Anyone with kids in public schools knows about the rise in prominence of standardized tests. Thanks to No Child Left Behind much school funding is put at risk when schools don’t have enough students pass the mandated tests. On top of that school administrators can lose their jobs if their students don’t pass at appropriate levels, so you can imagine the "learning atmosphere" that this might create.
One consequence of the increased emphasis on testing is that you have teachers teaching to the test. Our kids now come home with syllabi that clearly indicate when test preparations begin, which is usually one month before the test is administered. And test preparation doesn’t just mean covering the subject matter, it also means test taking strategy. Imagine spending a whole month getting ready for tests, and think about the ripple effect it has on the rest of the curriculum.
Another consequence of the new testing regime is that you have administrators and teachers fighting for their professional lives, and that leads them to do some rather strange things. Exhibit A is the principal in Washington state who suspended a fourth grade student for five days because he refused to answer an essay question on the state exam. You can read about it here. The kid didn’t want to write the essay because he was worried that it would offend the principal (the same one who ended up suspending him) and he couldn’t be convinced that it was okay to write the essay. The principal was so worried about the effect of his refusal to answer on the school’s average that she suspended him for "blatant defiance and insubordination." Simply put, she’s off her rocker.
Given the atmosphere that school administrators are working in these days it’s no wonder you have a few whackos going too far. In an effort to bring accountability to education what No Child Left Behind has actually done is change a learning environment into a test factory producing Scantron-completing robots (our kids). I’m all for making sure our teachers and school administrators are held responsible for doing their jobs, but there has to be a better way than this.
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Befuddled 
NCLB is terribly stupid. It forces schools to do a whole lot more paperwork for something that should be pretty blatantly obvious and logical.
Of course, it’s amusing that this is being pushed by someone who grew up in private schools. Go figure that one out.
I believe that children would do better if you just treated them fair and more like adults and less like children. Throw in some fun activities, and kids pick up everything else through those bright heads of theirs.
What I don’t get is that even private schools don’t run a model like NCLB. And if you look at private K-12 education, they send a lot more kids to college. There’s a good reason for that. So copy it. It’s really THAT easy. [sigh]
DM, I believe you’re engaging in what is called preaching to the choir. I’m with you.
Can you help but not preach to the choir though? *laugh*
My gf is going back to graduate school to eventually become a teacher of the little kids. She did bring up a good point. I believe she voted for the school bonds in Forsyth because she said that there really hasn’t ever been a school bond that didn’t help the schools in any way. Perhaps that’s from trickle-down effect or something.
My issue is basically: If you apply business tactics to any school or government agency, you could create some superb efficiency changes without the ridiculous management. Heck, apply Six Sigma or something.
Whenever I have kids, I guarantee that as a parent I’ll be doing some extracurricular things that will help my kids strive outside of the public education like my parents did.