of 98% pass rate on the science SOL (our standards test)
but some of our kids aren't passing and no matter what I do they won't. Do you
know if you have a borderline mentally retarded student taking science for
learning disabled kids they need to pass the test? Well, if the retarded kids
can pass, how good is the test?

I had one kid (smart, I liked him) who had to go home and do 3 hours of house
work and deal the mom's, boyfriend's 19 year old just released from prison, son
sharing a room with him. The 6 degree night he only walked the dog for half and
hour mom got ****ed, loaded him into the car and tried to have him locked up for
insubordination. Yeah, he was really worried about Newton's laws!

We've got kids who face safety issues everyday and no one worries about that.

No child left behind also mandates rather time consuming tests (6+ hours) for
many students. In my sister's school they tested on kid in a number of sessions
over a number of days to prove he was making progress. This child possesses
only a brain stem, nothing above it. What did that testing accomplish?

No child left behind is a great example of educational policy gone bad. High
stakes testing isn't good for anyone. Standarized tests are fine, but don't
tell kids they are failures over and over and over again when they can't help
that they have an IQ of 72.

Margy

Jay Honeck wrote:

Perhaps it would be better to evaluate exactly what's wrong with that
particular school and see if you can fix the problem.

Which is what in reality is happening. Before, the taxpayers would be
asked to throw fistfuls of money at the school. Now, they're starting to
look at the teachers and the administrators, which is where the problem
has almost always been.

PRECISELY!

For too many years, teachers and administrators at bad schools were allowed
to just shuffle under-performing students along, getting them "out of their
hair" by promoting them.

Now, for the first time, they are being held accountable -- and screaming to
high heaven.

To which, as a parent with two kids in arguably the finest school system in
America, I say "good!"... Sometimes it takes a swift kick in the pants,
financially, to wake people up to a problem.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"