No Child Left Behind

[ZeaLitY]

Some friends have started discussing this, and despite my reading the Wikipedia article, I haven't really passed judgment yet. Does it suck?

[Corey Taylor]

The program? It's being used at our school, and the middle school. It isn't too bad. It gives the kids the help they need.

[CyberSarkany]

Because I am to lazy with searching wikipedia myself:

What is this? Like learning aid for every below average pupil?

[Silvercry]

Its a good concept in theory.  But so is communism.  How'd that one work out for Russia?  Cuba?  North Korea?

In practice, it places pressure on the schools to promote students who fail to the next grade level, which helps the school look good but fails the student in question.  It also places far to much emphasis on standardized testing, which in turn forces teachers to "teach the test".  I never understood that concept personally: it seems to me that if you just teach the subject matter and teach it well, standardized testing becomes almost a moot point: Students will pass because they've been given the knowledge necessary to do so.  But evidentially, that’s not the way it works.  Again, this fails the student.

Of course, my take of the matter might be skewed slightly given my incredibly low opinion of the nation's public school system in general.  Chibi-Silvercry is only 15 months old, but I'm already looking at area private schools to send her to.  They’re damn pricey, but I'll sell crack to pay the tuition before I doom her to my area's craptacular public school system.

[nightmare975]

Yeah, here at our school, kids who are failling make people like me suffer. We get taught the same shit over and over just for them.

[ZeaLitY]

That's what I thought. I no longer have tolerance for holding back the entire world for those who consciously wish to fail. This situation needs to be rectified. Keep them in dummy land and perhaps make the tests a bit more expressive and less important. I am gifted as a natural test taker, which means I can use deductive logic pretty well to feel out answers. But I have peers just as educated as I am in the subject matter who have a harder time of it and score worse albeit having a higher grade in the class. Or at least, I did, since this is past-tense...

[ChibiBob]

No Child Left Behind sucks. Why? Because my high school, with its best passing rate and highest SAT scores in the entire state, was given a "failing" rating by the government because one more student dropped out last year than the year before. That's such bullshit. Now from what I hear the entire school's like a Nazi deathcamp, with the administration basically forcing each and every student into classes far below their academic level so nobody will feel obligated to drop out, not to mention bolting the doors shut during school hours to prevent truancy and the incarceration of the students so that won't appear as a "drop" on their record either. And because the other schools in the county are full of inner-city kids, they get all the funding while my former high school suffers with almost no working technology, fourty kids per classroom and over two hundred kids per teacher per day -- it took them ten years of asbestos and mold warnings before they built a new facility this year, for Chrissakes.

No Child Left Behind leaves all the children with a bright future behind, while promoting those who really couldn't give a rat's ass less about their own education and would probably do better dropping out and becoming entrepreneurs or fry-flippers at Mickey D's.

[Radical_Dreamer]

I agree with Zeality. We need to stop letting the disenfranchised drag the rest of the student body down with them. Keeping those who are mildly below average in their ability with the average is actually beneficial to them, however. The average serve as a Jupiter of sorts, pulling smaller groups toward itself. Obviously, some students are so far below that they cannot keep up and it benefits all parties to keep them seperate, and there are those who simply wish to fail. They won't amount to anything with or without a high school diploma, so save some money and agravation and cut them loose. Another problem is the above average students. They also need to be seperated, as the power of the average actually pulls them back toward the average. One size does not fit all in education, and the school system needs to be able to more successfully differentiate the needs of individual students, and place them where they can get the education that best fits them. It benefits everyone to do things this way.

[Exodus]

This program is actually the reason I'm behind on credits.

It sucks.

[nightmare975]

This program is actually the reason I'm behind on credits.

It sucks.

More information, please? This has gotten me intreaged.

[Exodus]

I basically fell behind, made up a year's worth of failure, only to be told none of the credits would be counted. Mind you, this was eight and a half credits towards graduation.

[nightmare975]

I basically fell behind, made up a year's worth of failure, only to be told none of the credits would be counted. Mind you, this was eight and a half credits towards graduation.

Know how you feel. They did the same with my Foreign Language Requirement.