Monday, August 13, 2007

Another School Year Begins

This week marks the beginning of another school year for many school systems around the country. While poking around for something worthwhile to post, I ran across a series of links about No Child Left Behind. I got started with Michael Alison Chandler's Stipends, Training for Teachers Fuel Debate about how NCLB funds are used in the Washington, D.C., area and then moved on to a review by Jay Mathews of Linda Perlstein's new book, Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade. Poking around a bit more, I found Edward Humes's Book Review in the Los Angeles Times a little better read.

Perlstein spent a year at Tyler Heights Elementary School in Annapolis, Maryland, researching the human effects of NCLB on students and teachers. Not surprisingly, she found that teachers were teaching the test, and doing pretty well at it. Humes writes:

The goal, Perlstein shows, is to limit teaching to ideas, skills and knowledge that can fit inside the confines of a multiple choice test. Teachers must follow a strictly paced and worded script that even mandates what classroom posters can be hung. Students are similarly regimented: Creativity and spontaneity only get in the way of data collection. And so the author treats us to the awful moment when bright kindergartners identifying long vowel sounds are told to stop -- because rigid lesson plans say they are supposed to know only short vowel sounds.

Despite the insane testing mentality the fatally flawed NCLB act has produced, I still see teachers working daily to provide an exciting, effective, well-rounded educational experience for their students. Since I now work year around for a web site that supports teachers, I know folks have been working all summer to create a positive and effective learning environment for their students. I get calls, emails, and instant messages each day from Indiana teachers working to create online materials for their students to use during the school year. We also did a couple of workshops for teachers in west central Indiana on how to use the Moodle Course Management System in their classroom. Both workshops played to capacity crowds of enthusiastic teachers.

Could there be a problem here?

The Northwest Arkansas Morning News had an article last week that caught my eye: Six Universities To Tap Education Budgets For Athletics. It sorta makes you wonder if we shouldn't reassess our priorities in this country.

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