Raise Your Hand if Your Want to Leave a Child Behind

As a teacher in Gilbert and leader in the teachers' association I get the opportunity to talk with hundreds of teachers during the course of the year. I have yet to meet even one who at any time woke up with the thought “who can I leave behind today?”

The teachers and support professionals (bus drivers, food service workers, classroom aides, office personnel and all others on the team of professional who have chosen to educate America’s young people chose this as a career for things like, student progress, achievement, and success.

No Child Left Behind had some lofty goals with noble sounding names like adequate yearly progress, highly qualified, high-stakes testing, scientifically based research, school choice, and other high sounding bits of bureaucratic edu-speak.

Let me set a few things straight from the perspective of my fellow teachers and mine classrooms.
 

• Class size matters, anyone who claims to have research to the contrary has never set foot in a classroom.
• There is no such thing as a typical student.
• One single test will never assess the true knowledge of all students.
• Special needs students have accommodations detailed in Individualized Education Plans not only because it is the law but also because it’s right. A high stakes test with cruel and unrealistic expectations should not be forced upon that student.
• Curriculum alignment is a good thing but lockstep delivery due to a perceived need to cram every moment full of specific objectives does not produce a thinking student but rather a short term memorizing student.

It is nearly impossible to fully appreciate the damage caused by No Child Left Behind until you sit with a parent of a special needs student with a 1-2 grade aptitude because of a learning disability. He was forced to take an 8th grade AIMS test “at grade level test” and came home feeling like a failure because he realized that no mater how hard he worked he could not succeed. NCLB left that child behind!

In my Fundamentals of Engineering classroom I teach Problem Solving using a system. An effective problem solving system employs as much information and input as possible. NCLB was crafted by politicians and so called “think-tanks” which has resulted in a law with serious flaws. Add to this a serious lack of promised funding and you get just what some of the proponents desire, a perception of failure.

America is under extreme pressure to maintain its place as the greatest nation on earth. Just as Horace Mann’s concepts of a system of free public education became the foundation that built this nation into a superpower in the first half of the 1900s and the GI bill for returning WWII vets fueled the expansion and wealth from then to the present a renewed commitment to public education has the capacity to keep America on top.

We have chosen education not because it is easy but because we care. Expect excellence because that is what we expect of ourselves. Give us the resources to excel, I can’t teach industry standard computing skills with 8-year-old computers. Treat us like professionals; I can’t give your child the time and attention he or she deserves if I am on my way to a second job. No full time education support professional (classroom aides, food service workers, etc.) entrusted with the care of our children should be forced to live below the poverty level.

Our future depends on us working together, government, parents, and educators to create Great Public Schools For All Children! Lets roll up our sleeves and get to work together.

The writer is Mike Weaver, a teacher in the Gilbert school district and president of his professional association, the Gilbert Education Association.

NCLB – Let’s get the facts straight

In recent weeks there have been many news stories discussing NCLB and its impact in our schools and students.  Let’s take a look at this law from a practitioner’s perspective.

What is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965? What is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001? Brief descriptions of these two Acts are included in this article. Following the descriptions are some insights on how the high stakes testing affects students, teachers, and programs.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was enacted by Lyndon B. Johnson. This was the first comprehensive law for education and provided substantial funding for Kindergarten through Twelfth Grades. Included in this funding are programs such as:

• Title I (aimed to assist disadvantaged to meet high standards)
• Professional Development Program
• Education Technology
• Class Size Reduction
• Safe and Drug Free Schools
• Bilingual Education
• Native American Education
• Head Start

Additionally, the ESEA law proved to be a catalyst for future educational legislation. That list includes:

• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
• Bilingual Education Act
• Goals 2000: Educate America Act

These acts allow the right of an education for all children.

Today this law is known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) which was renamed under the current president in 2001. While many programs listed above still exist, significant changes were made. The additional components of the law are:

• mandates state administered standardized testing
• flexibility with school budget (allocation of funds to various NCLB programs)
  parental options in regards to sending their child to a "better" public school than their home school
• innovative professional development (e.g. reading programs).

NCLB imposes many additional mandates and requirements without any guarantee that additional funding will be provided to meet these mandates.

NCLB Mandates State Administered Standardized Testing

The Arizona state administered standardized test is the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS). All students in the third through twelfth grades must take this test.

What does NCLB mean for our students? Students must take this test at grade level regardless of the ability level. For instance, a student can be reading at a second grade level and because they are in the fifth grade must take the fifth grade AIMS. What a disservice to this student. Is this fifth grade student being left behind? Absolutely! Students who are English Language Learners must take the AIMS test in English. Are these students being left behind? Yes, again! Our precious students are more than a test score. This one test will never assess the true knowledge of a student. It is as if the federal government has made standardized assessments the one and only measure and worth of a school and the children who attend.

What does NCLB mean for our teachers? Teachers are drowning in D.R.I.P. (data rich, information poor). The idea of building a community of learners is replaced with numbers, percentages, grids, graphs, labels and fear. By focusing so much time and energy on discussing the data, researching the data, crunching the data, and dissecting the data, teachers no longer have time to actually teach. Teachers want to teach the student not teach to the test. We are the field experts and front line practitioners. We need to get back to the art of teaching!

What does NCLB mean for our school programs? Some of the areas losing ground are Art, Music, and Physical Education.  Many school districts have cut these programs to focus on the subjects tested on the AIMS. Art and Music are vital and essential in the education of a child. The Arts provide students an aesthetic education with the means to think, feel and understand the world around them in unique and distinct ways from other academic disciplines. These skills have been recognized as essential to lifelong success both in and out of school by a variety of education and civic leaders. Physical Education plays a critical role in increasing activity by offering quality, daily physical education and other opportunities to recreate. Physical education not only gives children an opportunity to be active but it teaches them the skills they need to be active throughout their lifetime.

I am a Music Educator. Thankfully, I work in Sunnyside where the subjects of Art, Music, and Physical Education (PE) are still valued. Each child in elementary school still has these subjects as part of the instructional day. Through Music, my students apply math, reading and writing in learning and understanding how music and lyrics are composed.

When I hear “No Child Left Behind” I cringe. This under funded nightmare has created a testing monster. A child is not a test score, a teacher is not a data machine, and the Arts need to remain an important educational part of every students’ education.

No Child Left Behind is to be reauthorized this year. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords have held public forums on NCLB. They have asked tough questions and taken the responses back to Washington D.C. Teachers, parents, and legislators need to work together for our students to have a quality public education.

The writer is Anna Lisa Termini, a teacher in the Sunnyside Unified School District and president of her professional association, Sunnyside Education Association.

No Child Left Behind, Leaving Them Behind

With the passage of the so-called No Child Left Behind act, educators across the nation were put on notice that student achievement was important.  I do not believe that there was ever a teacher who did not already believe that student achievement was important and went into teaching to accomplish that.  There has never been a time in my 22 year career that I thought of leaving a child behind. 

As a veteran classroom teacher and currently the president of the Mesa Education Association, it is a privilege to talk with teachers and educators on the impact of NCLB.  The goals were lofty and the message was optimistic and positive.  Unfortunately, the devil was in the details as the law was never funded properly and the promises made were never kept.  The current NCLB law seems to want to punish schools and districts and not assist the students it was enacted to help.

Teachers are required to teach a certain way.  Students all across the district and the country learn in different ways, yet we are told that instruction must be done in one way only.  One size does not fit all when professional educators are faced with the diverse populations coming to our public schools.  Teachers and support professionals continue to rise to the challenges and are doing the best to ensure that every child receives a quality public education. 

Extra meetings and so-called professional trainings are taking valuable time away from our teachers who need that time to plan and implement quality lessons.  These trainings are taking so much time, that even if they are good, the teacher has no time to implement the teaching strategies. 

Educators have gone into teaching to make a difference and they are making a difference, one student at a time.  We don’t hear of the teacher who taught a challenging student how to recognize his or her letters; we don’t celebrate the teacher who gets the quiet student to speak in front of the class; we have forgotten the teachers who spend their own money to make a lesson come alive for their students.  These are the celebrations and successes that NCLB has forgotten and overlooked.  These are the intangibles that cannot be assessed by a single multiple choice test; but these are the reasons that teachers continue to come back year after year.  These are the stories that make a school successful, despite the arbitrary labels assigned by NCLB.

There are shortcomings in NCLB and now is the time to let Congress know that the law needs to be fixed.  Schools and districts cannot accomplish the goals if they are shortchanged and there are more ways to fail than to succeed.  Teachers are highly trained professionals and have a strong knowledge base.  This cannot be ignored and let’s let the professionals do their job and support them every step of the way.  

The writer is Kirk Hinsey, teacher in Mesa public schools and president of the Mesa Education Association.