stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2011-06-12 10:50 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2011-06-12 10:50 pm
Entry tags:
NCLB Waivers
So Arne Duncan is graciously offering (or threatening) to grant waivers to some schools, exempting them from the No Child Left Behind Act. Gosh, really?
Under President Bush, the mean-spirited, punishment-oriented NCLB Act set impossible standards. By 2014, all--ALL--students in America must be proficient in reading and math. This includes special education students of all ability levels, truant students who attend school one day in ten, and students who arrived in America last week and speak no English. All students, no exceptions, no excuses. (Because saying, "Huang-Xi just walked into my classroom four days ago, he speaks only Mandarin Chinese, and he can't possibly pass an English reading test" is an EXCUSE, soldier--it's YOUR FAULT that student can't pass that test!)
As you know, Bob, making 100% of humans do anything is impossible, and we educators have been waiting for the inevitable implosion. Every school in America will be in violation of NCLB in two years. And now we're watching Arne Duncan (whom we teachers loathe and despise) scramble to figure out ways to ensure America's schools don't all fail at once.
His solution--grant waivers to schools who follow the rules of Obama's much-hated Race to the Top initiative--is laughable. It won't help. An awful lot of schools are unwilling or unable to live up to RTTT. His "solution" is also stop-gap, nothing more than the frantic paddling of a drowning man.
No Child Left Behind is poisonous and punitive. It's all stick and no carrot, all punishment and no incentive. (What kind of teacher only punishes and never praises?) It must be repealed, not repaired.
Under President Bush, the mean-spirited, punishment-oriented NCLB Act set impossible standards. By 2014, all--ALL--students in America must be proficient in reading and math. This includes special education students of all ability levels, truant students who attend school one day in ten, and students who arrived in America last week and speak no English. All students, no exceptions, no excuses. (Because saying, "Huang-Xi just walked into my classroom four days ago, he speaks only Mandarin Chinese, and he can't possibly pass an English reading test" is an EXCUSE, soldier--it's YOUR FAULT that student can't pass that test!)
As you know, Bob, making 100% of humans do anything is impossible, and we educators have been waiting for the inevitable implosion. Every school in America will be in violation of NCLB in two years. And now we're watching Arne Duncan (whom we teachers loathe and despise) scramble to figure out ways to ensure America's schools don't all fail at once.
His solution--grant waivers to schools who follow the rules of Obama's much-hated Race to the Top initiative--is laughable. It won't help. An awful lot of schools are unwilling or unable to live up to RTTT. His "solution" is also stop-gap, nothing more than the frantic paddling of a drowning man.
No Child Left Behind is poisonous and punitive. It's all stick and no carrot, all punishment and no incentive. (What kind of teacher only punishes and never praises?) It must be repealed, not repaired.