<p>So good to see citizens taking matters into their own hands!</p>
<p>We have a saying in manufacturing, “You can’t inspect in quality.” That means you don’t get a good product by checking it after it’s already made, only by making it carefully in the first place.</p>
<p>Just as companies fail that expend their resources inspecting what’s already made, so do schools fail that expend their resources testing instead of improving instruction.</p>
<p>Since the discussion has veered in the direction of the negative impacts of testing children too often or too early, should we not ask when and where the real problem arise?</p>
<p>Are the tests too hard that they cause the educators to forgo what they consider a better education for a lock-step set of instruction that only serves to pass the test? Why are the tests so different from the proposed curriculum? Or are they?</p>
<p>Are questions such as the following ones too hard for 9-10 year old students?</p>
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<p>Are we raising the bar too high for our 3d and 8th graders? Are we expecting too much from our teachers? </p>
<p>Can’t we think that, in a better world, the level of education in the affected grades would be so good that the test(s) would be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate the excellence of education versus something that causes lost sleep? </p>
<p>Is it so wrong to establish “some” standards and develop a system that tries to measure the same standards? Without standards, how do we measure the effectiveness of education … before it is too late?</p>
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<p>Scarsdale mothers rebelled against the early testing in 2001. Isn’t that the same Scarsdale that has been a vocal opponent of the AP and similar programs for years? </p>
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<p>Out of curiosity, how many who are opposed to NCLB do, however, support the existing role played by the AP or IB programs in our high schools?</p>
<p>I think AP can be useful, with a good teacher, to offer a higher level choice to students ready for it. I don’t think the test aspect at the end is important; what should be valued is an authentic introduction to a college level of instruction for the students who are prepared and who choose it, a level which might not occur in some schools otherwise. I also think that many schools (as I recall Scarsdale argued this)can offer alternate challenging courses that provide an equivalent experience.</p>
<p>I have no experience with IB and connect speak to that.</p>
<p>xiggi, you’re asking the wrong questions. Should we have standards? Of course we should have standards! Few would say otherwise.</p>
<p>But should those standards be handed down unilaterally to communities from a remote central government or agency? Should we be expending resources on testing when instruction, teacher compensation, early childhood development, etc.the factors that determine how children will perform on those testsare not being adequately addressed or funded? These are the matters that beg to be debated.</p>
<p>An anecdote, for what it’s worth: My daughter had the most wonderful teacher in fourth grade. Kind, nurturing, and smart as a whip. Able to relate to kids and adults equally well. Great at keeping the kids on-task without being a slave driver. Such skills as I have never seen in a teacher.</p>
<p>We were lucky to have her, because she had been fired the year before from her job as principal of a nearby school that failed to make “adequate progress” according to No Child Left Behind. The school is about 40% children of Mexican immigrants; many of them barely speak English.</p>
<p>The testing that revealed these students’ deficiencieswho benefited from it? The cost of the testing surely could have paid for an ESL teacher. I’m certain they did not get a better principal in place of the one who was fired. The social programs that could bring these students and their families out of poverty, which is of course the first step toward improving educationare they any better now?</p>
<p>But we have testing! Wonderful.</p>
<p>I am ambivalent about NCLB, too. But it’s a little ironic to be cheering on the “Scarsdale Revolt”. I don’t think too many kids were being left behind in Scarsdale, so, sure, the program is unnecessary there. And in perhaps a couple dozen other school districts nationally. Except that it would be pretty embarrassing to come up with the criteria for exempting rich districts from the program.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I think we need to have some verifiable standards for judging whether we are accomplishing our educational goals. As to where those goals should be being set, in general (and with a few exceptions) both states and school districts have failed miserably at setting goals that can be assessed objectively. Hence the need for NCLB in the first place. The execution of NCLB has been less than great, and perhaps there should be some exemption process, but on the whole I think it’s the right idea.</p>
<p>Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that a state’s failure to set goals is grounds for the federal government to step in and do it for them. In fact, it’s not allowed, because the Constitution doesn’t say it is allowed. (See the tenth ammendment.)</p>
<p>On the contrary, a federal system is intended to preserve the uniqueness of, and to foster a certain amount of competition between, its various member states. It’s a free market of political ideas, if you will. The founders of this country, in their wisdom, believed that the more central the government, the less equipped it is to respond to the needs of its many, diverse citizens.</p>
<p>Go, Scarsdale Mothers!</p>
<p>If Scarsdale was a little more diverse they might not look so good on paper.</p>
<p>Even before the NCLB testing revolt and the AP revolt they had the Regents revolt (they lost that one), but for years their students were too good to take Regents. It’s a long standing attitude in that district.</p>
<p>And frankly I think we should have National standards, not state standards. Some states have set their standards much lower than others, just so that kids will pass. We only know that some states produce much less prepared students because of the NAEP testing. <a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s a novel proposal: You work to make education better in your state, and I’ll work to make education better in mine. If your kids are smarter, and I decide to emulate your system, then I can do that, but you can’t make me.</p>
<p>Is that not a reasonable compromise?</p>
<p>I currently live in (but am not a native of) one of the states whose schools the rest of the country is always trying to improve. The people here are pretty happy with the state of things: The schools aren’t great, but if you want better schools, plenty of towns have them, and we’re free to move there. The cost of living is very low. There’s no overcrowding, plenty of open land, lots of natural beauty. The unemployment rate is below the national average.</p>
<p>Many of these people say, sure, your schools are better, but if I have to give up all of this for better schools, I’ll just stay put, thank you. Is it your place to tell them they’re wrong?</p>
<p>Why require children to attend school at all? They’re missing out on all that natural beauty.</p>
<p>Just as a minimum length of education is required, so should a minimum quality of education. No one’s telling your neighbors to move–they’re saying that their neighborhood schools must meet a minimum standard of quality.</p>
<p>I have mixed opinions on NCLB, but I do believe in the need for some sort of national standard. A child born in state A shouldn’t automatically expect to receive a poorer education than a child born in state B. Classism already does that for us; no need to encourage it.</p>
<p>So what do they do with 5 year olds who can’t even spell their own name yet? I know kids who can’t do that. They don’t know their ABC’s, cannot count, etc.</p>
<p>I hear the schools in Mexico aren’t so good. Let’s invade and set some standards.</p>
<p>And you’re right, some five-year-olds can’t write their own names. Are you suggesting that making them all take a name-writing test will improve their ability to do so?</p>
<p>Yes, you may say. And you’d be right, because teachers would “teach to the test” and make darned sure that, even if they don’t know anything else, they all know how to write their names.</p>
<p>See where I’m going with this?</p>
<p>^ Analogy fails because the federal government already has authority over the states and is not invading anything but peacefully invited in a couple hundred years ago. Division of rights goes both ways.</p>
<p>I don’t think testing is necessarily the way to go about it, but I also think it would be much worse when left to individual states.</p>
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<p>I also believe that the AP could be (again) useful, but with some huge caveats such as sticking to the original purpose of the tests, namely offering Advanced Placement. In its current stage, the AP are mostly used for outright credits and sometimes for admission decision. Today, the AP is a program that has been spinning out of control and should be drastically curtailed and reanalyzed. </p>
<p>And, if teaching the test is a big no-no in education circles, you should not look further than the AP to find the poster child for such teaching. With a curriculum that is a mile wide but an inch deep, if passing the test s important, the teacher is more or less confined to teaching to the test! And that is a PROFOUND departure of what college education is or, at least, should be. </p>
<p>As it it is today, the AP is part of the problem where high schools pretend to be able to deliver college-level education all the while colleges have to offer a smorgasbrod of remedial courses because the basic education in high schools is so lacking. High schools should be high schools and colleges should be colleges. In the meantime, all this hybrid nonsense is only hurting the students by robbing them of an education designed for their level and maturity. If our high schools would come close to graduate a majority of students who can read, write, and calculate at a REASONABLE level, we would not have much of a discussion. Unfortunately, our public system of education does not come to close to accomplish such a basic goal as it follows a truly darwinian approach by focusing on the few who have sufficient familial support to do well and all but abandon the substantial number that doesn’t. To correct such imbalance, our best teachers should be asked to cover the at-risk and difficult students. Instead, teaching classes such as AP are viewed as plum jobs and rewards for seniority, thus compounding the problem of rampant mediocrity in the areas that need the most help. </p>
<p>I’d like to add, that is not an indictment of teachers. I view them as much as prisoners and victims as the students they teach. Nobody should blame they for trying to teach better or “easier” students, especially in a system that offer little or no rewards for excellence. What is broken is the system, especially the type of system envisioned by Weaver, Weingarten, and their goons.</p>
<p>As far as the future is concerned, we DO have the opportunity of implementing massive changes. With estimates ranging from needing 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 new teachers in the next years, we ought to look at ways to attract new talent to replace the massive numbers of dedicated and competent teachers who are bound to retire. Going back to the same patterns that has resulted in such a decline in education in the past 50 years is no longer a solution. </p>
<p>Oh well, this is probably a lost cause!</p>
<p>I don’t just mean write their names; I mean they cannot spell their names at all.</p>
<p>I wasn’t suggesting anything. I’m saying that if some kids start school without even know their names or ABC’s, how can schools expect them to do all this other stuff in kindergarten? What do they do with them?</p>
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<p>I know the Constitution is not fashionable these days, but if you read it, you see that it goes just one way:</p>
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[QUOTE=The Framers of the Constitution]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
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<p>Unless the Constitution says that the federal government is allowed to make the states live up to certain educational standards—and, of course, it does not—then it’s up to the states, or the people in them, to decide what their standards are going to be.</p>
<p>There is a mechanism in place to fix this if you don’t like it: amending the Constitution.</p>
<p>No, I forgot, there is another mechanism, which is the one we actually use: elect officials who ignore the Constitution and do whatever they darn well please.</p>
<p>I would agree that we need some way of identifying students who have challenges.</p>
<p>For example- if a child is dyslexic, they may also lack phonemic awareness and not be able to remember letter sounds. These kids may not read until mid elementary school- has nothing to do with what they are exposed to- however- what is most important to me- is that these kids who are not early readers or writers be allowed and encouraged to express their intelligence in other ways- until they are neurologically ready for reading & writing.</p>
<p>It is critical that they think of themselves as learners, not as " behind" the rest of the class, and not be forced to spend extra time on what they have difficulty with but instead are encouraged to explore their strenghts .</p>
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<p>The schools in Mexico are indeed lacking, but you should consider the available resources. Teachers earning $400 per month who teach two full shifts in a redesigned school bus or an abandoned trailer face a set of issues that are quite different. </p>
<p>In fact, when scratching the surface, it is remarkable how much some teachers accomplish in Mexico. When helping a few students preparing for the ACT and SAT, I was amazed how well-prepared most were in basic math, especially in geometry and pre-algebra. Of course, all they had to learn in their formative years were Number Two pencils and a piece of paper and … a dedicated teacher.</p>
<p>Xiggi–definitely the AP program suffers from having to cover too much. My H who is taking over our AP bio program this fall, has said this–it has to cover what every college bio class might cover. His inclination is to study a few things deeply, but that’s not how this goes.</p>
<p>He is also a latecomer to teaching, career switching from medicine. Quite a few teachers in our HS started in other careers. We have not seen a phenomenon of the best teachers leaving as you describe. But mediocre teachers come and go. As is true in all professions.</p>
<p>I can’t prove this, but I can tell you, and it’s true, that any student (even you were you still HS age) who cared about learning would be fortunate to be in H’s class. And he is committed to *public *education. Something we seem to be losing sight of, unfortunately.</p>
<p>mantori - How does that go just one way? Not specifically delegated/prohibited powers are reserved to the States OR the people. And the federal government is supposed to be a chorus of THE PEOPLE’s voices (or at least one would hope). Our legislators would be severely limited if they had to amend the Constitution to enact anything not specifically delegated or prohibited by it.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m no lawyer or Constitutional scholar. I suspect President Obama, who is, may have a more valid opinion on this issue.</p>