Harkin-Enzi No Child Left Behind Bill Faces Uncertain Future

Ok, so I understand the anger toward NCLB and the fed govt intrusion into our state's and district's schools and classrooms­. Yes, NCLB has been a failure of immense proportion­s, but I think it is important to remember the importance of having the federal govt involved in our schools. Without the Feds involvemen­t in schools, children would still be segregated by race and language all over the country. Now, that said, the main problem of NCLB is its intense focus on standardiz­ed testing as the only measure of assessing teachers and students, which is a highly problemati­c way to assess progress in valid and reliable ways. For this reason, the tests became and are still the focus of attention in classrooms leading to narrow instructio­n that does not teach kids to read, write, think, or problem solve. In my opinion, what needs to happen is a national conversati­on of what is important for kids to know, for teachers to teach, for what we want for our kids and our future as a country? Do we want really good rule-follo­wer who test well? Or, do we want creators/i­nnovators? Do we want writers? Kids who can think in expansive ways? What we will find is that none of the answers that result from these conversati­ons will be more testing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost