Who benefited from the No Child Left Behind?

[PM_Mama00]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

It was actually harder for me living in the city catching the bus (buses running late or crowded, apathetic drivers, and so on).

Now in converse to that, I live in the suburbs and the kids have EASY access to get transportation and to school. Metro stops at all the corners, 3 buses to and from the subway and then of course the subway itself, not to mention that YES, the regular yellow school bus. Never rule out transit when it comes to getting kids to and from school and how teachers rely on it.
I don't care where you live....in Grime City USA or Lily White County...putting a child on a bus system is dicey business at best unless you plan for it.

Out of curiosity, what is a suburb to you? I think we're thinking of two totally different things. In our version of the suburb, people drive everywhere. Even driving to Downtown Detroit isn't bad as far as parking goes. There are a few parking lots that are used for people who work downtown and don't want to drive there and take the bus. In our suburb, you even DRIVE to the bus stop lol. We don't have Metro... we have SmartBus, driven by the craziest drivers and I don't know how many times I've almost gotten hit by them. And we also don't have a subway system. Mass transit or whatever people call it isn't an option in our area. I think it'd be completely awesome if we did. I wouldn't get stuck driving my drunk friends around.


I forgot to post earlier that I have a few teacher friends. We chatted about NCLB and I was under the impression that it meant no matter how bad a kid was doing, he wouldn't fail that grade. I didn't know that there was SO much to it. Both of these friends that I spoke with are by far lazy teachers. They are constantly thinking up new and different projects and activities for the kids. They are involved in their life as far as a teacher can go. They are the type of teachers that a student goes back to and says "You were an awesome teacher". Both of them aren't happy with this system because they DO have to teach the test. They don't have much of a choice because the schools make "the test" their curriculum.

I hate standardized tests. I'm a bad test taker. I probably would have graduated high school and college with a 4.0 had I never had to take a test.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by PM_Mama00

Out of curiosity, what is a suburb to you? I think we're thinking of two totally different things. In our version of the suburb, people drive everywhere. Even driving to Downtown Detroit isn't bad as far as parking goes. There are a few parking lots that are used for people who work downtown and don't want to drive there and take the bus. In our suburb, you even DRIVE to the bus stop lol. We don't have Metro... we have SmartBus, driven by the craziest drivers and I don't know how many times I've almost gotten hit by them. And we also don't have a subway system. Mass transit or whatever people call it isn't an option in our area. I think it'd be completely awesome if we did. I wouldn't get stuck driving my drunk friends around.

.

Im 20 miles away from downtown DC if that matters. And yes where I live, having a car DOES matter although here in THIS county we have decent Metro access. ANd I am lucky that I live near the end of the subway line. My MIL and my best friend live 5 miles away and have to drive to MY area to get metro access but that's not considered rural...heh.

But that is beside the main idea of what Kevin was trying to impart.

The main idea really is kids with any kind of access has a better chance to make do with the school system than those who don't

I didn't know that there were different 'versions' of suburbs.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by PM_Mama00

I forgot to post earlier that I have a few teacher friends. We chatted about NCLB and I was under the impression that it meant no matter how bad a kid was doing, he wouldn't fail that grade. I didn't know that there was SO much to it. Both of these friends that I spoke with are by far lazy teachers. They are constantly thinking up new and different projects and activities for the kids. They are involved in their life as far as a teacher can go. They are the type of teachers that a student goes back to and says "You were an awesome teacher". Both of them aren't happy with this system because they DO have to teach the test. They don't have much of a choice because the schools make "the test" their curriculum.

I hate standardized tests. I'm a bad test taker. I probably would have graduated high school and college with a 4.0 had I never had to take a test.

The bolded part is a great example of what I meant as far as the bill getting blamed for district response to it.

Sure, graduation rate as measure by the number of 9th graders who enter who graduate four years later is one indicator for school performance under NCLB. BUT it's the school districts and spineless administrators who have decided that rather than try to get kids to do all their assignments and actually learn something (or take responsibility for re-taking the course) that teachers should just hand out passing grades. These geniuses apparently have so little faith in actual learning that they don't see that there would probably be a relationship between lowering requirements for the class and kids maybe not learning as much to show off in the tests.

But NCLB probably included graduation rates so that schools didn't have a perverse incentive to push kids no likely to do well on the tests out of school. And yes, I think there are some schools that would have done this. I think a lot of schools indirectly encouraged certain kids to drop out for a long time.