No Child Left Behind

"Welcome back to the darkside." This starting quote, said by the women in the beginning of the video, immediately sets the mood for what is to come. The setting is dark and it provides a serious tone to the women's speech. The viewer can tell she strongly supports her opinion by the emotion behind her facial expressions and through her tone of voice. The women is clearly against the "No Child Left Behind" act, and that makes two of us. The idea of having an eduactional program, like "No Child Left Behind", seems wonderful at first, but once the women broke it down in sections, I realized the damage it can do the educational system and students.

Problem numbero uno : It's comparing "apples and oraanges" like the women said. It is clearly seen that there is a problem here, because immigrants or lower level students are being to compared to the previous score of other students that may or may ot be in the same level. I believe the test should focus on the student as an individual, as oposed to a whole. This way you can see the exact change of improvement each student has achieved from one year to the next.

Another flaw was that the students from 3rd to 8th grade were tested once a year every year in March. My plan: Have the teachers give the test in late May or 1-2 weeks before the school year ends. That way the students have enough time to learn what they need to learn, and the teachers don't have to stress about teaching rushing their lesson plans and setting time apart to prepare them for the test. If the students are tested at the end of he school year, they would have alreadylearned all the material ,and the test should be a summary of everything they learned that year. (Like a final).

In addition, the worst part of this act is the reward on punishment section. Rewarding schools for yearly progress is not bad. However, punishing schools for not improving is horrible. If a school is suffering, it needs all the help it could get, and taking away money to help out the staff and students isn't going to help. The ones who get more affected by this, is not the teachers whos salaries have declined, but the students. If the teachers do not have that willngness to teach, then the students won't have the willingness to learn, and vice-versa if teachers show eagerness to teach, then students will want to learn.

As far as private and home-schooled kids, I don't care. Their parents have enough money to hire a tutor if their child is suffering academicaly in the future. I just don't believe kids in Title 1 pubic schools have to be punished if there school doesn't meet the act's standards, because it's not their fault. What does child know about administrative funds? They are just there to learn and we should provide them the education they need.

I agree with this quote from Gov. Bill Richardson ,"I would scrap it, it doesn't work."
I'll start over and start a new plan. Tip for those is government: Analyze the method of teaching in other countries with a higher education level, apply it to this education system, and maybe just maybe it can work in this country too. (Tip of countries: Germany, Finland, or Canada)

Here is a quote that I taught was clever, sad but true.
"It has been said that we have not had the three R's in America, we had the six R's; remedial readin', remedial 'ritin' and remedial 'rithmetic."-Robert M. Hutchins