No Child Left Behind...

[Kothnok]

... sometimes means No Child Gets Ahead, either.

I was reading some of the comments on /. about some experiences some people have had with public education recently and came across this one that just made me laugh and cry at the same time.

Story of my school's life. I don't know what kicked it off, but in 1999 a group of parents got together to stop the awarding of best-in-school awards to the top students, because it had the effect (they claimed) of causing all the other students to feel they weren't as good at school. The idea being that three students would end up awarded for excelling, and seventy others in the same year would be indirectly labeled as inferior.

Within two years we had academic success awards removed, and all kinds of other awards, including ones for one total misfit who'd been caught multiple times shitting on the bleachers. He got an award for exemplary social behaviour or some such, because he went a couple months without taking a crap on school property.

Now the smart kids go without awards, but the dumb shits get an award for not smearing their own feces all over the place. Mediocrity ftw.

[Nixphire]

Doesn't competition breed innovation?

[fiere redfern]

But where's the competition if there's no reward for the winner?

[capnpop]

I don't really blame the "No Child Left Behind" laws for this. 

It's more of the "we don't want to make them feel bad" thing going on.  It's the same reason there are some pushing for no more use of red to mark papers since red is associated with bad or wrong (why a similar association about a different color couldn't be made I'll never know...). 

Graduation no longer requires that you pass all your classes, but instead a promise to pass those classes before a certain deadline.  If you fail to make it you don't "graduate," but the best part of graduation is already done.  By the time my children (of which i currently have 0) are graduating I fear that the "don't make them feel bad" idea will have spread to the point where 2 + 2 = 5 will work because "s/he does her/his math a little differently, but that doesn't mean it's wrong."

Slippery slope ideology? Certainly.  Impossible? Not in the least.

[Nixphire]

It's all a big conspiracy. I hear things like the reason things like Columbine happen is because of these warm cocoons that we put our children in. We want them cut off so much from everything that is bad that when bad things happen, or hurtful things, that they don't have the coping skills to deal with it. So what happens when someone calls you a bad name, shoves you in the hall. Well rather then coping with it and letting it go. You let it build up to the point where you bring a gun to school.
So it's not always in the best interest to overly protect your kids.

At least that's what I've read.

[Shadowwolf]

Well, when I was growing up kids didnt shoot other kids in school for name calling or being picked on. Kids shot other kids from rival gangs, drugs, etc which is always going to happen. Then suddenly one generation, im not sure which, started having kids and shielding them from all the "violence" and convincing them how "special" they were and filling their heads with mindless positive crap and suddenly kids were blowing other kids away with dad or granddads guns because they didnt like being called a "nerd". Yet instead of looking at the situation they created they quickly blame the video games or the news or the Internet.

These people act like violence didnt exist before these things. They also dont accept that shielding thier kids from all negativity plays a role in the lack of their ability to deal with unpleasant situations.

I forget, what kind of violent video games was Hitler playing?

What were some of the Internet websites Pol Pot was visiting?

Stalin watched which violent movies?

You take away all reason to try hard and excel at something and you create a situation of "good enough". Thats what society is teaching kids today, good enough is just as good as doing your best.

[un4]

That's why you need a 40% to pass each section of the Ohio Graduation Test.

[fiere redfern]

It's things like the No Child Left Behind Act that disgust me, personally. Here we are, teaching our children to do things like celebrate mediocrity and sue everyone if they feel the least bit slighted. Ever. Back in my day, (god it feels wrong to have to pull that) little things like spanking a young child for doing something wrong was not abuse, christ. It was a teaching method. I got my share when I was young, and I like to think I turned out okay. Every day Ave bitches to me about a woman at his company who, because she is friends with the head of the HR department (and happens to be a minority), knows she can get away with taking a "vacation day" one day a week EVERY week (when the department is the most understaffed, of course), and if someone even looks at her funny, she'll sue their pants off.

I'm honestly tired of all the BS people think they can get away with because they have "rights", when the REAL rights are slowly being taken away by every Big Brother Act Doubya can get his slimy little hands on. Yes, you have the right to be an ass to me because I am Caucasian and your ancestors were somehow done wrong by my low-brow booze-swillin' Southern redneck ones. Grats2u, now leave me the hell alone. 

Bleh... realizing now this rant took off on a perpendicular tangent. Remind me never to post when I'm dead-tired and already angry >.<

[Shadowwolf]

Ive been saying for a while that most parents in today's society expect society as a whole to raise their kids not themselves. Thats why they protest or enact bills to pass laws that prohibit this or that, or benefit their underachievers as much as the kids that try hard.

The moment you dont show favor to their kids, you are a bad person.

The best example is my neighbors. Their damn kids use my stone steps and walkway as a skateboard ramp because it makes a good launch platform. Well, in doing so they destroy the stone and walkway with scrapes and chips, not to mention if they get hurt I would get sued as its my property. They do this when Im not home of course, but a few times they were so bold as to do it when I was home because they figured I wouldnt do anything and their parents would defend them. They were partly right, their Mother actually had the nerve to come over after I kicked them off my property and told them if they didnt leave Id have the cops make them leave and told me they had "the right" to skateboard where they want. I about rolled over laughing. These are the same kids that when in front of their own house, any car that drives by they do stupid things like jump out in front of them to see what will happen.

If I did that kind of thing growing up not only would my mother have smacked me around, my grandmother and other relatives would have laid into me about it later once they found out.

Im not sure if its the No Child act thats the cause of this honestly, I believe its more due to the parents having kids that probably shouldnt be, the fact that these people are also focused on being politically correct...which is a whole other issue, and the fact that Therapists and Pharma companies with all these drugs and advice about hands off parenting or loading the kids up with drugs to curb a disciplinary issue that can simply be overcome with a smack upside the head.

[Nixphire]

Shadow?





But yeah, kids can get away with anything. Haven't you seen that show jack ass? But then again, a minority of kids have been like that for as long as time can remember.

Not to get all doom and gloom, but at least there are still a few functional members of society that are raising their kids correctly and not over protecting their children. I know my kid is going to do damn well.

[un4]

My solution is to not have kids 

[capnpop]

2 of the things wrong with no child left behind (off the top of my head):

1: "Satisfactory academic progress" = improve every year indefinitely.  Highest you can get is 100%, if you don't get higher than that the following test cycle you didn't make academic progress and get put on the list to be put on the plan.

2: Lack of flexibility for students with special needs.  This includes students with behavioral disorders, limited English proficiency, cognitive disabilities or other disabilities qualifying for special education services.  They all take the same test.  The federal law allows for schools to exempt a certain percentage(1%) of the student population from taking the test which actually only includes an average of 9% of the total number of special education students.

Additionally, no child left behind requires 95% participation from each subgroup(subgroups are ethnicity, reduced/free lunch status, among others. 37 total).  If a subgroup has a low population and a few of the students fail to take the test this counts as a failure.  One example I found was a school in Minnesota that had 53 students listed as "Asian/Pacific Islander."  Three of these students didn't take the test which resulted in a failure for the school.

[Luise]

As a teacher and a mum:
The most difficult students I have met behaviourally and often academically, usually have parents who either
1) are in crisis (e.g. going through divorce/violent abusive father) - they usually improve when things settle down.
2) bury their head in the sand and turn a blind eye to all their kids behaviour- "not my little darling- she's so good at home" or "he says he didn't do it and I believe him".
3) blame the teachers/politicians/school/environment - "I pay the fees -so you fix the problem"
4) haven't given their kids any boundaries - we have a lot of rich kids at our school with lots of problems - "he's old enough to make his own choices now".

I'm an old fashioned teacher that marks tests in red ink with ticks and crosses. In our primary school they only ever see ticks- and I had to explain to my 7 yr old work that she got incorrect. I do not believe that she as been psychologically damaged in the process.
Some parents get offended but most are happy because they know where their kid stands.
I also award the top 5 students every topic tests. I also give out improvement awards, so everyone gets a go.
Australia has a lot of issues with tall poppy syndrome- so I like to commend the high achievers.
My students also get a special reward (chocolates of course) if they find a mistake on the board that I have made.  They love it when I'm tired!

[Nasanna]

Wow, I wish I took your math class Luise!

In Ohio, I could take the Ohio Proficiency Test (that was the one before the Ohio Graduation Test) in the summer before 9th grade (high school). You have to pass this test to graduate highschool. I aced it, yet was still required to take the basic history and math classes freshman year to be prepared for the test...

I was also in the last class to be required to take the Ohio Proficiency Test and not the Ohio Graduation Test, so my class was the "trial run" for the OGT. Since it didn't really matter how well they did on the OGT, the students in my grade doodled or wrote stupid answers to all the questions on the sample test. The next year, the students the year behind us were praised for doing so much better than my class since they needed it to graduate.

[Telfurion]

In concept, No Child Left Behind is good: don't promote kids who haven't learned the material, thereby filling our society with a bunch of uneducated, endeserving GED or diploma holders.  However, it seems that even with the protocols of NCLB in place, low-level learners still manage to be promoted far past their education level.  For instance, in California, much like other states, you have to pass the High School Exit Exam to graduate.  You can take the test as many times as there are sessions and after two fails you are allowed a proctor who will sit with you and explain each question to you, along with inifinte time with which to take the test.  Even most mentally retarded kids have to take the test.  After a couple years of studying the results, the test has been shown to have 99.9% first time pass rate amongst the top 90% of the population, while the effective curve is weighed down very heavily by the mentally retarded children.  So, even people that have no business graduating high school because they are literally to f-ing stupid, graduate because the only people that fail are actual disabled people. 

I say, let some kids fall behind.  Make the test easy, but not so easy that the valedictorian gets the same score as the kid smearing his feces on the bleachers.  Then, if the kids don't have any legitimate reason for being such an idiot (such as a learning disability), then hand them back to their parents to educate.  We don't need more idiots in the work force, we need less.