Score This!!!

The United States is a score crazy culture. If you can't separate the winners from the losers, why do it? NCLB is a natural extension of this underlying sociological need to keep score.

Before WE condemn THEY for forcing US to give tests to THEM...WE should take a good long look in the mirror. We may be teachers during the day but in the evening, we become raving lunatics shouting at coaches, referees, and our children as they compete on various athletic fields.

Last night provided a welcome reprieve from The Great American Sorting Machine. It came in the form of a middle school chorus concert. The kids danced and sang their hearts out. There were no booing fans or yelling coaches. My spirit was lifted.

The music teacher gave a sincere, impassioned speech to the assembled audience including school administrators about the need to make time for the arts. I could not agree more. The students expressed their heartfelt gratitude for this teacher who had confidence in them, cared about them, and helped them be their best.

My 16 yr. old son, who inexplicably wanted to attend his little sisters' performance, brought the message of the evening into focus for me. He wasn't there to see his sister. My son had come along to see his Jr. High music teacher. The one who inspired him to play the drums and return to the Piano that his father had forced him to play as a child.

Despite the absence of a scoreboard, it was clear who the winners were last night.
I hope it is equally clear to anyone reading this who the losers will be if we continue to marginalize art and music classes.

Rainbow's End

For many children, the pot at the end of their public school rainbow is filled with unemployment, illiteracy, and disenfranchisement from society. Some would suggest the need for gateway examination requirements as a measure to prevent the undereducated masses from being shuffled into mainstream society. I say, too little, too late.

Our learning trajectories are set during pre-school years. Although negligible at first, these subtle differences at the starting gate quickly grow into the unbridgeable chasm separating the haves and the have-nots. To illustrate, start with two points at one end of the chalkboard. Angle one upwards, ever so slightly, (the winners), and the other on a slight downward slope (the losers). To exacerbate the problem, there are numerous external factors weighing on the downward slope until it bows. These include poverty, illness, drug use, violence, and many other statistically significant factors impacting a child’s educational trajectory. (Read Lee & Burkham’s Inequality at the Starting Gate)

NCLB mandates educators somehow bring these diverging dots together and we are spending billions of dollars to do just that. Unfortunately, as my Pappy used to say, “The hay is already in the barn” by the time children enter kindergarten.

Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have proposed pre-school initiatives to give educators a fighting chance. This is by no means a political blog. However, if it were a one issue election and the issue was support of education and educational technology, Obama (see zero to five initiative) appears to be the best choice. I applaud Senator Clinton’s proposed $10 billion dollar pre-school initiative (education wins). I fear her propensity to impose governmental control as with the bill she tried to pass to regulate the video gaming industry (technology loses).

Most understand you can’t change people…they have to decide to change on their own. If given a choice of whose trajectory to change, I’d prefer to work with the pre-school child who still dreams of castles and fairies. Who still believes in his or her own ability to succeed.

When you cast your vote, please speak for those too young too vote, too naïve to know what waits for them over the rainbow.

Don't be an Ass.

Pulling the Cart of NCLB:

In order to understand the prevailing climate in public education one first must examine the impact of No Child Left Behind which was spawned by the Smith and O’day led standards based movement (Linn, 2005). The basic premise of NCLB is school accountability for student achievement with the admirable goal of producing a generation of adults better prepared to meet the demands of contemporary society. The carrot or stick if you prefer for accomplishing this task is federal funding and standardized tests are employed as the metric du Jour (Linn, 2005).

It has often been said that what gets measured gets done and unfortunately what is getting done in our public school system is an alarming narrowing of the curriculum as resources are redirected to meet AYP (Hass, 1991). With the educational spotlight firmly fixed on core subjects such as math and English, education in the area of the arts and humanities has been seemingly left to wither in darkness (Eisner, 2005). Additionally, the contemporary curriculum rationale involves mandated learning objectives which are in essence, what we teach. Educators then prep to teach the what, help students learn it, measure the results, and then apply a points system of reward. This cycle is perpetuated until the educational objectives are achieved (Baker, 2004).

In order to validate that learning has taken place summative assessments are used to measure classroom level student performance in our public schools. In actuality, educators could and should be incorporating formative assessments which help to focus students on the task instead of the right answer and have been demonstrated to result in significant learning gains (Black & William, 1998).

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
-author unknown.

So what are we getting from our present educational process which has basically existed in it’s current form for the last century? According to a 2005 survey from the National Association of Manufacturers, 80 percent of employers say K-12 schools are not doing an adequate job of preparing students for work. Furthermore the same study reported 55 percent of employers believe our high school graduates have not even acquired basic employability skills such as attendance, timeliness, and a good work ethic.

If you put a carrot in front of a donkey it will pull your cart right off the edge of the cliff to get the carrot. I believe it reasonable to assume that the current White House administration which signed No Child Left Behind into legislation is driving the educational cart. The question remains, who is the ASS pulling it?

Bush Wacked!

“Six years ago, we came together to pass [NCLB], and today no one can deny its results,” Bush said in his State of the Union address Jan. 28. “Last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record. Reading scores are on the rise. And African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs.”

It is no surprise that when financial aide and continued employment are contingent upon test scores going up, test scores will go up...AKA "Test Pollution"

I bet I know a few educators that would deny President Bush's claim.

Eisner, Kozol, Nieto, Hargraves to name a few...