The Revenge of NCLB

Three wonderful news stories broke over this weekend in various publications that offer a compelling look at the state of No Child Left Behind - the Republican Educational plan that requires ALL students to test above average (obviously the person who came up with that idea ought to be investigated as to whether they actually took a statistics class at all, much less passed it ;)

The basic idea behind NCLB, of course, was that bad teachers and social advancement were behind our woeful educational system. Therefore, if we came up with a way to get rid of both, we could fix the entire system. By giving standardized tests and requiring all students to pass them, regardless of their actual skill levels or prior education, we were drawing a concrete line in the sand and saying, "Either they all pass, or we all fail!" Bad Teachers would clearly be pointed out by their test scores. Students who had not achieved a score above average would clearly point to a teaching problem.

So, what did we learn this week?

1) According to the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, cheating by teachers is wide spread. To keep their test scores high and to make sure that their students all pass with above average scores, some teachers have been known to alter test answers in order to get higher scores. Wow. Imagine that? Bad teachers doing bad things to make other teachers (we'll call them good) look bad by comparison. Never saw that one coming.

2) A substitute teacher in the Chicago area showed a class of 6th graders Brokeback Mountain and told them not to tell anyone that they'd seen it. Clearly this substitute teacher has bypassed the NCLB trap meant to get rid of bad teachers.

And my favorite,

3) Teachers in one small school decided to "teach" their children what to do in the case of an emergency by "pretending" that there was a gunman out in the woods with them who wanted to kill them. Needless to say, the children were absolutely freaked out by the prospect of a person with a gun out there wanting to kill them. Parents were not very appreciative of the lesson and, I imagine, a lawsuit is pending.

Whatever affect the NCLB is supposed to be having, its clear that getting rid of bad teachers is not one of them. But I would suggest that perhaps we ought to have a new piece of educational legislation called, NAGA, and begin enforcing it right away. No Administrator Gets Ahead would punish the lawmakers and administrators of these school districts when their children go without books, adequate classrooms, lousy teachers, and insane curriculum. By setting definite standards for minimal advancement and then giving administrators one school year to meet those standards or else they would lose a paygrade, I imagine most of our educational problems would be solved within one, maybe two years.

Of course, I only say that because clearly our school administrators are all above average and ought to be capable of just about anything.

P.S. Yeah, Randall, I know the logic is a little "off" but its still fun to talk about.