An Olive Branch

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 18:02:42 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

As I understand "No Child Left Behind", the ultimate goal is that the
failing schools are "punished" by being eliminated.

This, as everyone would probably agree, is a good thing.

Well Jay, I guess I don't agree.

Before you eliminate a school, someone had better make darned sure
that there is another school nearby to take all the kids from the
failed school (school is mandatory, right?). Is there an alternative
school nearby? If so, can it take all these children from the failed
school? If not, what the heck you going to do with all those kids?

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

Corky Scott

Corky Scott 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.

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"

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"

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.

It sounds like you've identified an absurd part of No Child Left Behind that
we talked about to some degree (that thread is months old). There is no
justification for requiring a retarded child to pass ANY kind of
standardized test, period.

But that doesn't mean No Child Left Behind is a bad program -- it merely
means it needs to be fine-tuned to not include kids with mental
disabilities.

Bottom line: For the first time schools nation-wide are having to prove that
they are actually educating the children in their care. This seemingly
innocuous requirement has stirred up a firestorm of resentment and
objections, which, IMHO, says volumes about what has really been going on in
our schools.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay, read Margie's post again.

You focused on the walking carrot and ignored the ****ed-up mother.

Which do you figure there are more of in underperforming schools.?

Don

Jay, read Margie's post again.

You focused on the walking carrot and ignored the ****ed-up mother.

Which do you figure there are more of in underperforming schools.?

And your point is...what?

Surely it's not that we should abandon standardized testing as a means to
determine the functionality of our schools because some parents are morons?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:33:07 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

Jay, read Margie's post again.

You focused on the walking carrot and ignored the ****ed-up mother.

Which do you figure there are more of in underperforming schools.?

And your point is...what?

Surely it's not that we should abandon standardized testing as a means to
determine the functionality of our schools because some parents are morons?

I'm with Bill Cosby. Don't blame teachers for what parents send to
school.

Don

I'm with Bill Cosby. Don't blame teachers for what parents send to
school.

I agree with you, Don -- but surely there has to be a way to hold
underperforming schools accountable.

We just can't continue to turn our backs and pass along (and graduate) kids
who can't read, write, or do multiplication. It's just not acceptable.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:37:47 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

I'm with Bill Cosby. Don't blame teachers for what parents send to
school.

I agree with you, Don -- but surely there has to be a way to hold
underperforming schools accountable.

We just can't continue to turn our backs and pass along (and graduate) kids
who can't read, write, or do multiplication. It's just not acceptable.

T'was ever thus. The parochial school I attended in the '50s dumped
the problem kids who didn't respond to corporal punishment back into
the public schools. In my parent's day, the problem was
biodegradable: mandatory schooling ended earlier. Dropouts filled the
niches occupied today by undocumented laborers.

Keeping the problem kids in school longer means there's a chance of
saving more of them. The down side is they're a bad influence and the
consume resources. The education establishment is burdened by some
really stupid ideas,but so is everything including aviation. The fact
is, a lot of it works despite the stupid ideas. On the other hand,
the most useless year my daughter ever spent was the one in the
charter high school.

I don't have an answer, but I do feel that NCLB is another feel-good
smoke screen with an agenda.

If you want to take this off rec.aviation, I don't use the email in my
header anymore. It's dtuite"symbol"penton"dot"com.

Don