In Connecticut, the education officials created an informal report card about the No Child Left Behind Act that is up for re-issue September 30. They were hoping that this would get the attention of the senate and hopefully they would change certain aspects of NCLB. Among the concerns:
An emphasis on constant testing, inadequate funds to meet mandates, the lack of consistent methods to track and compare progress, and a perception that some states get more latitude than Connecticut to excuse large numbers of special-education students from testing.
Although this is based in another state they education leaders are still voicing their opinions on what should change in the act. Should there be less testing? Why are other states excluding special education students from formal testing? Why do some states get more funding than others? These are all valuable questions that a lot of people are wondering about. All the states are having problems with NCLB, and hopefully the re-issue will be a little better and it will help a lot more students.
One of the main problems that the United States has is standardized testing and how much is required under the NCLB Act. Compared to Conneticuit at 1 %, for example, Texas gets to exclude at least 5% of their students from standardized tests.
The sheer volume of testing required also frustrates many educators, who believe those exams do not reflect much of the progress in classrooms, some officials said.
That seems to be the main consensus throughout the United States and it is a hot button topic among teachers and soon-to-be teachers. We think that although these tests can help support some with scholarship money, there are way to many tests that don’t actually measure how the students are doing in the regular classroom. It would be a lot of work, but it would bebetter if teachers could test their own students with their own tests that the teachers created just for their kids. Knowing that something like that won’t happen, we may just have to stick with the tests that states are forcing on our students and hope that we can prepare our kids enough so that they all have a fighting chance for the scholarship money they all deserve for having to take these tests in the first place.
Testing, funding questioned as No Child law faces re-authorization
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andi12 said
Oh I hope that if enough education officials complain about NCLB that it will be modified in some way! This may be too much optimistic thinking on my part-but I am glad that you found some evidence of people speaking out against the inequalities (which you pointed out in your article) that this law creates for students and teachers alike. It seems though that the people who have the most voice and who are in charge of representing their constituents, those great lawmakers in Lansing and Washington, are not informed enough and do not have the in-school experience of dealing with NCLB. So that becomes a problem. We need to get our voice out there regarding these issues and if educators all over the state and even country can speak out and be heard, maybe something will change. I liked your letter to Gov. Granholm too. She needs to hear these issues as well. I do not think the premise behind no child left behind is necessarily a bad one but there needs to be some changes made in the implementation of it because right now, it is not working.
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Jon said
Like your article points out, standardized tests do not completely measure a students capabilities. Sometimes a student has a bad test day, or some students just plain do not test well. It seems a little unfair to me to expect a student that does not test well to perform at the level of other students. While standardized tests can put a student in the range of where he can expect to be, they clearly are not capable of pin pointing how smart a student is. Unfortunately, that is what they are being used for.
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