By Doug Curlee | A two part series in the Santee, CA Patch
Doug Curlee is a veteran of 42 years in the battlefield of television journalism, 33 of those years in San Diego County. With a population of 56,000 and located in eastern San Diego County, Santee is the twelfth largest of San Diego County's 18 cities.
Hurry up, Mr. President!
PART ONE | Doug sits down with the Santee School Superintendent Patrick Shaw, and he had a lot to say about "No Child Left Behind."
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SUPERINTENDENT SHAW>
February 22, 2011 - During his State of the Union speech last month, President Barack Obama said he felt some changes needed to be made in the “No Child Left Behind” education program for America’s school children.
After an afternoon chat with Santee Schools Superintendent Patrick Shaw, I came to one conclusion-
The President can’t move fast enough.
“No Child Left Behind” doesn’t just need revision- it probably needs to go away.
Dr. Shaw is clear that the ultimate goal of NCLB is a good one- it works toward making sure that every child achieves the absolute maximum possible in school.
We can all agree with that part.
The problem comes in when you realize that we’re dealing with people here- not statistics.
“Teaching to the test is not in itself a bad thing” says Dr. Shaw, referring to the annual test kids have to take.
“The problem is that the state and Federal standards are way too high, and getting higher and more difficult every year. Even though Santee’s schools are ALL above the cutoff line of 800 points, one of the local schools has already been forced into a performance increase status... meaning the Feds are saying they’re not good enough. That means, in this case one of the school’s subgroups- the way the Feds make the schools separate out the various ethnic and socio-economic groups in the school- didn’t increase its scores as much as the regulations say they should have. So, the school gets punished.”
And here’s the icing on this half-baked cake: Next year, when the school will be reevaluated, the standards it has to meet will be even higher.
It’s truly a no-win situation- no matter how hard you try, the system is set up so that it’ll NEVER be good enough to satisfy the educational bureaucracies at the state and Federal levels.
Another thing that’ll make your head spin- a school , or a district, may very well meet the state standards for educating your kids- and yet still fall short of the federal standards for the same school, and the same kids.
And finally, to put a cherry atop the iced, half-baked cake: The standards California has to meet bear no relationship at all to the standards for, say, North Carolina, or Texas or Vermont.
This is the restrictive straitjacket in which teachers are trying to teach your children.
Nothing is more important than THE TEST.
Stifled are teachers who like to think outside the box- teachers who might have an alternative means of getting through to students when the accepted ways haven’t made a dent.
This, to put it kindly, is a mess.
The President is absolutely correct when he says this stuff has to change.
But maybe even he doesn’t fully understand how much it has to change- or how quickly it has to change.
I’m not through with this topic yet- more, including possible fixes- next time.
Is 'No Child Left Behind' Creating Test Taking Robots?
PART TWO: Teach to the test leaves little room for teaching for life. Santee School Superintendent and Doug Curlee finish their conversation about NCLB.
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March 11, 2011 - I’m not the least bit surprised, when thinking about the educational mandate called “No Child Left Behind,” that there is such a groundswell of movements across America demanding much more local control of school systems.
Parents are not dumb—they can see that NCLB is pretty much out of control, and getting more so every year.
No one can argue with the idea of teaching children to pass a test—up to a point.
It’s when the pass-the-test mania crosses any number of human lines in its zeal that we probably need to call a halt to this, or at least slow it down significantly.
Santee Schools Superintendent Patrick Shaw, for one, is pretty much fed up with it all.
The ironclad demands of the NCLB system almost completely rule out the idea that, at the end of the day, we’re dealing with people here: teachers and students.
No matter how well students do in meeting this year’s goals, the class coming up, in all grades, will have a bigger mountain to climb, thanks to the rigid and unbending demands that, by school year 2014, 100 percent of students must meet 100 percent of all the program’s demands.
That is not only impossible, it’s unreasonable to place such demands on teachers and students alike.
Patrick Shaw says it’s time to be realistic.
“The standards need to be relaxed somewhat—in fact, a lot,” says Shaw.
“Although all of the Santee schools currently exceed the magic cutoff number of 800, one of our schools has already been forced into a performance-improvement program, because one of the federally mandated ethnic or social subgroups in that school didn’t quite meet the standard. Notices were sent to the school’s parents, saying the school was in that program, leading parents to think their kids’ school was no good, when in fact that isn’t the case at all.”
Let’s face facts.
We all know that there are teachers who should no longer be in a classroom—there are teachers who never should have been in a classroom to begin with.
But such teachers are a small minority within any school system.
The vast majority of people who go into teaching are there because they love it, and because they love it, they’re very good at it.
Those very good teachers know how to motivate kids, how to think outside the box, how to get kids interested in school and study by making it something they want to do, rather than something they have to do.
Teaching to the test tends to destroy that, because the whole of teachers’ efforts have to go into passing that test—there is simply no time left to work with kids on anything else.
None of us—especially parents—want to admit this fact, but there are also students who should not be in a harsh, demanding, inflexible school program, because they are not equipped to do well in that environment. Not every student is going to do well in math and science, and they shouldn’t be forced into those disciplines. Some are more equipped to be writers, to be mechanics, to be something—anything—except nuclear physicists or rocket scientists.
But, under NCLB, teachers and students alike are shoehorned into the restrictive tunnel that leads to the Holy Grail of NCLB: Pass the test.
Is it any wonder that kids often grow frustrated and hate school? Often dropping out?
Under this system, we are raising a generation of kids who may (no guarantees here) do well on tests.
Are they ever going to be able to do well at anything else?
Like … life?
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