New Views On No Child Left Behind

During some of our Monday evening meetings we were lucky enough to be visited by a few different groups of people who spoke on similar issues concerning education in and around Decorah. The groups represented were administrators, school board members, teachers, and parents of high or low achieving students. Each group gave us valuable insight into issues like No Child Left Behind, funding, and how to motivate students. I think the NCLB discussions were the most interesting to me. I had never really heard anything good about NCLB in the past, but after listening to the administrators, school board members, and shockingly even some of the teachers, I have kind of changed my views about it. I still don’t know that NCLB is realistic for every school district, but I think that it is much more about how the classroom teacher applies the findings of the test that matters. You certainly shouldn’t be focused on teaching to the test, but if all of your students are struggling in similar areas maybe you need to look into those areas and see what you as a teacher can help them do about it. I think that it is possible for the test to be helpful so that we can mark individual progress, but it is also important to be realistic when helping students set goals for themselves and that is where one problem with NCLB comes in. It just isn’t realistic that all students will be able to perform at the exact same level, no matter what school districts do or which techniques we try to implement, no two children will ever be able to learn the exact same concept in the exact same way, and then earn the exact same score on a standardized test, it just doesn’t work that way. We as educators need to think about these things when testing our students and try to make NCLB into a positive assessment that allows students to feel good about the progress that they are making.