[MOSAIC] comments on NCLB

[Renee]

www.nclbcommission.org

Click on it. 
They want everyone to give their opinions and suggestions.  This is 
your chance now, if you really want to let the NCLB commission know 
what you think.

Renee
This is what I submitted:


In the last several years, I have witnessed a systematic dumbing down 
of the classroom due to the over-attention given to testing, test 
scores, and the mistaken idea that students will learn more if we test 
them more. Classrooms that used to be places of joyful learning, where 
students were invited to be creative while learning the basics, where 
children loved to read and talk about books, where students did science 
investigations and serious mathematics, where teachers were honored and 
celebrated for their professional expertise, have turned into places of 
gloom and doom, where students are stressed and teachers have been 
devalued and distrusted, where once-thoughtful, supportive 
administrators have thrown away everything they know about children's 
learning in favor of easily-counted data that is largely reflective of 
simple, surface learning rather than the deeper reflective learning of 
real problem-solvers.

I have watched how, in a short period of half a decade, children who 
once loved to read have turned into children who view reading as a 
chore, because reading has been reduced to decoding, passing tests, 
reaching fluency benchmarks, and the racking up of points for taking 
computer quizzes.

The most insidious result of this law is that schools all over the 
country have been forced into a situation where test scores dictate who 
is considered a learner, who is considered proficient, who is 
considered below average, who gets to advance to the next grade and 
even graduate from high school, even though the test-makers themselves 
have said over and over that no one test should ever be used for 
high-stakes decisions.

Shame on the writers of this pitiful excuse for education reform. In 
future years, when the children who are in school right now are running 
our country, we are going to see the damage that has been done by this 
law.

It is time to do something serious to change the details of this 
legislation. It's time to take an extensive look at what is being done 
to children who have had recess taken away, who are no longer allowed 
time for art and music, who are forced to go to summer school, Saturday 
school, Intercession programs, and other "remedial" programs if they do 
not make the grade according to test scores, and who will certainly 
grow up to be non-thinkers and non-learners if something is not 
changed.

Thank you for asking! I hope you are planning to listen!




"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of 
crisis, remain neutral." ~ Edmund Burke