Posted on 03/20/2007 3:56:46 AM PDT by theothercheek
Now that Congress is debating whether – and in what form – to renew No Child Left Behind (NCLB), some legislators on both sides of the aisle are openly wondering whether it’s time to face the reality that some children will never catch up, no matter what.
When Congress passed NCLB in 2002, the breakthrough federal education program aimed to have every public school student – whether middle class or poor, white or minority, native born or illegal alien - performing at grade level in reading and math by 2014. Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA, recently told The Washington Post, "There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target."
A group of 57 Republican lawmakers have endorsed a bill that would essentially gut NCLB. The WaPo reports:
Under the House version, states could opt out of the law's mandates through a referendum or through a decision made by a combination of state officials. The Senate version would allow states to opt out of some requirements through negotiations with the federal government. Both versions would allow states to use nearly all their federal education funding, except money designated for special education, for any educational purpose.
One can make a credible case that it is senseless for NCLB to apply to special needs students or to non-English speaking illegal aliens (AKA"migrant children"), so the law was doomed to failure from the start. But The New York Times considers an additional factor that makes the educational goals of NCLB out of reach for millions of students, not just these hard cases: an acute lack of qualified teachers, particularly in the middle school grades.
Middle schools do not attract – and cannot retain – qualified, talented teachers, according to The New York Times:
[E]ducators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute.
As they do so, they are running up against a key problem: a teaching corps marked by high turnover, and often lacking expertise in both subject matter and the topography of the adolescent mind. …
"More people end up in middle schools because that’s where the openings are," said Carmen Fariña, a former deputy chancellor of the New York City school system who is now helping 35 middle school principals reshape their schools. "It’s not necessarily a choice." …
[I]n the Bronx, [Jason] Levy, the principal of I.S. 339, has worked hard to cobble together a staff capable of helping him revive a school mired in years of failure.
"Just go to a job fair," he said. "The lines for elementary school and high school are around the corner. We can’t get people to teach in middle schools."
One of his solutions has been to rely heavily on Teach for America. Twenty-one of his teachers, nearly a third, are part of the program, which recruits recent college graduates. While such teachers are often well-educated and energetic, many leave after their two-year commitments.
Why are these teaching jobs going begging? Because compared to middle school, teaching high school is a cakewalk – those students most in need of a dedicated, talented, innovative educator to inspire them to learn have dropped out already, the paper explains:
"Problematic kids in high school don’t come to school anymore, but in middle school they still show up," said Barry M. Fein, the principal of Seth Low. "I think that piece alone makes it more challenging."
The challenges surface in test scores. … The most recent results of math and reading tests given to students in all 50 states showed that between 1999 and 2004, elementary school students made solid gains in reading and math, while middle school students made smaller gains in math and stagnated in reading.
So there you have it: Tenured, unionized teachers who can’t – and don’t want to – make sure no child is left behind (second item, The Daily Blade, February 23, 2007). Whodathunkit?
NOTE: In case I did not put all the links in correctly, this is the second item in a feature called The Daily Blade and follows an article titled, "Nagin Has A Chocolate Chip On His Shoulder."
But the peer thing can happen in any school. I didn't go to public school, I spent 12 years in Catholic school, and believe me there wre a lot of things going on that were neither being taght at home or in school.
I had a conversation with my 8yo last night about "Bratz" dolls and why she can't have them even though some of her friends have them. The friends she was talking about are not in her public school class, but in her Sunday School class.
The girls basketball and softball coaches at my elementary school and high school were lesbians.........and I went to Catholic School. And that wasin the 70s.
Exactly! The most common way of making test questions more difficult is to make the language more complicated. So, really what you end up measuring is language skills instead of science, social studies or whatever.
I just had this discussion with my son's 3rd grade science teacher. My kid knows science. I help him study so I KNOW that he knows the information. He does well with the test questions that are fairly straightforward. But when they get complicated (Ignoring A, B, C and D, place E, F, G, H and I in order from greatest to least) he always does SOMETHING incorrectly.
A lot of it is more than peer. It's stuffing boys into classrooms where if they act like boys they get disciplined. It's having kids exposed to high levels of sexualization with no way for the teachers to really control what's going on. The pressure cooker where the things kids teach each other cannot be monitored or controlled by the instructors. It's the PC drama. The gay agenda touches everything, even in conservative areas. My kids still don't understand why gay marriage is bad. They see it as a fairness issue.
And worst in some ways is the coaching in self-esteem as the primary value, no matter how people perform. And if the kid has an issue where he knows he doesn't deserve that self-esteem.
You have girls going around cutting themselves. You have kids sneaking vodka into school in water bottles. Meth is easily available. Straightedgers beating up other folks. Goth kids doing goth things. Lots of emo posing. Sex everywhere, well before they are ready for it.
You as a parent compete against that. And this is in nice schools. High school and middle years. And you as a parent may be the only real counterbalance. And your weight is often light there for about 3-5 years.
The way we do high school is unhealthy. And it produces people who didn't have to end up with the scars we give them cramming them into that type of environment.
I think we need smaller, non-coed high schools myself, with a lot more emphasis on real world working skills. And the social engineering that passes for a lot of educational theory needs to be screened out.
You are foul to even make these types of implications. For your information, my daughter has never even had a woman coach for softball - ever - since the time she was in 7 and under tee-ball. The closest she has ever come to having a female coach is her batting coach and she is married with 4 children.
You make nasty implications without any facts to back them up. Even if a coach was a lesbian what's to say that person is also a pedophile? Nothing at all. The most recent scandal in our area was a former ACLU lawyer, and baseball coach, respected member of the community, who was caught with sadistic child porn. Married, with kids, and possessing tapes of children screaming while being raped. I'd take a lesbian without pedophilic intentions over someone like that 7 days a week.
I think we need to look at how IDEA came about. Prior to IDEA, "special ed" kids weren't being taught badly, they weren't being taught AT ALL. When the laws changed, no one knew what to do with them. It has taken time to figure out how to best help them. Special ed teachers, in my experience, are generally very good. THEY are the ones we all go to!
Kids aren't being mainstreamed because special ed teachers aren't doing a good job, but because parents want their kids treated as much like everyone else as possible.
I'll bet many special ed teachers would like to have complete control over "their" students because the most often complaint I hear is that the regular teachers are resistant to the special ed teacher's advice and inconsistent with behavior programs.
My 3rd grade son has learning disabilities. Personally, I'd much rather have him removed to a smaller, quieter room and getting one on one attention. Most times what happens is the sp. ed kids are all placed at one table, the classrooms are still noisy and distracting and the sp. ed teacher is trying to help 4-5 kids at the same time.
Your kids went to community college with mixed age groups and you think it's good, - but you just said how bad it is for others.
You build your own strawmen.
I have no problem with small same-sex high schools, I went to one :)
And the social engineering that passes for a lot of educational theory needs to be screened out.
I could not agree with you more. The problem, however, lies in the definition of "social engineering." What you consider SE and what I consider SE could very well be 2 entirely different things. I see it right here on FR with the various nanny-state issues.
Don't forget about shotgunning.
I taught a girl who is a National champion, and dang near went to the Olympics, in trap. Went to college on trap scholarship. Wants to be a gamewarden.
And! Our rifle team this year is all girl. Undefeated. Going to state.
My kid looked over my shoulder at this - she is completely jealous! She would love to be on a rifle team. Apparantly she is somewhat unique/prized because she is not 'eye-dominant' - whatever that means and why ever it's important. She impressed the local rifle club coach.
I'm not going to waste my time with it. I am very familiar with what a teacher makes in my state and I am very familiar with what a professional makes in our state. On average, I think teachers are fairly compensated. The bad are overcompensated and the good are undercompensated.
Blaming teachers for poor classroom results is foolish. Our biggest teachers, parents, are failing. Of course, when 50% are born out of wedlock and single moms are supposed to make a living and be both parents it isn't really a surprise, is it?
On paper, I'm certified to teach grades 7-12 in science, but in reality, I can't get a job at a middle school, because principals there want people who are certified in "middle grades education", which teaches one about the unique learning traits of adolescents, and gives you a smattering of knowledge in 2 or more subjects.
Personally, I think we'd be better off forgetting about the middle grades concept and going back to junior high, but no one listens to teachers much....
That's one reason. The other is that there just aren't enough special ed teachers available - and since NCLB has required many of them to go back to school and take a number of classes to be considered "highly qualified", some very good SpEd teachers I know are considering finding other things to do.
Yes, archery -- but many years ago in junior high. The only exercise to it, of course, was chasing after arrows in a mad rush to shot again.
Yep - that's me!
I had to take quite a few classes to get dual/triple/quad certs.
...or guidance counselors.
LOL
My family moved cross country to find the best special ed placement for my daughter, who is deaf. She goes to school in Pittsburgh; goes on Sunday and returns on Friday. She loves it and we love it. Like any school, these are kids who have any degree of intelligence; she is in the middle class of the three available classes. I think she will probably go to a Vocational Tech school. We have IEPs like everybody else. She received speech and language therapy; her reading has improved immensely with the help of a reading therapist, and her spoken language is really starting to come together. She leaves her family in the dust with her signed language. We're lucky that we had the resources to move and that I understood the laws prior to use coming to PA. As to the mainstreaming thing; I didn't want her mainstreamed. We already did that and it was not the best placement for her. It's hard on the weekends as she has no friends in this area, but as she is older she will be staying at her school more weekends. Dianna, she was mainstreamed for history in 7th grade and the history teacher wanted her to interpret political cartoons! I said, man, I couldn't even do those.
Glad to see this thread.
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