Friday, April 22, 2005

Something odd...

I've written several critical posts about NCLB and today's emphasis on testing, testing and more testing. Whenever I do, I always get comments from teachers along the line of "yes!", "I agree" and "that's just what I think".

Which doesn't surprise me. I don't know of one teacher who feels the current climate of test, test and test again is in the best interests of children.

I get comments from parents who home school, mainly because they don't agree with the current emphasis on test scores, which is the direct result of NCLB. I must admit, that were my children younger, and if circumstance had allowed it, that I might be tempted to consider home schooling too.

And I get comments from people who think NCLB was way overdue and that it is the best thing to happen to education. Which doesn't surprise me except that everyone of these people who tells that, also tells me that they home school. If NCLB is such a good thing why aren't they enrolling their children in school so they can take advantage of it?

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

You make me glad again that my parents scraped up the tuition to send me to catholic school. But even there, I was often bored and frustrated because I got most lessons much faster than most of my classmates. I came to hate stupid children, blame them. I grew out of it, but I have to wonder if this situation is just going to set up the "slow" kids for even more prejudice from the others.

I have this half-baked scheme to have all kids with laptops plugged into a national curriculum, neighborhood "storefront" schools, self paced learning etc. I'd love to see what a real teacher would do to refine the idea and see if it could be a feasible real life system.

Mamacita (The REAL one) said...

I've been trying to comment on your last few posts and finally Blogger is going to let me! I hope. Just wanted to thank you for putting into words what the majority of teachers and intelligent parents have believed about every issue you've ever posted about. Won't you be, won't you be, please won't you be my neighbor?

lijhe said...

That *is* really odd! I wonder... maybe these are religious homeschoolers who basically agree with the NCLB philosophy of education, but still want to keep their kids home to protect from secular influences?