Who benefited from the No Child Left Behind?

[epchick]

Originally Posted by deepimpact2

Just look around at the school systems. I can speak from experience in my own state, and I'm sure people in other states can attest to the same thing. What the federal government says is a high quality teacher is someone who has the right credentials on paper. Anyone can go through certification requirements if they pay the money and enroll in the classes. That is NOT what makes someone a good teacher. It takes years of dedication and working to hone skills before someone really becomes a quality teacher.

I know teachers who have the proper certification and can't teach worth a d@#$. They don't know how to do proper lesson plans. They don't know anything about pacing guides. They stand up and lecture for the entire class period with little involvement or interaction from the students. I could go on.

And it is interesting to me that despite the NCLB laws, they STILL push TFA.

Yes, there are probably certification programs that you can just pay money and get certified, but that doesn't mean that those people are gonna be piss poor teachers. Yes, not all teachers are gonna be "high" quality teachers, but you can't base that on anything except the person. And the teachers you mentioned probably came waay before NCLB. Like I said, NCLB didn't lower the bar on 'quality.'

And as to Kevin's argument that certification programs are turning them out as fast as they can, that is also not always true. I have to stay in my certification program for at least 18 months, and then do an "internship" for a whole year after. Not necessarily what you would consider 'fast.'

[AGDee]

Our truancy policies are similar and parents are often taken to court before the child is 16. There have been a few changes made recently to help encourage the 16-18 year olds to stay in school. To get a driver's license, the 16 year old has to be in school. I don't know that they take it away if the kid already has it and drops out though. There has been some push to change the drop out age to 18 or graduation, whichever comes first, which makes a whole lot more sense to me. I don't understand why a 16 year old would be able to drop out of school when they're not allowed to do much of anything else without parental permission, including seeing R rated movies. That's definitely a way that society can help.

The mass transportation issue is pretty unique to Detroit. Most big cities have good mass transportation. This one I'll blame on the auto industry dominating our culture here. It's not in the best interest to implement something that will hurt the industry that 60% of your economy relies on. As a result, we have really crappy mass transportation. I have had co-workers who re-located here from other places be pretty surprised just how far people generally commute to and from work and how far apart we can live from each other. It's not unusual to work with someone who lives 100 miles from you because you each commute 50 miles from opposite directions. I guess we're more spread out than many metro areas. I mean, I'm dating someone who lives an hour and 15 minutes away and we both live in "Suburbs" of Detroit. You do have to get pretty far from the city to get to anything that I'd consider rural, especially to the north or west. To the south, it's more rural.

I agree, AGDAlum that it's interesting to look at the breakdowns in different districts of the sub groups scores. It's even more interesting that the Detroit area is so segregated that in the "best" districts, there are no subgroups. In the most affluent county around Detroit, all of the special ed kids go to one district, so the other districts don't have their scores included. Oh wow, they all go to the same district that the impoverished kids live in too. It's shady, really shady. So these really affluent districts send their learning disabled kids out for special ed and there are so few minorities in these districts that don't have to separate them out. So, those districts always make AYP and get the funding. Then the district that provides all the special ed for the county and is one of the few districts in that county that has poor kids doesn't make AYP ever and loses its funding. That's definitely a flaw. That's not as true in the two other Detroit area counties though. The other two are much more integrated.

I expect our graduation rates are going to dip drastically in Michigan in 2011 when the new graduation requirements go into effect. There are just some kids that won't be capable of meeting those requirements no matter how good their teachers are or how spectacular the curriculum is. Some kids aren't going to "get" Trig no matter what you do. Unless, of course, they just get passed through. I think that's why teachers are starting to do this "100% on homework" as long as it is finished, whether it's correct or not, especially in math. If you have all 100s on your homework, you can't fail the class, even if you fail all the tests. I didn't even realize that was going on until I noticed that my son was getting 100s on all his homework but 80s on his exams. I asked the teacher at conferences about it because I was concerned that he wasn't retaining concepts and wondered if I should get him extra tutoring. That's when I found out his 6th grade teacher gave 100 on homework if it was complete, even if every answer was wrong. My bright but very lazy son figured out that if he didn't feel like doing his homework, he could just put down anything and it didn't affect his grade. However, he didn't learn the material either so he wasn't working up to his potential on tests. I wasn't letting him get away with that so I told him I was going to start checking his homework every night and that if he was doing it incorrectly, I would show him how to do it right and he would have to re-do it. Then he started getting As on tests too. I don't know whether that teacher just started doing that or if that has always been his style. I wasn't impressed with that particular teacher though.

I do think that too much pressure is being put on individual teachers to ensure that their kids perform well. Can you blame the 8th grade math or English teachers for a child who cannot read at grade level or do higher level math? It's likely that they fell behind back in 1st or 2nd grade. That 8th grade teacher can't be held responsible for what was lacking in 2nd grade.

I don't know what teacher certification requirements are in other states. In Michigan though, it's all based on years of education. Teachers get their initial certification and have to complete 20 credits of grad school classes in 5 years to keep their certification. While that does require effort on a teacher's part, I'm not sure it measures how a teacher actually teaches, does it? It seems like more of a measure on how well a teacher can do in school rather than how well a teacher can teach children.

I have always felt that our society is very messed up with our priorities and pay scales. I've said this before on this board... we pay day care workers, who care for our children, and nursing home aides, who care for our parents, some of the lowest hourly wages. While teachers are better paid than them, they definitely aren't paid enough for the importance of what they do every single day. If we really want to make educating our kids a priority and we want quality people to do it, we are going to have to look at what we pay them. Although, I guess one could argue that nobody goes into teaching for the money, they must go into it because they have a passion for it.

[PM_Mama00]

To go with the graduate class thing and how well they are teaching... One of my friends who is in one of Downriver's better school districts has the principal coming in and out every so often. They have review days or something like that where the principal will spend the day or a half day in the classroom watching the teacher and how the kids react to the teacher. I think this is something that was implemented with NCLB. Although I do remember in high school our principal would lurk in the hallways and sometimes sit in the back of the room but I don't think there was an evaluation or anything.

[deepimpact2]

Originally Posted by PM_Mama00

To go with the graduate class thing and how well they are teaching... One of my friends who is in one of Downriver's better school districts has the principal coming in and out every so often. They have review days or something like that where the principal will spend the day or a half day in the classroom watching the teacher and how the kids react to the teacher. I think this is something that was implemented with NCLB. Although I do remember in high school our principal would lurk in the hallways and sometimes sit in the back of the room but I don't think there was an evaluation or anything.

That was done long before NCLB. Principals have always had to do evaluations.

[AGDee]

I remember the principal coming in to observe even way back when I was in elementary and I somehow understood that they were evaluating the teacher. Performance appraisals are part of any job. We always behaved perfectly when the principal was in the room though! He was scary.

[agzg]

Originally Posted by AGDee

I remember the principal coming in to observe even way back when I was in elementary and I somehow understood that they were evaluating the teacher. Performance appraisals are part of any job. We always behaved perfectly when the principal was in the room though! He was scary.

We were always well-behaved when the principal was in the room, too. But he wasn't scary... he was my dad.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by agzg

We were always well-behaved when the principal was in the room, too. But he wasn't scary... he was my dad.

This reminds me of our elementary school principal...he was so tall his head scraped the tops of the doorways. He was such a nice man. Awww, happy memory

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by agzg

We were always well-behaved when the principal was in the room, too. But he wasn't scary... he was my dad.

In my case, that would be even MORE scary! But, our elementary principal was really tall and really big. He was completely bald and had a mole right on top of his head. He was scary looking. I don't think I ever saw him smile. He walked slightly hunched, kind of like a woman with osteoporosis. I can picture his walk in my head. Lumbering is the word that comes to mind. He would lumber down the hall with a scowl on his face and kids would just scatter as far away from him as they could.

[PM_Mama00]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Yes, but some of these new programs are focusing on getting these teacher candidates into the classroom much faster and for a much longer period of time before they're off on their own.

I think that's what they do with the Early Childhood majors. They do an internship in the beginning, and then the student teaching at the end. I know UMD does that, but I'm not sure about other schools.

That is awesome. And it is even more awesome that your administration paid attention. My experience has always been that those situations were unwinnable, thus were battles not worth fighting. Did you by any chance go to a school where teachers weren't tenured? I do think tenure is a blight on our education system (at least in the K-12 context) and needs to go. Before we can even talk about holding administrators accountable, we have to let them be able to hire and fire so that they can get the people they want so that they can implement their strategies for success. It's all about making education more focused on the students than on the employees and institutions which deliver it.

I'm not sure if our teachers had tenure back then. I know we got stuck with a HORRIBLE professor that was pretty suspect and they couldn't let him go cuz of his tenure. Boo on that.

As far as principals, our elementary one was loved by everyone. He made the school fun: we had a black cat named Angelo as a mascot. They let him roam the halls. He was Irish, so every St Patrick's Day he had this HUGE rock brought in and told us it was the Blarney Stone, so every year we'd go down and take pictures by it. He was really cool. I got along great iwth my high school VP and I was his assistant one year. I got along with my counselor too but I was the kid who liked being in school. I'd go back to HS in a second and do it all over again.

[agzg]

Originally Posted by AGDee

In my case, that would be even MORE scary! But, our elementary principal was really tall and really big. He was completely bald and had a mole right on top of his head. He was scary looking. I don't think I ever saw him smile. He walked slightly hunched, kind of like a woman with osteoporosis. I can picture his walk in my head. Lumbering is the word that comes to mind. He would lumber down the hall with a scowl on his face and kids would just scatter as far away from him as they could.

My dad's tall, big, and bald, but smiley, no mole, doesn't lumber.

Plus, the kids loved him. Every day he'd stand out in the lobby and greet the kids coming in, and they all gave him hugs. He also set fun goals for them. If the kids in first grade read X number of books in a time period, he'd wear a chicken costume to school when it was done. Another time he did something similar, but for math, and since the school was only two stories (at that time) he conducted business from the roof (no children were sent to his "office" that day) where all the kids could see him when they were on recess. He also (and this is the benefit of being in a small, rural school) knew each child by first, last, and often middle name, knew their parents names, and knew where most of them lived. He would take a lot of kids home if they missed their busses.

I realize I'm a little biased, but my dad was like the best elementary school principal ever. It was really really hard for him to let go and retire, but with all the sadness that happened in our family the year he retired and the realization that things really had changed since he started, he made the right move by retiring. Better to go out on top while everyone loves you than to hold on too long and become the old crotchety principal that everyone hates.

ETA: My MOM (God rest her soul and you know how I feel about her) was the one to be afraid of if we got into trouble at school. For me, at least, my dad is a total pushover. I'm pretty sure I could get him to sign the deed of his house over to me if I asked nicely enough. He wasn't that way for all kids (here comes the preferential treatment part) so whenever I got into trouble and got sent to his office, he had to call mom who would come in and punish me.

[Kevin]

I'm not really saying anything about "fast." My argument is more along the lines of the fact that traditional educational structures and salaries are not attracting and retaining the best candidates for teaching positions.

There are some innovative programs out there, most geared at getting kids out of the classroom and into practicums ASAP. I'm not sure whether that's the answer.

Another model which has been somewhat successful (although I have veeerrrry mixed feelings about it) is Teach For America. My biggest issue with that program is that it seems to be a band aid for a bullet hole. First, the turnover for TFA positions is pretty high. Also, traditionally trained teachers don't like the program and its graduates because they feel (and I somewhat agree) that it deprofessionalizes their profession, and I think that does and should affect morale somewhat. But TFA admittedly has done good things.

NCLB is a good thing because it does help us to force accountability onto a system which was otherwise obsessed with preserving the status quo despite in many cases being by all accounts failed and going nowhere. NCLB helps us put the focus back onto serving the students rather than serving institutions and teachers. Ultimately, there will be thousands of good teachers and administrators who will probably be casualties -- and I feel for them -- but they need to know that it's not about them.

[Preston327]

I've had mixed experiences with the NCLB. I was in Middle School (I think) when it passed and those years sucked. The administrators were incompetent and basically ran the school like a prison, the teachers (with the exception of one) taught to the test and could give a damn less about anything else, etc. They always got rated an A school but behind that veneer was (in my opinion) a broken system.

High School was the complete opposite. My high school had several unappealing nicknames, a past reputation for drugs and crime and low test scores (they've never been rated above C to my knowledge). Yet, in my four years there I met more teachers who genuinely cared about kids absorbing the material and learning something useful than I did in all my years of school prior. Maybe my experiences were rose-tinted by being an IB student, I don't know. But when you consider the students they had to work with (generally low-income, mostly minority, several first-generation and limited-English proficient, and bad home lives) and the dedication they put into their work, it's hard not to think of that school as a good one. I truly think that the measure of a good education is not what score one gets on an arbitrary state-mandated test but rather the dedication one puts into one's studies and the dedication put forth by one's teachers.

*steps down off soapbox*

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I'm not really saying anything about "fast." My argument is more along the lines of the fact that traditional educational structures and salaries are not attracting and retaining the best candidates for teaching positions.

There are some innovative programs out there, most geared at getting kids out of the classroom and into practicums ASAP. I'm not sure whether that's the answer.

Another model which has been somewhat successful (although I have veeerrrry mixed feelings about it) is Teach For America. My biggest issue with that program is that it seems to be a band aid for a bullet hole. First, the turnover for TFA positions is pretty high. Also, traditionally trained teachers don't like the program and its graduates because they feel (and I somewhat agree) that it deprofessionalizes their profession, and I think that does and should affect morale somewhat. But TFA admittedly has done good things.

NCLB is a good thing because it does help us to force accountability onto a system which was otherwise obsessed with preserving the status quo despite in many cases being by all accounts failed and going nowhere. NCLB helps us put the focus back onto serving the students rather than serving institutions and teachers. Ultimately, there will be thousands of good teachers and administrators who will probably be casualties -- and I feel for them -- but they need to know that it's not about them.

But again, it's typically more the dumb reaction to the law by districts rather than the law itself that causes good teachers grief.

Something else to consider is that as the general economy stinks, teaching looks like a more attractive career. It would be a bad way to count on attracting people long term, but I think it could drive up quality in the short term, if coupled with new methods of evaluation and a stronger commitment from principals to explore removing bad or weak teachers.*


New York's "rubber rooms" are notorious, and there are some states where the unions are powerful enough to have compelled contracts clearly not in the students' best interest. However, in many states it's simply an unwillingness to consistently do the paper work that keeps bad teachers employed. Yes, you have "tenure" after so many years, but it doesn't guarantee employment if you are incompetent. And yep, a good principal could document incompetence if he or she wanted to and had the discipline to follow through. In fact, I suspect it doesn't require that much more work than most HR departments put into firing any employee in a big company that worries about lawsuits.

*I want to note that this is totally different than getting rid of unpopular teachers. Some of the absolutely most effective teachers are the ones whose classes kids try to weasel out of. Students are often very willing to sit through a bad teacher's class if it's fun or simply easy. (I don't say that because kids try to get out of my class as much as what I see with the preparation level of the kids in the grades I teach. The best prepared come from a teacher that the kids and parents cause grief about every year, mainly because she had high standards. If we had pay for performance based on student achievement, I think she'd be compensated very well. Interestingly, she doesn't even teach a grade that has a state test.)

[epchick]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Something else to consider is that as the general economy stinks, teaching looks like a more attractive career.

THIS! I don't really understand the argument "oh teacher's pay sucks, that is why it's attracting bad teachers." Cause really, (bad economy aside) if the pay is so bad, why would people, who ordinarily wouldn't choose teaching, want to teach? It doesn't sound very logical to me.

I can however agree that teaching is becoming more enticing because of the economy, although it's a double edged sword too. Because of the economy many schools (at least here) are cutting down teachers, so you have more displaced teachers than I've ever heard of (thus why I couldn't find a teaching position this past year).

Not to knock the certification program I'm in (which is one of the strictest when it comes to accepting people in, and to 'pass') but I don't understand how some people could have gotten in. Things like answering this question: "What did the Bill of Rights mean to the people of that time" with this answer "it may or may not have meant something to them." Yeah that's a future teacher right there But who knows, that lady could be an AWESOME teacher once she finally has a classroom.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by epchick

THIS! I don't really understand the argument "oh teacher's pay sucks, that is why it's attracting bad teachers." Cause really, (bad economy aside) if the pay is so bad, why would people, who ordinarily wouldn't choose teaching, want to teach? It doesn't sound very logical to me.

I can however agree that teaching is becoming more enticing because of the economy, although it's a double edged sword too. Because of the economy many schools (at least here) are cutting down teachers, so you have more displaced teachers than I've ever heard of (thus why I couldn't find a teaching position this past year).

The fact of the matter is, unless everyone becomes infertile, we will always need teachers. Crap pay is better than no pay. It's the same rationale as becoming a nurse or getting into other fields of health care even if you'd rather poke your eyes out with a stick than do that particular job - there will always be sick people.