Diamond Author
I've served in the public schools for over 25 years as a counselor and providing family counseling. So, I do have a vantage point to talk about education. The advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has had a negative impact on learning, education and motivation of our students. After reading this article, please take action to help repeal this misguided piece of legislation.
Here are the reasons it has hurt our students ~
- There is a bell curve of scores that naturally occurs among all people. This means that most students will fall in the middle of testing, a few will score very high and a few very low. Testing annually doesn't help students change this.
- Testing is enormously expensive. Testing companies are getting rich, but does it help our children and teens? Ten years ago, before NCLB we used to test students in grades 3, 5 and 7. These test cost $20 per student to purchase. I don't have current test costs, but we are now testing in every grade level. If you take that same money and use it for smaller classes, more individualized instruction, return of music and art, a greater diversity of classes, daily PE, and vocational/technical classes you would engage students to a much greater degree. The students I talk to are bored to tears in high school when a teacher stands up and lectures for an hour and fourty five minutes. The students want to learned, but feel totally ignored by the current system.
- Most teachers spend the first part of the year teaching and the second teaching to the test. They do this because of all the threats to them of having "underpeforming" schools. This takes the creativity out of teaching. It also is pointless to students. This type of learning only gets the information into short term memory for the test. Then they forget the information, so no real learning has taken place.
- Standardized testing originally was meant to give students, parents and teachers feedback about student learning. Originally the standardized tests would let a student know if they were learning what the average student in that grade was learning. When students scored around the 50th percentile they knew they were in the middle of the pack and learning well. Teachers weren't teaching to the test. The test was giving teachers feedback too on if they were covering the material well. If there was an area of weakness for a student, then the teacher, parent and student could take action to help bridge that gap.
- Testing consumes enormous content time. In addition to time spent teaching to the test, all learning stops for 2-4 weeks when all students have to take standardized tests. This doesn't even count the time making up testing for students who are absent.
- Personnel costs of testing are enormous. In order to be in compliance with test security, more testing personnel is hired at the district level. The average school has to allocate a testing coordinator and 1-3 other people who drop their professional duties for 4-6 weeks to count tests, make sure the serial numbers are accurate, give testing instructions, assemble all the tests after testing etc. So, these professionals are not able to do the work they are actually hired for during that 4-6 week window.
About this Author
Copyright 2010, Iris Fanning. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way and give author name credit and website link active. www.irisfanning.com [http://www.irisfanning.com]
Iris Fanning, MA, LPC, NCC is an award winning counselor and Life Coach. She has counseled thousands of teens, children and their families. She has also coached hundreds of women who want to have greater life balance, change careers, find love or advance in their careers. Group & Individual Coaching is available as well as your FREE newsletter at: [http://www.irisfanning.com]
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