Schools may skip Bush* law

[stevedeshazer]

Principal Ed Foster's Ooltewah High School in suburban Chattanooga, Tenn., has one of the state's best academic records. But Foster and his 1,750 students got a nasty shock last September: Ooltewah was named on a list of schools "in need of improvement" under President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law.

The reason: Only 94.1% of its students took the state's Algebra Gateway Test last spring - three students shy of the 95% the law requires.

"I was stunned," he said. "We've been known as a very high-performing school for some time."

Bush travels to nearby Knoxville, Tenn. today to celebrate the second anniversary of the signing of the law, which he says is revolutionizing schools and bringing needed federal attention to low-income students. But critics say its complex rules and far-reaching requirements could make it a political liability, with an estimated 93,000 public schools at risk of being labled "in need of improvement."

more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2004-01-08-bush-education-usat_x.htm
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Another Bush triumph!

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. We missed the necessary participation rate...

...of two idenifiable racial/ethnic minorities, and were put on the same list.

If you have only a dozen non-white students -- this is rural Maine, after all -- and two of them are absent on the day of the statewide reading test, poof! you are a 'failing school'.

Why?

You have to meet the statutory participation rates not only for the school as a whole -- that's what happened in this story -- but for half-a-dozen subgroups, ethnic, racial, and socioeccomic.

[stevedeshazer]

2. The whole thing is a joke

The tests aren't relevant, the schools are forced, with ever-diminishing resources, to teach to the testing rather than just learning, and there are no federal funds provided, so it is a classic unfunded mandate.

And, yes, here in rural Oregon there are public schools that have not much more than twelve TOTAL students.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. The smaller rural schools...

....will be screwed, at least at the HS level, because the NCLB language requiring 'highly qualified teachers' will make it difficult or impossible for chemistry teachers (with undergrad chemistry majors) to teach that extra section of physics, or the physics teacher (with an undergrad major in physics) to teach that extra section of algebra, which they could do, and probably already do, standing on their head.

Like there are hundreds of folks who are dying to teach part-time in the more sparsely populated parts of America.

The idiots who drafted this law had a single kind of school in mind at each level, and it is clear that the high school model they had in mind is a suburban -- probably Montgomery Co. Maryland, if I had to guess -- high school of about 1500 kids.

One size fits all doesn't even work with pantyhose.

[9119495]

10. Great point, which is why I'm thinking about not letting

my daughter take the tests next year when she enters 3rd grade. If I could convince just fifteen other students' parents, we could put a great school "in need of improvement." I think it would make a powerful statement if we could get the publicity. I saw some parents did this in Arizona a few years ago.

[lcordero]

4. I'm surprised that parents aren't belligerent about having their

children's info passed on to military recruiters because of that law.

[stevedeshazer]

6. There is some belligerence here

In my school district, recruiters were banned. When the NCLB law went into effect, the district was basically blackmailed into accepting recruiters to retain funding.

[wabeewoman]

5. Its time to start labeling this what it is

-a plan to privatize public schools because they 'obviously' can't do the job. Parents and teachers and school boards need to take back the schools from the repugs who ironically SAY they believe in local control.

[stevedeshazer]

7. I agree with you

The irony isn't lost on me.

In fact, the radical right got a big foothold on our government in the '80's by stacking local school boards with fundies. Now they are reaping their rewards.

Pendulum, I beg thee, swing this way.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. The real goal of NCLB program: to compel public schools to relinquish

federal funding. Secondary goal: to mandate so many goals that are impossible to achieve financially and simultaneously that the public schools appear to "fail" and thus allow the administration to trumpet the cure: first, vouchers for "successful" private schools (immune from NCLB and possibly "failing" per its own standards) and eventually, privitization of the public school system.

[rman]

9. and once privitization of the public school system is complete,

govcorp can teach the children everything they need to know, and nothing they don't need to know.

major tinfoil: Will the study of history be replaced by the study of some sort of 'development plan for the future'?

[ithacan]

12. exactly: Sneaky way to destroy public schools

the whole thing is structured in a way to ensure failure, especially since no funding was provided for the mandates.

It's part of the GOP's deceitful plan to foist their agenda onto an unsuspecting public... And totally in line with the Religious Right's agenda of privatizing schools thus subsidizing church-sponsored "education"; and of course with that kind of "education" you can be sure no kid will be thinking in any critical way...

[LeahMira]

16. Privatized comes from private... i.e. not accountable to the public

a plan to privatize public schools because they 'obviously' can't do the job.

I guess the federal government can't do testing in the private schools, eh? No way to tell if they are falling down on the job.

If by some strange fluke all of the students in every single school in a given district actually passed the tests with flying colors, I wonder what would happen. Would people say that their public schools are doing a fantastic job, or would they say that the tests must have been too easy?

If, like me, you suspect the latter, then the obvious conclusion is that these tests are nothing more than sorting devices, set up to find groups of students who can be excluded from services and marginalized from the mainstream... unless, of course, Mom and Dad can afford to buy them out of that group.

Standardized tests make for standardized people. Standardized people are yukky!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

11. from my understanding Vermont opted out of Fed dollars and told ...

bush to shove his "no child left behind" where the sun don't shine...they refuse to test their students to death and teach to tests
they are aware of the sinster motives of this bill...yto dismantle public education and replace it with their junk science (that support corporate interests) and intelligent design (Biblical creationism)curriculum

[LWolf]

13. Tinfoil hat here:

:tinfoilhat:

If your long-term objective is to abolish public education in favor of privatization and/or vouchers, what better way than to enact legislation that is so bad states will refuse to participate? Enough states reject federal funding, and you can call the dept of ed defunct, get rid of it, and then go to work at the state level.

While I completely agree with your take, I think that when states reject federal funding in opposition to NCLB, they are unintentionally serving the bigger purpose on the "ENAC" agenda. Interestingly enough, the first state reported to be exploring this possibility, about a year ago, was Nebraska. It was their Republican politicians, Bush supporters, who were bringing up the possibility. That was a red flag! I don't know what they decided, though.

[0007]

14. A few months back Bill Moyers brought us an expos on the Texas School

system on his "Now" program. It showed how school administrators lie, cheat and cooked the books to gain Federal monies. The biggest glaring error was that Texas showed hardly anyone dropping out from school. When in reality the drop-out rate was very high.

It is a shame that the media didn't pick this exposition up and bring it to the proper level of exposure to the American people.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

15. ITS BEING DISCUSSED ON C-SAPN...RIGHT NOW