“Teachers that can do nothing but teach to the test are probably not very good teachers in the first place.”
You are missing the point completely. These are good teachers who are FORCED to do nothing but teach to the test. They are given so much additional crap that they are MANDATED to teach — for the purposes of the test only — that other valuable programs (which, yes, include core basics like reading, writing, arithmetic and so on) get pushed aside by necessity, because the prime directive is to just PASS THE DAMN TEST at all costs. High test scores = a “good school” rating = more funding for said school. Simple as that. And it’s a joke.
I am also here in California. You ought to talk to my sister, who is a teacher, has her Master’s, and is a conservative. She’d tell you how it really is. The whole “any answer was okay, any spelling was okay” argument against teachers is largely a myth perpetuated by those who have no idea what is really going on in the trenches. I know a lot of elementary school teachers, and NO teacher that I’ve EVER spoken with has advocated “creative spelling” or anything of the sort. Maybe you’ve seen some, but I haven’t. Ever.
Kids were getting a much better, well-rounded and tailored education before this whole NCLB stuff started. They AREN’T miles ahead. Yeah, so a lot of them are passing a test. So what? Are they remembering what they learned AFTER the test? How many tests did you take in school that you just crammed for and then promptly forgot after the test? Yeah. That’s how this works.
Therefore you end up with inflated results that look pretty good on paper, but are very poor indicators of the quality of education that the students are actually receiving.
Nevermind the fact that I believe that the federal government shouldn’t even be in this anyway, so that’s another point of contention for me. It is further erosion of state and local control, and it goes against the 10th Amendment. NCLB is supposedly optional for states — they don’t have to go along with it — but of course they all do because the penalty for not going along with it is no federal funding, and schools need all the money they can get.
I’ll say it again: It’s a joke and it needs to be abolished. While it may have good intentions, it’s not the right solution.
And how is it called “cramming” if they are going over the material all the time, every single week of the school year, without a second for all those other wonderful uplifting other subjects?
Yeah, I “crammed” the multiplication tables and the words on the spelling list for the week, etc. I can still multiply and I can still spell those words. The test is about the foundation — reading and math. You can’t learn much or do much in the world without those skills.