This is a request for teachers, administrators, policy makers, legislators, parents, students and citizens to look into the political and personal and financial gains for the people who support NCLB; this mandate and its movement are neither altruistic nor honorable.
Know that the rhetoric, the statistics, the premise and the structure of this law is wrong. The schools, the teachers, and our children are suffering.
Let's take back our schools.
The current emphasis on testing forces teachers to “teach to the test” when their real job should be to inspire our students to love learning. Rather than improving teaching, our current county pacing guides undermine the profession by taking away the teacher's ability to engage students using a variety of techniques and strategies depending on the needs of the students in the class.
In order to ensure that all children thrive, schools need to be places of active and engaged learning, with a curriculum designed to maximize success for every child.
In a thriving learning community, multiple assessment tools, including tests, written work, performances, oral presentations, and peer and teacher-reviewed portfolios, can be used to gauge the progress of individual students, the effectiveness of teachers, and the overall success of a school as a place of engaged learning.
There are many powerful ways to improve education in this country. We can strengthen the ability of parents, communities, and informal learning institutions to be equal partners with teachers, educators, and administrators. The best way to ensure high standards and accountability in every school is to give parents a meaningful role in the leadership of their school and a voice in shaping education policy.
We can do this one child, one school, and one county at a time...
It is time for a new era of parental involvement in which parents are actively engaged in the governance of their local school and have a powerful voice in education policy.
Make your voices heard. Read. Listen. Think.
Before it is worse.
THE HISTORY:
Here is how it was in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, where our resigning superintendent's leadership and legacy continues to be in evidence.
September 06, 2004
Talented Teacher Leaves for NASA
Caryn Long, a science teacher who reached for the stars, is leaving Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to work for NASA.
As a teacher at Winterfield Elementary, Long won a prestigious NASA fellowship and applied to become a teacher-astronaut.
Long won't be suiting up for space travel. But later this month she'll move to Mississippi to work at the Stennis Space Center, helping other teachers learn how to get students engaged with math, science and technology.
She leaves with warm memories of students and colleagues, but with bitterness toward a school district she says has become too test-driven and bureaucratic to support innovative teachers.
"CMS is a big machine," Long, a 37-year-old new mom, said from her Union County home Thursday. "I don't think they're doing what's best for kids. The only thing that counts is the test scores; it's the only measure of achievement."
CMS hired Long when she graduated from Queen's College -- now Queens University of Charlotte -- in 1988. In 1999 she came to Winterfield, an east Charlotte elementary school where most kids are black or Hispanic and come from low-income homes.
She loved seeing children's faces light up when she taught.
She started pulling in honors, including a 2001 Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching.
But Long saw things that disturbed her. North Carolina's ABC program was driving testing to the forefront of education. Students' scores on state exams were shaping school ratings, teacher bonuses and children's chances of promotion.
She saw third-graders throwing up on test days. She saw a fifth-grader fall to the floor in tears of relief when a teacher told her she'd passed her exams.
"Why are we doing this to an 11-year-old?" Long wondered last week.
In its quest to boost performance, CMS uses standardized test-prep lessons and "pacing guides" that tell teachers what material to cover on what days. That tends to squeeze out the creative exploration that sparks a true love of learning, Long says.
In 2002, Long won an Einstein Fellowship for outstanding math and science teachers. It meant she would spend a year working with NASA in the nation's capital, using space exploration to spark kids' interest in math and science.
Long says she got enthusiastic support from Winterfield Principal Donna Parker-Tate.
But from central offices, she says, she got hassles. She had to fight to get pay-scale credit for the year she spent in Washington, and had to use her fellowship stipend to pay for health insurance.
Louise Woods, who chairs the school board's personnel committee and helped Long with details of her fellowship, acknowledges it was complicated and frustrating. She said she doesn't know why Long decided to leave CMS, but she's sorry to lose her.
"She's a wonderful teacher," Woods said Thursday.
CMS tries to balance freedom and standardization for teachers, Woods said. Federal and state laws force the emphasis on test scores. And the district set up pacing guides when it became clear that some schools -- often those with high poverty levels -- weren't covering the required material in a year.
But flexibility and support for star teachers are "something we do need to work on," Woods said.
Another talented teacher has left the profession to pursue a more lucrative and rewarding career in the private sector.
And while she packs her bags, the Administration scratches their heads with all those unused rulers and wonders, "Why?"
The answer is simple, good teachers are no longer allowed to actually teach. They are "instructors," told to cover X amount of material in Y amount of time if they want to keep their low-paying jobs and manage to get a meager raise.
And the material that they are given is not information that is potentially useful to the students. It is a curriculum that is designed to achieve high scores on the standardized tests that are used to rate the school systems and therefore the school administration.
What we have here is a system in which school administrations are pushing children to score high on a test, so they can themselves garner a higher salary for improving education' in their respective districts. And in a few years, after they have made a name for themselves, they pack up and move to yet another area and begin the same dance.
Meanwhile, we are giving students ulcers worrying about test scores that mean nothing to anyone except the school boards and department of education.
Back in the classroom, we see a teacher who has been in the profession for 16 years and has won numerous awards for her abilities. After winning the Einstein Fellowship, for being such an excellent science teacher, she was sent to work with NASA on developing studies that would help children get more involved in math and science programs. And what did she get for her trouble? She was forced to use the stipend that she received during this year to pay for medical insurance and had to fight to even get her standard yearly salary.
But NASA recognized talent when they saw it, and they made her an offer of a larger salary and even more importantly, the chance to actually influence the education direction of the nation's young people.
Now Caryn Long is truly an educator and a teacher, not just an instructor.
http://www.mac-con.com/christweb/archives/2004_09_06.htmlTHE PRESENT:
Eric J. Smith, Superintendent of Anne Arundel County Public Schools, has resigned. The county residents now have a new opportunity to evaluate and apply their knowledge about his policies and dedication to the federal No Child Left Behind Act by educating themselves and overseeing the board of education's choice for our next superintendent.
In his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, June 2004, Smith stated: "This law [NCLB] has fundamentally transformed the debate about public education in this country by changing the discussion from one about the lack of student achievement and issues beyond the control of schools and school systems to one about using research-proven strategies to ensure that each child can read, compute, and write on grade level."
Smith's standard approach to "excellence" in our schools has been to invest heavily in the programs of the top financial magnates in the educational industry, pouring increasing proportions of our budget into specific programs and high-stakes tests of questionable educational value. As is his style, he did not engage in any dialogue, he simply sprang forth with dramatic change, and invested in programs and a system of testing that ultimately has replaced curricula. Early in his tenure, after his dramatic changes became obvious to parents and notable in the trauma perceived by both the teachers and students, he held "community forums" at several schools, which served as misinformation campaigns, as he handled parental and community concern about pacing guides with the cunning admonition that: "these are GUIDES...not restrictions...." and that teacher's KNEW that they DID NOT have to follow them, but that they were meant simply as loose frameworks, or standards, but not scripts (insert appropriate fable here). Asked to account for the figures on expenditures to specific vendors during the three year tenure of Smith in our county, our county offices have explained that "that is a lot of research" because they do not keep the figures on specific expenditures by vendor.
Thanks to him, what is being taught in our schools is a scripted, measured, time-locked schedule of county endorsed "clips." Each day a certain page of information is presented (called pace guides), and information is abbreviated to conform to the time constraints (called block schedules), culminating in examinations that meet county, state and federal requirements of "proficiency" measurement. Teachers are frantic to keep up with "the pace," and although by the end of the year they previously were left with time to review some of the information, to perhaps strengthen the learning opportunity or even support a little abstraction from the year's academics, they now test; they now struggle to finish the clips; they now bite their nails to nubs worrying about the statistical regurgitate that will be the measure of their and their students' worth. Now, every subject is managed by this mestastisizing policy, which means by the end of the year in a given class, the students are tested daily, weekly, monthly, and by semester for the PSAT, SAT, HSA, and AP, and since THAT is still not enough, they will have course finals too (and I mean in Phys. Ed. too).
The other half of Smith's "nationally acclaimed success" is the Advanced Placement explosion. Classic examples of how his dedication to the rapid expansion of AP classes have faired are the roots of hilarious dinnertime discussions at our house. The teachers, forced to accommodate the doubled AP classes offered, have not been adequately prepared either. The subject matter and abstraction of concepts is difficult, even with a guidebook, and certainly, no one has the time, to read, let alone "learn" the material or assimilate the overall subjects that these "advanced" classes are supposed to offer. In European History, our daughter's lectures included such substanceless information as: "this movement, referred to as the "whatchamacallit"..." because the teacher did not have the experience, the training, or the time to learn the material herself. Without time to debate this detail, the textbook and workbook provided by the College Board, material presented in a parrallel and measured goal of test-outcome, basically negated the use for a teacher, except as a test-dispensing machine.
In middle school, covering the topic of democracy, ( during her half-year allottment of Social Studies, after her half-year allottment of Science,) my younger daughter presented with the following question: "We were told that communism is bad, but what makes it bad." My other daughter reported that her 8th grade social studies teacher admonished her class during the election of our state governor by writing "Vote Republican" on the blackboard. My daughter's question to us was: “Was I born a Democrat?” She told us that the majority of her classmates "were Republican" as informed by the results of a quiz the teacher gave them with questions such as: “Would you agree to provide a free breakfast to needy students in the public school?" (Apparently, the popular answer was "NO!" ) End of lesson.
Europe, its geography, economic history, and political system was reduced, for times sake, to two weeks, in middle school. And in AP chemistry, all questions as to "why" or "how" are fielded robotically with "because." There is no time for picky little details. The entire AP Physics program has been reduced to the teacher's promise, on back to school night, to prepare your child to get a passing grade on the AP exam. This orientation to align curriculum with the exam contributed to the National Research Council's concern over the reduction of breadth and scope in science classes lost to a shallow, rote delivery and memorization of "facts" instead of an analysis of theory and the use of scientific method. And to add insult to parent's confusion, children are bribed into taking more than 4 AP classes a semester, with no required prerequisit basic courses, in earlier grades, with inaccurate descriptions of college and university application of their grades, and promises of savings in college fees with scores of 3 or better on AP exams. For everyone's information, with a score of 3 on an AP exam and $3.50, you can probably still buy a gallon of gas, but "no go" on skipping fees for the college-level class. Information about the test results have been "managed" and are misleading to the public. If you really have the determination to find the figures supporting Smith's campaign of "success" consider this: you will need to review the figures on how many students did NOT take the exams, failed them, or scored a grade of 3 or below on them; good luck, these figures are carefully hidden from public view.
Our Superintendent recently received a dismal report from the teacher's survey. He is facing a vote of no confidence from the Teacher's association of Anne Arundel County (TAAC). He has had the results from recently disclosed human resources audit reveal his practice of delivering irresponsible bonuses to high level administrators. It revealed raises to his closest cabinet members, pre-employment bonuses, other budgetary indiscretions, (remember the $300,000 security evaluation he surprised us and the boe with?). It revealed malfunctioning hiring and screening practices going back to the last audit, and major communication lapses, culminating in a damaged relationship with the board of Ed, the teachers.
Am I sad that he is leaving? I am not at all. And the news that he is leaving to join a seminar at Harvard's Graduate School of Education only keeps my nerves on edge. Because, unfortunately, for people like him, the "master" plan is to treat colleges and universities to the same tests and measurements principals that have been on our schools like termites for the last three years. Secretary of Education Spellings has already announced the NCLB plan to invade our universities. She will find a dedicated soldier in Eric J. Smith.
My child has a name, a personality and her very own potentials. She is not a number, nor a group. She deserves much more than the clips of information delivered to her at jet-speed with a bureaucratic eye on her regurgitated data product. She deserves the time and attention to her questions and her pace, even if it conflicts with the schedule of predetermined disbursement mandatory in our school system.
And as for the teachers, my children's teachers can do without the county-created and mandated script. They are professionals, educated, and willing to engage in an historically noble calling. They are individuals too, with interests and talents and specific unique areas of academic expertise. Take away their volition and you take away their passion. Take away their passion and...well, just look at them leaving.
What is at stake in our schools when our children become pawns for the far-reaching tentacles of politically driven principles, and merely data for professional credibility? The experiences we deliver, during the 13 years a child attends our public schools, will shape their identity and establish our societal identity for the future. This is far more important than the career or political aspirations of one self absorbed educational bureaucrat. The time is now for us to use this opportunity to evaluate the changes taking place in our schools.
We can do better.
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