Has Dubya lost his mind??
I only caught the end of the speech but what I saw was enough for me to question the man's sanity. He was singing the praises of No Child Left Behind...of course he was, he was behind that idiotic legislation in the first place. He's got too much invested (not to mention tons of taxpayers' dollars going to waste!) to back down and admit it's one big failure. He had the audacity to claim that he has talked to teachers who are "thrilled" with NCLB. WHERE on earth did he dig up such teachers, if they, in fact, exist?? I am a teacher myself and every other teacher I've ever talked to hates NCLB and knows that NCLB is an expensive legislation that is set up to fail and will not achieve its objectives because it is so ill-conceived. Instead it just frustrates students, teachers, and administrators and will end up driving teachers from the profession...and we have such a surplus. :roll: :roll: NCLB is so bad the NEA (National Education Association) is suing the government. The case is mostly about funding issues and the costs of the standardized test which are a key component of the "accountability" system the Education Department is promoting. There are several states who are also suing for various reasons (mostly funding).

I read an article a long time ago about how the success of NCLB in Texas was misrepresented. No big surprise that he'd do the same thing as president that he did as governor. The other thing is that when he came to Washington, he said he was a "uniter, not a divider" and he was going to change all the inter-party fighting going on. NCLB was a piece of legislation that both parties united behind. (Don't be mad at me! I'm not sure why the government is funding education anyway.) Anyway, it was the first and last time he united anybody. So he likes to talk about it.

I started searching for articles and other resources and documentation to present why NCLB is such crap and a huge waste of taxpayers' dollars...a nice sounding piece of legislation with zero ability to achieve the ends it aims to force all schools to achieve. I ending up cutting and pasting pertinent information to a word document which is currently 14 pages long. I doubt anyone wants to wade through all that. (If you do, PM me and I'll be happy to email it to you.) If you do a yahoo or google search for NCLB you will find tons of government supported websites that will detail the legislation and tell you why the government thinks it's a wonderful thing. You will also find sites trying to demonstrate that they are doing a great job implementing NCLB or trying to make the government happy by saying it's good. Looking deeper, you find the sites that discuss the problems and dissatisfaction with the whole program. Anyone who wants to believe GWB about NCLB is free to do so. I am a teacher and know first hand why NCLB is terrible. What I am adding here are a list of problems and one teacher's reasons for quitting the profession: Stan Karp is the editor of Rethinking Schools and he gives his: Top Ten Reasons Why NCLB is a Fraud 1. The massive increase in testing that NCLB will impose on schools will hurt their educational performance, not improve it. 2. The funding for NCLB does not come anywhere near the levels that would be needed to reach even the narrow and dubious goal of producing 100% passing rates on state tests for all students by 2014. 3. The mandate that NCLB imposes on schools to eliminate inequality in test scores among all student groups within 12 years is a mandate that is placed on no other social institution, and reflects the hypocrisy at the heart of the law. 4. The sanctions that NCLB imposes on schools that don't meet its test score targets will hurt poor schools and poor communities most. 5. The transfer and choice provisions of NCLB will create chaos and produce greater inequality within the public system without increasing the capacity of receiving schools to deliver better educational services. 6. These same transfer and choice provisions will not give low-income parents any more control over school bureaucracies than food stamps give them over the supermarkets. 7. The provisions about using scientifically-based instructional practices are neither scientifically valid nor educationally sound and will harmfully impact classrooms in what may be the single most important instructional area, the teaching of reading. 8. The supplemental tutorial provisions of NCLB will channel public funds to private companies for ideological and political reasons, not sound educational ones. 9. NCLB is part of a larger political and ideological effort to privatize social programs, reduce the public sector, and ultimately replace local control of institutions like schools with marketplace reforms that substitute commercial relations between customers for democratic relations between citizens. 10. NCLB moves control over curriculum and instructional issues away from teachers, classrooms, schools and local districts where it should be, and puts it in the hands of state and federal education bureaucracies and politicians. It represents the single biggest assault on local control of schools in the history of federal education policy. OK, that's ten: But frankly this law is so bad, I needed 11, so here's #11 on my top ten list of reasons why NCLB is a fraud: 11. NCLB includes provisions that try to push prayer, military recruiters, and homophobia into schools while pushing multiculturalism, teacher innovation, and creative curriculum reform out. If you want to read Karp's full argument, go to: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/bushplan/hoax.shtml Here is one teacher's reasons for leaving the profession: LEAVING THE TEACHER BEHIND By André Gensburger © 2005, André Gensburger, all rights reserved. I am a 3rd/4th grade public school teacher in a district currently caught up in union negotiations that are rapidly deteriorating due to lack of funding and a test-only atmosphere created by NCLB. This is my 6th year teaching and frankly, most likely my last. The creativity and joy of teaching have been replaced by a cut and dry standards-based only education which, with unqualified results, fueled by a paranoid need for pushing NCLB at the expense of all else, has left us all staring blankly for some basic common sense. Just this week I was told that all non-adoption/non-core reading books were to be removed from my classroom - perfectly sound readers for reading-starved children that were paid for by parents, PTA, school and teachers over the years. The dictate is that since they are not included in the adoption they have no place in the classroom. In its place are the few readers that accompany the adoption which hardly offer the full richness of reading diversity that was previously available to the students. Our grade levels mirror each other in pacing with no room for any creative teaching unless done in secret. Science and Social Studies have fallen by the wayside due to a time-consuming Language Arts program with a mandated number of teaching hours. And school districts are determining cuts to Music and Library programs, as though they had no relevance to the learning process. I have become a ‘page-turning monkey’ at the mandate of my school district based on the NCLB push. Our teachers are all stressed, exhausted, depressed and, despite being professionals, feel locked into defensiveness for everything said and done within the classroom. This is a totally unhealthy atmosphere in which to teach children and is destroying a generation of students who, in the end, won’t have a clue what they have really learned or why. It has been suggested that failing schools reinforce the government’s promotion of vouchers as though schools of choice will solve the problem. And the very test scores that determine failure come from a “standardized test” that has not even had consistent, relevant content year after year. How is any worthwhile data to be determined when the ground rules keep changing? As a teacher I am depressed by what I see – children struggling to master basic skills that they need for success while we spend more and more time assessing their lack of knowledge. I am amazed that parents are not in uproar over the politics of education created by people who are not actually teaching their children. And then I watch the media coverage that promotes the notion of strength through testing while denigrating teachers as “whiners” consumed with pettiness over salaries rather than student success and how many do not meet the requirements of The Highly Qualified Teacher. André Gensburger A Highly Qualified Teacher Concord, California andre@gensburger.com

...I have become a ‘page-turning monkey’ at the mandate of my school district based on the NCLB push. ... This is just sad.