No Child Left Behind............

[Mafesto]

Your thoughts?

The intentions of spending more resources on the least gifted students may be well & good,
however, our future does not rest in the hands of the least gifted students.

While we are producing "smarter morons", it is at the expense of our future leaders.
Our brightest students will have to compete on a global market with the best educated people from all corners of the Earth.
These students are starving to learn more, but are being held back by the weaker links in the chain.
Our high school classrooms are teaching at a speed dictated by the slowest learners. Some would like to be smarter, but simply do not have the tools, while others just do not care. They are not putting forth an earnest effort, but are governing the rate at which others around them can learn.
Our brightests lights are not being given the opportunity to shine to their potential.

"No child left behind" is a huge failure, but no one comes out against it for fear of being labeled as against education.

 

[switchback]

ROTFM!! I agree 110% Help slower learners but not at the expense of the others. Goes right along with cultural diversity. This whole country is to damned afraid of offending some minority when we should be focused on the advancement & protection of the MAJORITY. All we are doing is diluting everything. We spend WAY to much time & money on things that do nothing to solve pressing issues. I have a daughter that is struggling with multiplication. Her class moved onto division. I talked with her teacher and have been working with her at home and she now has it down to a science in 2 wks.

This is just another example of where we are headed. There are weak. There are poor. There are sick. Take care of them? YES! Weaken the foundation for them? No! The stronger we become as a nation the more we can do for all.
Sensitivity is an emotion, not a platform. EVERYONE deserves a chance to reach their potential.

 

[snow_knight]

here is the south dakota school systems.. the "no child left behind".. is there way of saying if you child is dumb we will slide through and get a diploma...

My last semester at college.. I was tutoring a kid in basic math.. he had graduated from a certain SD school district.. He could barely read.. by the time he was done reading a question he had forgotten what it was about and the #'s..

I'm not saying that its a lost cause.... but what is the use if we are just pushing them through the system..

Thats the problem with most U.S. citizens today.. they dont like to fix problems that involve a little hard feelings.. they like to cover the problem with a "grand solution" which all parties are happy.. which in most cases.. such as this one... isnt the best option for the future of our country..

so

 

[Ollie]

America used to reward the smart, the gifted.
Now they are held back, because everyone knows if you get ahead or are smarter than the next person, you had to cheat to get there.

I truly hope this country wakes up the fact liberalism has failed before the entire country goes down the toilet.

 

[sldgy]

Mafesto, glad you were in school before the no tard left behind era. You obviously got a first class education!

 

[Supplicate]

mafesto, right on the money man

I know lots of current teachers and students trying to go through the teaching program, they all believe that the No child Left Behind is really ruining the education system. My sister who specializes in "Special Needs" (Tard Teacher) really hates it. She feels that kids that need the extra attention should be in a classroom geared towards their needs, not dragging the rest of the class down with them.

America used to reward the smart, the gifted.
Now they are held back, because everyone knows if you get ahead or are smarter than the next person, you had to cheat to get there.

AMEN!

I will say this; even before this BS started when I was in highschool our school was going that way. Those of us that learned fast were always being sent on stupid errands or put to retarded tasks by the teachers so we didn't move past where the rest of the students. At least now they have a name to call the dumbing down of the american youth.

 

[H2SNOW]

hey who is gonna help my 4 kids ???/?

 

[xrated]

ROTFM!! I agree 110% Help slower learners but not at the expense of the others. Goes right along with cultural diversity. This whole country is to damned afraid of offending some minority when we should be focused on the advancement & protection of the MAJORITY. All we are doing is diluting everything. We spend WAY to much time & money on things that do nothing to solve pressing issues. I have a daughter that is struggling with multiplication. Her class moved onto division. I talked with her teacher and have been working with her at home and she now has it down to a science in 2 wks.

This is just another example of where we are headed. There are weak. There are poor. There are sick. Take care of them? YES! Weaken the foundation for them? No! The stronger we become as a nation the more we can do for all.
Sensitivity is an emotion, not a platform. EVERYONE deserves a chance to reach their potential.

Switch what are you thinking working with your kid at home! Good on you man, we need more parents who do that. It amazes me how much kids are supposed to know before Kindergarten now and what parents expect kids to learn in pre-school. I know I will work on reading, etc with my daughters so they are ready to go, but damnit they are gonna be kids and play and get muddy. Especially if we are gonna teach to the slowest, why bother getting my kids ahead.

Right on Maf, boy when I was in school we had a way of teaching the smart kids as well as the slow ones...it was called special ed classes!

 

[sldgy]

hey who is gonna help my 4 kids ???/?

You and your lovely wife are all the help they need.

 

[bonz50]

Your thoughts?

The intentions of spending more resources on the least gifted students may be well & good,
however, our future does not rest in the hands of the least gifted students.

While we are producing "smarter morons", it is at the expense of our future leaders.
Our brightest students will have to compete on a global market with the best educated people from all corners of the Earth.
These students are starving to learn more, but are being held back by the weaker links in the chain.
Our high school classrooms are teaching at a speed dictated by the slowest learners. Some would like to be smarter, but simply do not have the tools, while others just do not care. They are not putting forth an earnest effort, but are governing the rate at which others around them can learn.
Our brightests lights are not being given the opportunity to shine to their potential.

"No child left behind" is a huge failure, but no one comes out against it for fear of being labeled as against education.

watch the movie "Idiocracy" if you want a pretty clear picture of where things are headed....

 

[2fun4u]

My husband is a school teacher, and it blows my mind the paperwork and extra efforts he is required to do for the No Child Left Behind! He is the SHOP teacher! He has to write goals for the students who don't score well on "the test" to help the student bring up his reading skills so he will score well next time!!!!! WTF!? How do you write a goal for a student's reading skills when you have him in welding class!?

Students can't be failed and held back because it might hurt their little feelings! WHAT! When I was in school it was a threat to be held back as you didn't want to look like an idiot, so you worked hard in school to excel so you could go on to the next grade. Now, you must have the parents permission to flunk a kid!

I worked for 9 years in the Disabilities portion of Health & Welfare, and what I saw was the transition from separate classrooms, to having a one-on-one tutor in the classroom for the kids, to "mainstreaming" them. Now, everything you all have said is true, we are teaching to the least of the knowledgeable and also to "the test" - for if the schools don't pass the tests, they lose funding! Teachers don't have a chance to teach outside the textbook because ingenuity is not rewarded. Some of the kids who don't learn quickly would benefit from a great teacher using their brain to figure out what will work for that kid. Some of them would be further ahead if the teachers could tailor their teaching style to the kid's learning style.

The US public school system needs to take a look at some of the most successful nations and implement some of the practices they see. How about finding out early in a child's life what they excel at and pushing them to build on that skill and move them into a track in school that exploits it to make them hugely successful in that area!

I could go on forever on this subject as my teacher husband and I talk about this often. No child left behind = Everyone held behind! Nobody wins!

2fun

 

[Wired1]

watch the movie "Idiocracy" if you want a pretty clear picture of where things are headed....

Isn't that the truth.

When I grew up we had special programs for the gifted and the un-gifted. Then just general classes. What happened to working hard and earning what you want/need???

 

[Dogmeat]

I don't know what the solutions are, but I know what a lot of the problems are.... the kids' parents.

As a whole, American students are becoming dumber and dumber because they aren't forced to learn math and science ... It's "hard" and they'd rather "go shopping" ... and their parents have the same mentality.

It's killing America in the global market place not educating kids about math and science ... It's odd, it's like the more technologically advanced our society has become, the stupider the vast majority of the people living in it have become.

With that said, I don't really feel that the quality of the public education I received was very high. The general way that public schools are made me hate being there. I hated the place, I hated the other students, I hated every single minute of it from grade school all the way to highschool...

I was basically one of those kids who quite frankly didn't learn a god damned thing in highschool.

They decided for me when I was 11 years old that I wasn't "gifted" enough to take the advanced math or science classes, so that effectivley f*cked me once I got to 9th grade and had to take all the bonehead classes....I never took a calculus or physics class in highschool.

My dad was completley furious over the decision "I made" when I was 6th freaking grade to not take the advanced classes because my teachers didn't recommend me for them ... Now I understand why. I didn't learn a god damned thing from taking the "general" classes, and I was perfectly capable taking them ...

I don't know, personally looking back on it ... I don't think I was ever challeneged enough in school, and that's why I hated it so much. It was so monumentally boring I just wanted to die ...

In fact, I'm pretty sure that was it ... There really wasn't much required of me, I just showed up, got babysat all day, and went home ... I hated it.

I dunno ...

What's funny is, even though I never even took pre-calc in highschool or even a basic physics class, I wound up ultimatley getting a mechanical engineering degree and subsequently passing the EIT exam.

Pretty good for a guy whose teachers told him when he was 11 years old he was too stupid to do math

Like I said, I don't know what the solutions are, but I think one part of it needs to be holding students accountable for learning math and science so their minds become developed instead of making excuses for them.

 

[powdersledder]

In MN, if a class is too hard for the dumbest kid. They have to make the class easier for everyone. I slept through all of HS, never cracked a book and kept darn near a 4.0, This came to bite me in the *** now. Because guess what kind of study habits I developed in HS, none. Now I'm at Mich. Tech. and am at a severe disadvantage, not because the material is too hard or covered too quick, but because I lack the study skills I should have developed in HS. I even talked to a guy from back home about this and this is what he said;

"This happens to a lot of kids in this area, you were smart enough to get through all of HS without ever having to try, so you never learned how to study or develop good study habits, and now that your in college things became a lot harder"

All I know is that if i have kids, there's no chance in hell that they will be going to public school. I will pay for them to go to private school.

 

[bonz50]

In MN, if a class is too hard for the dumbest kid. They have to make the class easier for everyone. I slept through all of HS, never cracked a book and kept darn near a 4.0, This came to bite me in the *** now. Because guess what kind of study habits I developed in HS, none. Now I'm at Mich. Tech. and am at a severe disadvantage, not because the material is too hard or covered too quick, but because I lack the study skills I should have developed in HS. I even talked to a guy from back home about this and this is what he said;

"This happens to a lot of kids in this area, you were smart enough to get through all of HS without ever having to try, so you never learned how to study or develop good study habits, and now that your in college things became a lot harder"

All I know is that if i have kids, there's no chance in hell that they will be going to public school. I will pay for them to go to private school.

I had this same problem, but that was back in the early 80's... and i DID go to private school... don't think private school will save them, its up to the parents to FORCE them to study and work hard...

 

[Diesel99]

It blows my mind that every time a good topic comes up that there are excellent posts and great ideas brought up by most of the people on here.
Why is the US going down the toilet, we have to be heard and not let the small minority push unwanted policies on us and basically ruin this great country.
The wall street crooks (goverment) are stealing all our future dollars and bankrupting us.
The Greenies are stealing our great countries recreation sites right from under our noses.
The policy makers are pushing their agenda on us in too many ways and I for one am getting sick of it.
Time to fight back or get the hell out of the US.

 

[Ollie]

I had this same problem, but that was back in the early 80's... and i DID go to private school... don't think private school will save them, its up to the parents to FORCE them to study and work hard...

DING!
We have a winner.
Parents don't raise their kids anymore, that is the job of the schools.
Afterschool programs.
More sports than education (they even have scuba diving here and I live in colorado)
Schools spend 40%+ of their budget on sports. Not education.

Both parents have to work to really make ends meet. Doesn't apply to all, but most.
That means that instead of spending time with the kids making sure they do their homework they are just too tired and the kids don't bother.
How many of us would have done our homework without our parents making sure we did it?

 

[Anti-Hero]

fact is some babies need/ought to be shaken! like all the illegal beaner babies!

 

[Scott]

How well informed are you guys of it's design and workings?

NCLB was designed in Houston Texas as a local education program. It went national when Bush was elected.

It is NOT to remediate "least gifted students".

As a whole the school has to show improvement for each criteria every year. AYP (Annual Yearly Progress)
It's about how ALL levels of students do as a whole. It's not specifically designed to cater to lower level students do. How each school approaches thier AYP is up to them, as long as they meet AYP.

In theory, it's a good idea.
In theory.

It's NOT practical or reasonable for all demographics and population samples. Rural states and rural school districts, while students often set the high end of the bell curve for national testing scores, are not able to meet AYP. WHY? Because the structure of the program discounts the type of progress they make. Blue collar/vo tech curriculms are more common and not as many college prep curriculums to get them past AYP.

I feel it's bleeding-heart/idealistic name for a defunct cookie cutter program that is unequitable for rural districts to meet their criteria. Not categorically, but as a whole, it's much easier for urban districts to meet it.

Your thoughts?

The intentions of spending more resources on the least gifted students may be well & good,
however, our future does not rest in the hands of the least gifted students.

While we are producing "smarter morons", it is at the expense of our future leaders.
Our brightest students will have to compete on a global market with the best educated people from all corners of the Earth.
These students are starving to learn more, but are being held back by the weaker links in the chain.
Our high school classrooms are teaching at a speed dictated by the slowest learners. Some would like to be smarter, but simply do not have the tools, while others just do not care. They are not putting forth an earnest effort, but are governing the rate at which others around them can learn.
Our brightests lights are not being given the opportunity to shine to their potential.

"No child left behind" is a huge failure, but no one comes out against it for fear of being labeled as against education.[/QUOTE]

Most rural education associations and teacher's unions have had a lot to say against NCLB.

Teachers don't have a chance to teach outside the textbook because ingenuity is not rewarded.

Important.

 

[powdersledder]

I had this same problem, but that was back in the early 80's... and i DID go to private school... don't think private school will save them, its up to the parents to FORCE them to study and work hard...

I and most of the other students in my class did do their HW, but it'd only take us 30-45 minutes. My parents did push for me to do good in school, but what are you going to say to a kid that keeps a consistent 3.8+ gpa?

"You got a B! How dare you!!"