posted
I was going through the Louisiana School for the Deaf website, trying to find the forms I needed for some of the maintenance workers when I somehow stumbled on this. Thought yall might enjoy it.
Get in Line for "No Cow Left Behind"
From the Burlington Free Press on 7/25/03.
As a principal facing the task of figuring out all the complexities of The No Child Left Behind legislation and its impact on education, I have decided that there is a strong belief that testing students is the answer to bringing about improvements in student performance.
Since testing seems to be a cornerstone to improving performance, I don't understand why this principle isn't applied to other businesses that are not performing up to expectations. I was thinking about the problem of falling milk prices and wondering why testing cows wouldn't be effective in bringing up prices since testing students is going to bring up test scores.
The federal government should mandate testing all cows every year starting at age 2. Now, I know that it will take time out of the farmers' necessary work to do this testing every year and that it may be necessary to spend inordinate amounts of money on the testing equipment, but that should not detract us from what must be done.
I'm sure there are plenty of statistics to show what good milk producing performance looks like and the characteristics of cows who achieve this level of performance. It should, therefore, be easy to figure out the characteristics necessary to meet this standard.
We will begin our testing by finding out which cows now meet the standard, which almost meet the standard, which meet the standard with honors and which show little evidence of achievement. Points will be assigned in each category and it will be necessary to achieve a certain average score. If this score is not achieved, the Department of Agriculture will send in experts to give advice for improvement. If improvements do not occur over a couple of years, the state will take over your farm or even force you to sell.
Now, I'm sure farms have a mix of cows in the barn but it is important to remember that every cow can meet the standard. There should be no exceptions and no excuses. I don't want to hear about the cows that just came to the barn from the farm down the road that didn't provide the proper nutrition or a proper living environment.
All cows need to meet the standard. Another key factor will be the placement of a highly qualified farmer in each barn. I know many of you have been farming for many years but it will be necessary for all farmers to become certified. This will mean some more paperwork and testing on your knowledge of cows, but in the end this will lead to the benefit of all.
It will also be necessary to allow barn choice for the cows. If cows are not meeting the standard in certain farms, they will be allowed to go to the barn of their choice. Transportation might become an issue but it is critical that cows be allowed to leave their low-performing barns. This will force low-performing farms to meet the standard or else they will simply go out of business.
Some small farms will probably go out of business as a result of this new legislation. Simply put, the cost per cow is too high. As taxpayers, we cannot be expected to foot the bill to subsidize farms with dairy compacts. Even though no one really knows what the ideal cost is to keep cows content, the Legislature will set a cost per cow. Expenditures too far above this cost will be penalized. Since everyone knows that there are economies of scale, small farms will probably be forced to close and those cows will merge into larger farms.
Some farmers may be upset that I proclaim to know what is best for these cows but I certainly consider myself capable of making these recommendations. I grew up next to a farm and I drink milk. I hope you will consider this advice in the spirit it is given and I hope you will agree that the "no cow left behind" legislation may not be best for a small state like Vermont.
Kenneth Remsen is principal of Underhill School in Jericho (VT).
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Wow, that was kind of harsh, Dagonee. I mean, it was not trying to be serious, nor was it trying to be against the testing proceedure. All this guy wanted to do is pook a little fun at the new legislation's difficult points using a funny analogy.
And no, the state of our nation's public education is not bad. It is excellent, and provides students that want to learn a proper education that will help them through out their lives.
posted
You know, I'm actually a little disappointed that this doesn't discuss Mad Cow disease, as our current testing samples are such a small percentage of the cattle population that they CAN'T be representative. I think it'd make for a better parody.
And, believe me, "No Child Left Behind" DESERVES parody; it's one of the most boneheaded initiatives of a boneheaded administration.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I love what is happening in rural Southern Illinois.
Several rural schools have failed to meet the requirements in testing.
So students are being allowed to transfer to the closest schools nearby...
Except those schools, who happened to meet the testing requirements, don't want an influx of students that will require special classes or will force thier test scores to plummet, and they don't want the expense of shipping these kids 20-30 miles each way, so they are refusing to admit them.
By the time the kids find a different school that will admit them, they will be traveling several hours each way just to get to school, leaving at 4am and not getting home until 6pm, even if they don't do any after school activities.
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Dagonee, I'm guessing you have nothing to do with the public education system. The same arguments you make against the parody can really be applied to the bill itself. Especially the caustic "applaud the ingenuity" line.
posted
Not at all. It looks like he has a campaign promise he can claim to have kept. He and his supporters can claim to be pro-education and care about kids and similar bullshit. What other goals might he have had?
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posted
Oh, I see. Okay. He accomplished passing the bill, true. I thought you meant the bill was actually accomplishing its goal of "saving" the national education system - when it's well on its way to doing the opposite.
posted
Fine, if the Act deserves parody then for God’s sake do a good parody that actually speaks to the issues. Cows are more equivalent to books and computers and other teaching supplies – they are a resource. Students are schools’ customers, not a resource. The public doesn’t want to increase milk prices (although the farmers might). If a dairy farm does a poor job, it is the farmer and his stockholders, not the customers, who suffer. Except for the ridiculous dairy subsidies, farms are private concerns, not public. Taxpayers and legislatures have not only a right, but an obligation to step in when their resources are not being used right. If customers don’t like the milk from a given farm, they can go to another one. Most students in underperforming schools can’t do this.
The first rule in parody is make sure your analogies are apt. This one isn’t. It’s just not funny. The points it attempts to make may be valid, but it fails to make them.
Dagonee *Takes his satire very seriously.
Added after: I am in favor of school choice, whether by vouchers or some other means, and currently indifferent to No Child Left Behind.
Especially given the revelations about how ineffective the school system in Texas has actually been, with such things as massive fraud by schools on tests and no particular improvements on any tests other than the state ones, I'm rather reluctant to consider No Child Left Behind a good thing.
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posted
Yep. Definitely not connected to the public education system. It's funny because it's apt in plenty of ways.
Students aren't a national resource? Children aren't a natural resource? Students are not a school's customers at all... they don't pay to go (with the caveat of private school students). The general public is the customer, paying taxes to gain an educated populace... which is a resource everyone benefits from.
If a dairy farm does a poor job, it is the farmer and his stockholders who suffer... true. If a school does a poor job, it is the community and public that suffers - read as: those who have invested in the school via taxes. How are they differen't than stockholders?
"If customers don’t like the milk from a given farm, they can go to another one. Most students in underperforming schools can’t do this."
True, but the original milk farm shouldn't have to pay to send their customers to other milk farms. NCLB makes school districts pay for students to be transported to other schools. I have no problem with their being a semblence of school choice, within reason (magnet schools, for example) - but forcing a school to pay for students to go elsewhere is a bit ridiculous, and only serves to increase the original school's problems. A downward spiral, to be sure.
But, aside from all that, the aptness of the parody really lies in other areas.
There's an assumption that all students, no matter who they are, no matter what their background, previous education, special education concerns, physical and mental handicaps, or otherwise, can perform at the same level.
All students cannot perform at the same level. As a ridiculous example, children with severe cognitive impairment were required to take standardized tests last year. Some of these students can't even hold on to a pencil. The answer to this problem? Special education teachers need to become "highly qualified" - including passing a Praxis exam in a core content area.
Not all cows produce the same amount of milk. Not all students produce the same level of work. It's silly to assume they can.
The solution is decidedly *not* to simply create a federal mandate that all students must perform at a certain level *or else*. The "Cow" analogy handles most of these "or else" stipulations pretty handily, providing much humor for those of us up to our elbows in the cow patty that is NCLB.
Hmm... maybe I should write a new Modest Proposal, wherein the exceptional students are fed to the poor performers in an effort to increase their performance against the curve. That's not too far from the truth in many schools, though, so it might be hitting too close to home.
quote: Yep. Definitely not connected to the public education system. It's funny because it's apt in plenty of ways.
Students aren't a national resource? Children aren't a natural resource? Students are not a school's customers at all... they don't pay to go (with the caveat of private school students). The general public is the customer, paying taxes to gain an educated populace... which is a resource everyone benefits from.
And that attitude is partly what is wrong with schools-treating children as the product rather than the consumer. Children are the consumers of the product offered by schools. Regardless of who’s paying, they are the customers. And of course children are a “national resource.” But they are not at the school solely to produce the product created by the school – they are the consumer of the product of the school.
quote:If a dairy farm does a poor job, it is the farmer and his stockholders who suffer... true. If a school does a poor job, it is the community and public that suffers - read as: those who have invested in the school via taxes. How are they differen't than stockholders?
Because stockholders don’t care how the cows are treated (barring basic humanitarian concerns) except to the extent it affects milk production. The taxpayers care about how the children are treated beyond just how well they’re learning. Plus, milk (the product of dairy farms) is a commodity – essentially fungible. The major complaint with NCLB is that it treats education as a commodity. A comparison making a commodity more like a commodity to complain about the commoditization of a non-commodity doesn’t make sense.
quote:True, but the original milk farm shouldn't have to pay to send their customers to other milk farms. NCLB makes school districts pay for students to be transported to other schools. I have no problem with their being a semblence of school choice, within reason (magnet schools, for example) - but forcing a school to pay for students to go elsewhere is a bit ridiculous, and only serves to increase the original school's problems. A downward spiral, to be sure.
It’s only ridiculous when you fail to consider that the “school” isn’t paying for anything – certain resources allocated to the school to educate a child are being allocated to another school to educate that child. Treating the public school systems as fiefdoms from which resources are taken ignores the reality that schools don’t have any money of their own.
quote:But, aside from all that, the aptness of the parody really lies in other areas.
There's an assumption that all students, no matter who they are, no matter what their background, previous education, special education concerns, physical and mental handicaps, or otherwise, can perform at the same level.
All students cannot perform at the same level. As a ridiculous example, children with severe cognitive impairment were required to take standardized tests last year. Some of these students can't even hold on to a pencil. The answer to this problem? Special education teachers need to become "highly qualified" - including passing a Praxis exam in a core content area.
And I’m not defending NCLB’s treatment of children as the same: again, I’m not sure how much of it I agree with. But it’s possible to agree with the message a parody attempts to deliver and think that it utterly failed to deliver it. Cow’s produce milk. Children consume education. Besides, the dairy industry has worked relentlessly to standardize cows, and milk quantity test would be accurate. I was under the impression that one of the major complaints was that standardized testing wasn’t accurate.
quote:Not all cows produce the same amount of milk. Not all students produce the same level of work. It's silly to assume they can.
And again, if the student’s work was the “product” the analogy might make sense. Besides, I bet milk production in almost all dairy cows is within a much smaller range than passing scores on the NCLB tests. Cows that don’t produce enough are simply slaughtered for meat to save feed costs.
quote:The solution is decidedly *not* to simply create a federal mandate that all students must perform at a certain level *or else*. The "Cow" analogy handles most of these "or else" stipulations pretty handily, providing much humor for those of us up to our elbows in the cow patty that is NCLB.
I agree that’s not the solution. Again, once the basic comparison is invalid (dairy farms are not to schools as cows are to students), the subsequent portions utterly lose their punch.
quote:Hmm... maybe I should write a new Modest Proposal, wherein the exceptional students are fed to the poor performers in an effort to increase their performance against the curve. That's not too far from the truth in many schools, though, so it might be hitting too close to home.
See, that parody makes sense to me – especially given the elimination of gifted classes to avoid stigmatizing those not in the gifted classes. There are other possibilities that would work, especially medical ones (hospitals that don’t cure enough cancer patients have to pay to ship the healthier patients to the Mayo Clinic, Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer is compared to Stage I Basil Cell Carcinoma).
Again, I disagreed with the message on school choice, not the message on testing and subsequent actions. If it’s only aimed at insiders, maybe it can be considered more apt. Seems to me that it’s just preaching to the converted at that point.
posted
It's a particularly apt anology/parody for numerous reasons.
1. Students should be a national resource, but that is not how they are treated in this country. What's coming out of a majority of the schools is the next round of low-wage laborers. Schools were set up to train workers. Not to offer classical education - that's traditionally been reserved for the upper class. Except that schools are somehow failing to impart the golden work ethic . . . tsk, tsk. This irks big corporations who claim they can't find workers with a decent 8th grade reading level or the ability to do basic math. And big corporations fund a lot of political maneuvers, so they are heeded when they complain.
2. The punitive measures detailed in the NCLB Act provide an apt comparison to a mass production that involves another live creature. This is exactly how the students, system and people are seen by those "in power" at the present moment. Cows are assembly-line cared for. They all get the exact same treatment and the exact same conditions and produce the exact same results . . . or else. (The meat grinder for them.) The current administration is pushing for a similar mentality when it comes to children, starting at pre-K levels. No child is left behind . . . except those that don't conform to the expectations. Of a decent home (or a home at all), a decent breakfast to start the day, adequate clothes, stable parent(s) and a school that is safe to learn in . . . of a certain cognitive ability, maturity, capabilities, . . . the list could go on forever.
3. It becomes even more apparent that students are a resource when you look at how much education funding is wasted on "administration" - try looking for your state laws about education. They're all over the place. And then add then the federal mandate. Eeeck. However, all these requirements (with their subsequent "requirements" in evaluations, monitoring, etc.) provide an awful lot of job security. (Read: resources.)
I think "No Cow Left Behind" was timely and priceless - and the folks I work with did too - of course, we have to live with the results of this "act" which ain't much fun. But our lack of fun is nothing compared to the students' who will suffer because the of the numerous problems in this legislation.
And besides all that, LIGHTEN UP! It was funny, particularly given the current issue with cows anyhow. Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
You make an interesting argument with regard to consumerism and students as a commodity. It's true that students are seen too often as a commodity, but I don't think they are consumers either.
As it stands now, and as NCLB is emphasizing, students must perform. They are producers more than anything else - they produce scores and data which can then be used to gauge the effectiveness of a school. I think this is where the parody was likely aimed - NCLB expects students to produce scores, and the cow thing expects cows to produce milk. Whether these are realistic expectations is not considered.
While it can be argued that students "consume" the "product" of education, that is not measured. No one measures how much is taught, or how much education is consumed - they simply measure the resultant product produced by students as an end result. So saying students are consumers while cows are producers may be true in the real world, but the parody aims at NCLB's focus on them as producers.
quote:Because stockholders don’t care how the cows are treated (barring basic humanitarian concerns) except to the extent it affects milk production. The taxpayers care about how the children are treated beyond just how well they’re learning.
True. But NCLB doesn't care how children are treated. It cares about test scores and certifications and quantitative statistics. NCLB measures students as though they are cows, in effect.
quote:A comparison making a commodity more like a commodity to complain about the commoditization of a non-commodity doesn’t make sense.
Not quite sure how to unpack that line. The comparison, I feel, is using cows to *show* that NCLB views students as a commodity. It's pointing up that fact, using an obvious commodity to show the average person that NCLB views students no differently than cows - simply producers, whose production can be affected by barn improvements and farmer certification.
quote: It’s only ridiculous when you fail to consider that the “school” isn’t paying for anything – certain resources allocated to the school to educate a child are being allocated to another school to educate that child. Treating the public school systems as fiefdoms from which resources are taken ignores the reality that schools don’t have any money of their own.
Yes and no. While a school has no money of its own, the school district has a budget. Now, through simple math, you can calculate how much money is spent per pupil - but that's not actually spent on each pupil individually. A school doesn't lose $35k that would just go to that child, it loses $35k worth of infrastructure, salaries, supplies, computers, transportation, after school activities, and other expenses.
Schools that already have little to no revenue because property taxes in their area can't cover their costs (or because their residents won't pass a budget) will be hit very, very hard - and these schools are the ones most likely to miss the NCLB boat and have to send off their students. Wealthy districts are more likely to pass the NCLB requirements, so the wealthy districts will be getting money and students funneled to them from the poorer districts.
Also, as the influx of poorly performing students rush in, they will effectively knock off the school's performance and bring them below the NCLB benchmark... so eventually there will be *no* schools that are performing up to NCLB par.
That's why I found your "ingenuity... philosopher" line so amusing, if only because I'd use the same sarcasm - only aimed at the savant who masterminded NCLB.
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Personally, I think that students are a resource, rather than a commodity. Similar to fossil fuels, rain forests, clean water and breathable air. We rely on our schools to maintain a constant supply of well educated adults, so much so that we take for granted that these adults don't just spring from the ether. There's a great deal of work involved to keep this resource viable, but it's mostly hidden.
Just as we mine fossil fuels to excess, cut down rain forests, and pollute the water and air, the average voter/taxpayer often shoots down budgets or elects people who do awful, awful things like passing NCLB.
Certifying a teacher isn't going to improve a child's education, or (more importantly, as NCLB is concerned) raise his or her test scores. Just as certifying a farmer won't improve a cow's production rate. The onus of production (which is really what NCLB is aimed at, score production) is on the student (or, in the parody's case, the cow). Why don't we require highly qualified parents as well as teachers? How about highly qualified tutors, study buddies, friends, siblings, or any of the other people that influence a child's ability and motivation to learn? Either a teacher can teach, or not - a slip of paper isn't going to change that (especially when such a piece of paper can be had simply by passing a written test!).
It isn't enough to offer a sterling educational product for the student consumer. To effectively teach, that student has to be motivated to buy what you're selling. Even the best schools in the country have dropouts and students who fail - through no fault of theirs, or through no lack of trying.
A speaker at a workshop once said that it's impossible to teach, one can only make it easier for someone else to learn. If the student adamantly doesn't want to learn, no teacher in the world can teach him or her. The teacher might *inspire* a student to learn, but never force them.
The parody is funny to insiders because we see the sterile, quantitative methods used by NCLB in a vain attempt to solve qualitative problems largely out a school's control.
quote: And besides all that, LIGHTEN UP! It was funny, particularly given the current issue with cows anyhow.
No, it wasn’t. That’s the point – everyone is saying this parody is likening students’ treatment under NCLB to cows, but it’s not. A parody works by taking a technique used in one situation and applying them to another situation to highlight the technique’s absurdity.
In this case, cows are already treated as commodity producers, to be standardized and measured with reliable tests. The parody is trying to say NCLB takes dairy techniques as they already exist as a new program for education. But it does this by taking the new education program and applying it to dairy farms, where it is basically already done. It’s not shocking or absurd to use these techniques on dairy farms, so the parody loses its power.
Cows’ milk production is already tracked and measures. Cows that don’t measure up are slaughtered for meat. Farms that aren’t efficient go under due to market forces (unless propped up by government subsidies).
The more I think about, a parody taking efficient dairy techniques and applying them to children would have been funny and pointed.
quote: While it can be argued that students "consume" the "product" of education, that is not measured. No one measures how much is taught, or how much education is consumed - they simply measure the resultant product produced by students as an end result. So saying students are consumers while cows are producers may be true in the real world, but the parody aims at NCLB's focus on them as producers.
The problem being that the milk production tests are both accurate and valid – steps taken to increase the score of the milk production test will increase the score on the test, and the score accurately reflects the value of the resource. I thought one of the major complaints about NCLB was that the tests weren’t particularly accurate or valid. Again, the parallel is weak just at the point it needs to be strong to make its point.
quote: True. But NCLB doesn't care how children are treated. It cares about test scores and certifications and quantitative statistics. NCLB measures students as though they are cows, in effect. …
Not quite sure how to unpack that line. The comparison, I feel, is using cows to *show* that NCLB views students as a commodity. It's pointing up that fact, using an obvious commodity to show the average person that NCLB views students no differently than cows - simply producers, whose production can be affected by barn improvements and farmer certification.
Exactly – but it measures them as cows are measured now, not under the hypothetical program described in the parody. So the “change” in dairy farming proposed in the parody isn’t a radical change, suggesting the change in NCLB isn’t radical: ineffective as commentary. Maybe an effective parody would have been to replace principals with dairy farmers because they’ve been wringing the last drop of a commodity from the cows for so long.
quote: Personally, I think that students are a resource, rather than a commodity. Similar to fossil fuels, rain forests, clean water and breathable air. We rely on our schools to maintain a constant supply of well educated adults, so much so that we take for granted that these adults don't just spring from the ether. There's a great deal of work involved to keep this resource viable, but it's mostly hidden.
The other problem with the comparison being that most of these resources are consumable and/or renewable. Students would be more like a piece of capital equipment – big upfront expenditure for years of output. And of course, capital equipment is best produced in a standardized fashion. This whole analogy is making me uncomfortable.
To sum up, the parody would have been much more effective had it been written to take dairy techniques and apply them to schools. The analogies all point in the wrong direction to be effective as written.
posted
Dag, with all your comments on the accuracy of milk production tests, you appear to have missed the point of the parody -- that treating students like producers of milk is a crime against them.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I’m aware the of the point the parody tried to make. My contention is that, from a literary point of view, it utterly fails to do so.
The parody isn’t saying that NCLB treats children like milk producers.
It’s saying that treating milk producers like NCLB treats children would be ludicrous, so obviously it’s ludicrous to treat children that way.
The problem being that dairy farms already act that way. From the standpoint of the dairy industry, it’s rational to act that way. So it’s not ludicrous to apply the NCLB to them.
Had the parody gone the other way – some memo showing how the creators of the NCLB got the idea from dairy farm techniques – it would have made the point you say it does.
posted
I respect Dag's nitpicking of the aptness of the parody, and I think he's mostly right. If a bit nitpicky.
But my main point is: I think you sort of have to be from Vermont to fully appreciate whatever aptness it does have.
Parodies written in Vermont, whether of the Patriot Act, gays in the military, steel import quotas, or school systems, all HAVE to use cows. It's all they've got. Posts: 431 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
*looks at the poster hanging in her office and chuckles*
It is a picture of a cow on it holding a baseball glove in its mouth and a bat under its chin and it says "I'm having a long, productive career and I have the stats to prove it." Underneath that are stats for height, weight, average, status etc.
Edit: Is not from Vermont. Is in the Ag business, though.
posted
By the way, thinking of ways to make this parody more effective has moved my neutrality concerning NCLB toward tentative dislike until I can do some more research. So in a weird, “learned helplessness” kind of way, it was marginally successful on me.
Except for the school choice portions. Not gonna change my mind on that one.
posted
You make interesting points, and I see where you're coming from, Dag. Not to say I really agree with you entirely, but your reasons seem valid enough.
One of the main complaints I have with NCLB is that it is too anti-Darwinistic (which can resonate for good or ill, depending on the audience). I've called it the "student extinction bill" or "no antelope left behind" more than once - if no animal in a herd were left behind and the whole herd waited for the slow ones to keep up, they'd all be eaten by predators.
Milk production is a survival of the fittest industry - produce, or get thrown in a meat grinder. Higher education in this country is similar - get the grades or fail out of school. Private schools run along the same lines - get the grades and behave, or get thrown out. It's really how the world works - keep up or get left behind.
Saying that no one should ever be left behind is pretty silly when taken in any context (certainly any context that makes a claim at preparing anyone for any aspect of the real world). If everyone slowed down to focus on making sure every last person kept up, no forward progress would be made. NCLB wants every child to perform, no matter what, and holds schools accountable when they don't.
This artificial resistance to darwinistic trends is ludicrous in a milk producing farm, as poor producers are eliminated in favor of better producers. Why? Because milk production is the most important thing, and low producers must be eliminated and replaced with higher producers.
NCLB is schizophrenic in that it wrongly focuses on the product of scores and wants to achieve a high quality product... but then imposes this artificial antidarwinism that cripples such an output-based endeavor.
In that sense, it's very difficult to parody effectively, in that it doesn't even make internal sense.
If one made a parody saying farmers should run the schools the way cows do, that'd point out the fact that NCLB is overly focused on product but would be exactly opposite to their stated goal of making poor producers succeed (whereas a farmer would just replace the poor performers with healthier, better cows).
However, the opposite, allowing the NCLB legislators to run farms like schools (as this parody showed) points out the fact that NCLB cannot increase performance with its methods (as these methods would cripple national milk procution). However, it doesn't effectively parody NCLB's narrow focus on product.
So, yeah, it's not a 100% effective parody, but I don't think anything can be. It's really a parody of itself. But, working in education as I do, I saw humor in it for its sheer idiocy. Of course it's stupid to use NCLB on a farm! It's stupid to use it anywhere! It's just funny to see it in a different light.
One of the most telling lines in the whole parody is this one, though, which got me to laugh out loud:
quote:Some farmers may be upset that I proclaim to know what is best for these cows but I certainly consider myself capable of making these recommendations. I grew up next to a farm and I drink milk.
Legislators with zero time in a classroom are making policy on education. Maybe teachers can rewrite the election law during their lunch breaks, to give them a taste of their own medicine. It's sickly ironic that NCLB is forcing teachers to prove they are highly qualified before teaching a single student, but there's no need to prove the authors of the bill are highly qualified at *anything* before they affect every child in the country.
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As far as test scores not accurately reflecting student ability, well duh. And tests that try to gauge thinking ability rather than simple knowledge are no better because of their subjectivity and reliance on students understanding "how" to take that test. Even saying that a human being's performance and capability can be measured by one simple multiple choice test is pretty far fetched. Using said test scores to dictate policy is even worse.
Even worse, pointing to teachers and schools as the sole party at fault and in dire need of repair is ludicrous. Social concerns in communities, families and cultures are more at play than a teacher's ability to impart information.
Why do wealthy white students succeed? Mainly because their families, communities and role models all value academic success. Why do poor black students struggle? Mainly because their families, communities and role models do not value academic success, or have largely not attained it themselves. (I know I'm painting with broad strokes there, but those are trends I've noticed)
There's an achievement gap between white students and students of color, between those with money and those without. Are more certified teachers going to help? New educational models? More technology in the classroom? Smaller class sizes? All the normal buzz words and issues? Sure, a little. Will it fix the problem? NO WAY. Not until the families, communities and support networks that influence these students for 18 hours a day work as hard motivating them to succeed as their teachers do for 6 hours a day.
NCLB is focused in the wrong areas, has found a scapegoat to point fingers at, uses illogical methods and isn't even properly funded. It's a dark cloud over the educational system.
Any parody that gets me to smile instead of thinking about how awful that bill is works just great for me. Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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