Superintendents in Eastern PA are petitioning the state capital for changes in NCLB:
On Monday, 138 superintendents from several eastern Pennsylvania counties gathered at Norristown High School in Montgomery County to sign a petition to support changes to the No Child Left Behind Act.
[Changes requested in the petition are]:
Altering the punitive-testing requirements so schools and children aren’t judged on a single test score.
Ensuring that the teacher quality definition will not force qualified, competent teachers from the classroom.
Closing loopholes that exempt charter schools and supplemental service providers from some of the requirements.
Requiring Congress to fully fund the act before punishing cash-strapped school districts that don’t meet the mandates of the new law.
Well, when one test score is defined as "punitive," I can tell we're dealing with people who find objective testing punitive in and of itself. What would the alternatives be? More test scores? Or more subjective measures?
I found this quote telling:
Tammy Manko, a parent with two children in the Freeport Area School District, and Dominic Duso, vice president of Apollo-Ridge Education Association, share many of the same reservations.
Manko said she pays close attention to what is going on in education, and she has discussions with a number of relatives who are teachers. Manko believes the act puts a lot of pressure on students and teachers, and that there’s too much emphasis placed on the PSSA tests.
“I have never put a lot of faith in that kind of testing,” she said. “I think these tests are the antithesis of what education should be. I feel for the teachers and I feel for the kids.”
She said teachers feel the need to teach to the standardized tests. Kerr said that’s not something that’s encouraged in the Armstrong School District.
Duso said No Child Left Behind holds schools accountable for things that are hard for them to control.
So it's more important to "feel" for kids than to understand why they're doing so poorly on objective tests? That's more important than trying to figure out what teachers were teaching previously other than basic skills? And I'd be willing to cut schools slack on the attendance thing if they were to accept that it is the schools' responsibility to teach reading and math, no matter what their students' home lives are like.
Posted by kswygert at March 2, 2004 01:40 PM