Yes. The difficulty lies in the fact that kids are not learning because they are not brought up in a home where education and learning is valued. Often lower income areas are affected because the parents are only concerned with making ends meet and not how important it is to make you child love reading and learning from day one. I think we need to find a way to hold parents/guardians and children more accountable for being involved in the learning process. While teachers are responsible for being able to teach, a lot of pressure needs to be put on the parent and student as well.

GR!! i will try not to go on too much of a tangent here. i am a special education teacher. in theory, no child left behind is a great idea – IN THEORY!! but it is only making schools lose focus on teaching children. nobody worries about what the kids learn, or what they remember. they spend too much time teaching to the test and reviewing out of stupid state guide books.

schools lose funding because their students don’t score high enough on the standardized tests, but these are often schools that do not have enough money to begin with. they cannot afford for the huge technology labs and they can’t afford to buy new textbooks every 3 years. so yeah – i have a great idea – lets cut their funding more so that the kids fall even more behind!

then there are students that are in special education. some of them will never be able to take a standardized test and fill in the little bubble. they just can’t. i’m not sure how other states do it, but in illinois, they have an alternative assessment. this is a portfolio. the teacher picks a certain number of goals off a list. then the teacher gives the students work along those goals and takes pictures and stuff. then the teacher has to put together this portfolio and organize it in a certain way. now, it gets mailed to the state. they look to see if the goals are checked on a piece of paper. they look and see if the goals are typed. they look at how the information is organized and labeled. they don’t assess the student’s actual work! so they are grading the teachers… not the students!

THE PROBLEM IS THE POLITICIANS THAT HAVE NEVER ACTUALLY TAUGHT. THEY MAKE ALL THE STUPID LAWS AND NEVER HAVE TO IMPLEMENT THEM. THEY DON’T HAVE TO WORK WITH STUDENTS. THEY DON’T KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT TEACHING!!!!

As a special ed teacher I can see the positives and the negatives (mind you there are far more negatives the positives). Having all teachers show compensies in the subjects they are teaching is great. Of course if a special education teacher has to be certified to teach Science, Math, History and English if s/he is teaching that subject the should general education teachers who have students with disabilities in their classroom be required to be certified in special education?

Now I am not saying this to anger general education teachers but to become a special education teacher I have had to take more then 63 hours of special education classes alone not to mention the 24 general education classes I had to take. I am currently getting my certification to teach Elementry education and English, plus I eventually want to get my certification to teach Math/Algebra and Science.

Here is the issue, in a perfect world all students would be working a the same or near same level and one test would fit all. We all know this is not a perfect world and students come to schools with all ability levels and we as teachers and adminstration must make sure they learn the skills they need to be a functioning individual in society. The high-stakes testing has taken away the focus on skill and knowledge aquistion to regurgitating information that students often will not use when they get out of school.

In Oklahoma we have three different assessments, the EOI (end of instruction exam), the portfolio and last year we were given a modified test for certain subjects like Algebra, English 10 and Biology but we still have to teach to the test or the school looses their funding if they can not show improvement every year on their test scores.

My suggestion is contact you senator and congressmen and tell them you concerns, make the politician who vote these laws into office accountable and if they will not take responsiblity vote them out of office. I grew up being told that this is a country of the people, for the people, by the people and I feel betrayed because I have no say in my government.

Education is important, but the very people who TEACH our children are the MAIN ones who DON”T care!

There is SO much corruption in public schools!

It’s all so burecratic now, it makes me sick.

With the NCLB, there is even more of this. The schools do NOT teach so the child won’t be ‘left behind’ they teach so the schools can get MORE MONEY.

I think that the important question is what exactly does No Child Left Behind mean. If NCLB means that every child is able to perform as well as they possibly can, then I think it’s a great thing. Does it mean that every child will be on the same level, No.

NCLB. coupled with a naive belief that all children with disbilities can be “included”, has done more harm to special needs kids than good. I’m a volunteer tutor at a very good local primary school. One of the kids I worked with this year was a kindergartener who had been declassified coming out of a special ed preschool-with a 58 IQ. On any measure he was functioning like a 2-3 year old with a few spikes because he had some street smarts It took the full school year and a lot of persistance by his parents, the classroom teacher and me to get him reclassified and into an appropriate class next year. In the meantime I watched him fall further and further behind and get more frustrated. His teacher tried the best she could but she had 20 more kids to get ready for all the testing. By the end of the year he could find colors if you named them but couldn’t name them on his own, count up to 6 objects if you pointed to them as he counted, and write the first 3 letters of his name. He was still drawing faces without a nose. All of that took an incredible amount of work. The school has an inclusion program. Many of the kids do well, but there are some who fall further and further behind. The teachers know they have no chance of passing the standardized tests but they have to teach for them anyhow instead of working on basic skills. If those kids were in small classes with teachers trained to work with them they might still be below grade level but they might make more progress. One of the problems is that nobody likes to admit that not all kids can reach grade level and that goals need to be more realistic. NY wants all special ed kids to be given age appropriate curriculum. I had a friend who was principal of a school for profoundly retarded children. They were functioning like 2 year olds at age 12. Imagine trying to write lesson plans that covered 7th. grade social studies.

A more realistic approach would to set goals for individual children and track progress towards those goals, not expecting that one year of school would lead to a year of progress. If the little boy I tutored comes out of next year knowing the letters in his name and a few more, able to count ten items and knowing the names of many body parts I think he will have done well. Unfortunatly, NCLB will not reward his effort or that of the many people who work with him.

NCLB was written as a no win law. There is no one who can force any school district to comply. Why? Because it flies in the face of another law that provides that our children will receive a free education. NCLB’s answer to non-compliance is to not send funding to those schools/states that don’t comply. Because the law provides that our children have to have a free education, they can not do this.

I do’t go with ur remark. In our country lot of programmes are being carried over to provide equal educational opportnites to all people irrespective caste creed colour.since our Independence lot of programmes are taken by the central and state govts to provide free n compulsory education to all.