[HELLRAISER II]

Let me tell you about No Child Left Behind. This program is so the teachers will be judged by their graduating students performances & pre-college testing and on the surface this looks great, finally the teachers are going to be held responsible for their teaching faults if there are any.

However what they don't tell you is that even special ed students & foreign kids who don't even speak English are also used in the percentages and that is not fair. How do you teach a kid to pass a High School test when they can't even tie their own shoe strings or can't even read and write? I know this for a fact because my wife is a teacher, the Administrators and the Politicians are the only ones to benefit from this fiasco.

[Eva]

The schools will just do what Capistrano Valley High School in California used to do when my daughter was a student there. They require 100% attendance, then send all the low performing kids and goof offs to the library to make up the allowable percentage of absentees.

[No Blue States]

"How do you teach a kid to pass a High School test when they can't even tie their own shoe strings or can't even read and write?"

Perhaps if they cant tie their shoes by HS they should be in special ed.

[Puppage]

foreign kids who don't even speak English are also used in the percentages and that is not fair.

When the state of CA stopped teaching children in their native tongue, their test scores rose. So, NOT speaking English is a crutch for a limited time (as evidenced by CA) & cannot be used as a reason not to pursue this act. No one likes to be held accountable, and this is no different.

With that said, it most surely should NOT begin & end with the teachers. There's a HUGE responsibility on the family as well.

[jigsaw]

How do you teach a kid to pass a High School test when they can't even tie their own shoe strings

Well, now, that's a whole 'nuther issue the Democrats are screaming about! Poverty!

'Cause of the Bush economy, too many kids in this country don't have shoes
and those that do don't share them. It's disgraceful.

And when you think of the songs declaring about terrorists, "We'll put a boot up
your a$$," you realize Bush's military is part of this problem. Just how many
boots is Rumsfeld going to ruin rather than giving them to the poorest amongst us?

I'm going back to that Sports Illustrated thread.....

[Sender]

Hey man, we should get together sometime and let our Georgia teacher wives figure this whole thing out.

[Ima Lurker]

Amen to that. Putting the special ed, non-english speaking AND "troubled" (rotten to the core) kids in regular class rooms only hurts the kids who want to learn and who can learn. It SOUNDS like the politicians and school administrators are doing something to improve schools when in reality it's all smoke and mirrors.

[CMAC51]

However what they don't tell you is that even special ed students & foreign kids who don't even speak English are also used in the percentages and that is not fair...I know this for a fact because my wife is a teacher, the Administrators and the Politicians are the only ones to benefit from this fiasco.

I find it necessary to totally disagree with you. My wife is a teacher dealing with dyslexia and reading recovery. According to her the real benefits of testing rose dramatically after exemptions for learning disabilities were removed. The delivery of the test is modified to compensate for the student's specific disability, however they are tested on the material and their results are included in the overall results. Administrators were no longer able to hide problems. Now the problems get addressed and fixed.

[ladylib]

Testing companies really benefit.

My brother taught ESL. Last year, a kid came off the plane from China who couldn't speak a word of English and my brother had to give him the test a week later.

There is some woman from the fed ed department who was interviewed and claimed that Down's Syndrome kids will be held to the same "high" standard as normal kids.

Meanwhile, schools which don't want to be labeled "persistently dangerous" and really are fudge their statistics or, in the case of NYC, a girl can be raped in a stairwell, but unless the perp held a gun to her head, the school isn't considered "persistently dangerous."

Kids are told they can leave failing schools, but if they are in a failing district, where do they go? Other public schools aren't required to take them.

No Child Left Behind isn't what it's cracked up to be.

[SCalGal]

However what they don't tell you is that even special ed students & foreign kids who don't even speak English are also used in the percentages and that is not fair.

This is absolutely true. The schools are judged by their overall scores, and these include all special ed classes.

My autistic students scribble on the test or play connect-the-bubble on the answer form. Even the two who are able to do the problems in the test can't manage the test format so they get zeros.